Vodafone Idea (Vi) just announced its quarterly results for Q1 FY25. The loss has narrowed for the company's QoQ (quarter-on-quarter), but no ARPU (average revenue per user) growth is a concern. A worrying sign for the telecom operator is its active user base, which has declined at an alarming rate in QoQ and YoY. The blended churn rate, which dipped in the previous quarter, rose again this time. Another key stat that we would focus on is the addition of 4G users and the average data usage by 4G subscribers. Vi didn't see much positive here. Let's go through the results and see what happened with the company in the first quarter of the financial year 2024-25.
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Vodafone Idea (Vi) Q1 FY25 Performance Detailed: Revenue, Loss, ARPU, and More
Vodafone Idea's revenue from operations dipped marginally from Rs 10,606.8 crore to Rs 10,508.3 crore. The net loss from the company decreased from Rs 7,675 crore to Rs 6,434 crore.
The VLR subscribers or active users dipped from 193.3 million to 188.3 million. This kind of dip wasn't seen before for some time, and the average revenue per user (ARPU) stayed flat at Rs 146. The blended churn rate was at 4%. Total data subscribers of the telecom operator fell from 137.3 million to 136.9 million.
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The 4G/5G subscribers of the telecom operator rose from 126.3 million to 126.7 million QoQ, which is the kind of growth that won't affect the telco's revenues much. The loss of subscribers has hurt the operator's revenues, especially as its ARPU remained flat. The overall mobile subscriber base fell from 212.6 million to 210.1 million QoQ.
The average data usage by 4G subscribers grew marginally from 15.8GB to 15.9GB, a negligible growth. Capex spend for the quarter stood at Rs 7.6 billion. Vodafone Idea has increased the data capacity by 17% post fundraising, and expects to grow it further by 15%. The 4G population coverage of the company will grow by 16 million by the end of September 2024.
The company is in the process of shutting down 3G completely throughout the country. The telco's overall broadband site stood at 4,17,250 as of June 30, 2024, and during the quarter, 6600 4G sites were added. The company is further expanding the LTE 900 presence in 14 circles to improve indoor coverage.
Akshaya Moondra, CEO of Vodafone Idea Limited, said, "Post the recent equity raise, we are in the process of expanding our 4G coverage and capacity as well as launch of 5G services. Some capex has already been ordered and under execution, basis which we expect ~15% increase in our data capacity and an increase in 4G population coverage by ~16 million by end Sep’24. Our current Capex needs are being met out of equity funds."
"We are engaged with our lenders for tying up debt funding towards the execution of our network expansion with a planned capex of Rs. 500 to 550 billion over next 3 years. The recent tariff intervention is a step in the right direction for the industry to move towards better return on investment, as also to improve cash generation to support the large investment requirements. However, further tariff rationalization is needed for the industry to fully cover its cost of capital," he added.
