News
Indian operator posts slowing revenue growth, in line with industry trend.
Idea Cellular on Monday reported a sizeable decline in net profit for the first three months of its 2017 financial year following a change in accounting method.
In line with new rules in India, the mobile operator has adopted the Ind AS reporting standard, which is based on IFRS.
As a result of the change, the financial reporting of Idea’s Indus associate and ABIPBL joint venture are consolidated at profit after tax level only, Idea explained in its Q1 report. Therefore, net profit – or consolidated total comprehensive income – fell to 2.17 billion rupees (€29 million) in the April-June quarter down 74.5% from INR8.52 billion a year earlier.
The operator noted that it has restated its overall results for the year-ago quarter, in line with Ind AS.
The telco’s revenue for the period grew by 7.9% to INR94.87 billion (€1.3 billion), while EBITDA was up by 3.2% to INR30.74 billion; the firm’s EBITDA margin slid by 1.5 percentage points to 32.4%.
Idea’s financial performance compared with the year-ago quarter was affected by, amongst other things, spectrum acquisitions, licence renewals and changes to the terms of data packages, it said.
It also pointed out that it has been affected by the slowing rate of growth in the Indian mobile market; its 7.9% revenue growth figure is significantly lower than the 16.4% increase it posted in Q1 last year.
Idea Cellular had 176.2 million mobile customers at the end of June, 61.4 million of which have adopted 3G or 4G devices, while 27 million are using 3G or 4G data services it said; 4G customers alone reached 1.8 million.
Overall mobile data users, including on 2G, now number 49 million, or 27.8% of the telco’s overall base.
Blended mobile data ARPU was INR142 (€1.92) in Q1, down from INR147 a year earlier, while data usage per subscriber rose to 674 MB from 599 MB.
