Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Data comes to RCom\'s aid, net jumps 6x to Rs 675 crore





Shrugging off a decline in the telecom sector after mediocre results from India's leading telco Bharti Airtel and third-ranked player Idea Cellular, India's fourth-ranked Reliance Communications (RCom) on Tuesday reported stellar results for the three months ended September.



RCom's net profit in Q2 grew six times to Rs 675 crore as against Rs 102 crore in the same quarter last year. While this was primarily on account of a one-time writeback of Rs 441 crore due to business restructuring, excluding the writeback, RCom's net profit rose 1.3 times to Rs 234 crore.



On a qoq basis, the telecom firm's revenues jumped 7.82% to Rs 5,835 crore and profit rose five fold. In comparison, in Q2, Idea Cellular's net profit tumbled sequentially by 3.3% to Rs 447.6 crore, while its revenues declined 3.3% on-quarter to Rs 6,323.3 crore. Bharti's net profit also fell 29% to Rs 512 crore though its revenues climbed 9.9% to Rs 21,324 crore. However, India's number two telco, Vodafone India, which also reported earnings on Tuesday, notched up a 13% growth in revenues at Rs 20,476 crore for the six months to September.



RCom said its earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) rose 15.2% to Rs 1,887 crore on an annual basis. Its Ebitda margin stood at 35% -- among the highest in the industry -- with a strong contribution from both India and global businesses. Accordingly, its global Q2 revenues stood at Rs 1,139 crore, down 0.3%, yoy.



In a positive sign, RCom, which recently announced a bundled iPhone 5s and 5c offer with no upfront cost for its subscribers and slashed 3G prices bringing them on par with 2G data tariffs, is riding high on data revenues.



A company spokesperson said, "The total data traffic went up 116% yoy on the back of total data subscriber base growth of 30.8% to 34 million, including 9.1 million 3G customers." RCom's revenue per minute (RPM) stood at 43.4 paisa, up 7.7% yoy. Average revenue per user (ARPU) swelled 26% to Rs 120. However, minutes of usage (MoU) saw a marginal drop of 1.7% due to a traditionally weak second quarter.



While reiterating that the company continues to be cash flow positive, RCom said it generated operational cash flow (Ebitda) of Rs 2,328 crore, and paid net finance charges of Rs 676 crore.
News From: http://www.7StarNews.com

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