In line with Company’s long term mission of consistent, competitive, responsible and profitable growth, Idea is pleased to report YoY standalone Revenue growth of 18% (Q1FY14 vs Q1FY13). Consistent as Idea sequential standalone quarterly revenue growth is 7.2% in Q1FY14 on the back of 8.6% QoQ growth in Q4FY13
Competitive as company strengthend its ‘Revenue Market Share’ position by 0.9% to 15.7% in Q4FY13 over Q3FY13 as per latest TRAI report. Responsible as Idea continues its journey of deep interior rural expansion, now covering over 300,000 villages & offering the worlds’ lowest voice and data tariffs for bottom of pyramid customers. Profitable with robust YoY standalone EBITDA growth of 43%
The multiple drivers of this sharp profitable growth have been robust ‘Voice’ & ‘Mobile Data’ revenue coupled with scale benefits & better cost management
The Voice minutes expanded by 12.5% on YoY basis to 147.3 billion in Q1FY14 supported by net annual new customer addition of 7.8 million, cumulative subscriber base reaching 125 million as on 30th June 2013.
The Q1FY14 also has the highest ‘Mobile Data’ adoption with incremental annual data customer addition of 12.6 million, as EoP of Data subscribers swell to 30.9 million. The data volume growth exploded @ 92.2% to 13.8 billion Megabytes usages in Q1FY14 on YoY basis. The Data as a % of ‘Service Revenue’ improved by 2.7% in one year; mobile data now contributing 7.2% to ‘Service Revenue’
With company clamping down on promotional free/discounted minutes for ‘New & Existing Customers’ and higher contribution from VAS services, the ARPM (Average Realised rate Per Minute) improved by 2.5 paisa per minute (6.0%) to 43.7p/min. Nevertheless, even improved ‘Voice Realised Rate’ for the company is still below Q3FY12 level. The ‘Value Added Service’ contribution increased to 16% (15.2% in Q4FY13), further helping improvement in overall ARPM
The company remained focused on better cost management, delivering blended subscriber churn of 5.1% in Q1FY14; a reduction of 4.8% in last one year. The overall ‘Subscriber Acquisition & Marketing cost’ has fallen by ~3.8% in Q1FY14 vs Q1FY13
The revenue growth trajectory and cost efficiency has translated into healthy standalone 28.2% EBITDA margin, a YoY margin improvement of 4.9%. This quarter one off regulatory charge of ~Rs. 250 million is included in ‘License and WPC charges’
In this quarter the life of some fixed assets have been revised from 13 years to 10 years. All Idea active network assets now have a useful life of up to 10 years. This change has resulted in a higher depreciation of ~Rs 1,800 million in this quarter; total impact of this change for the entire FY14 will be ~ Rs 4,500 million
The ‘Interest & Finance Cost (net)’ was lower by Rs. 95 million, even after accounting for foreign currency exchange rate loss of Rs. 230 million. Company’s Net Debt reduced from Rs. 115,881 million in Q4FY13 to Rs. 102,199 million in Q1FY14. Net Debt to Annualised EBITDA level now is at an enviable 1.39, by far lowest in the industry
The standalone PAT with double bottom line drivers of “Voice and Data” improved by 143.8% on YoY basis to Rs. 4,829 million in Q1FY14, including boost from Indus dividend of Rs. 838 million. The company generated healthy Cash Profit of Rs. 17,438 million, a growth of 66% over Q1FY13 further strengthening Idea’s Balance Sheet
Consequent to Hon’ble High Court approval of merger of ‘Idea Cellular Tower Infrastructure Limited’ (ICTIL) with Indus, the ownership of 11,094 Idea towers has vested unto Indus w.e.f. April 01, 2009 and ICTIL has ceased to exit. The standalone Idea reporting does not include these towers IRU income and linked depreciation
Idea consolidated revenue including 16% Indus contribution has grown by 18.8% and consolidated EBITDA by 44.6% on YoY basis to Rs. 20,763 million in Q1FY14
Idea with consistent network Investment, market place agility, Customer centricity & emphasis on building World Class Indian brand remains on course for performance driven leadership in the mobile business. The company strong Balance Sheet gives Idea confidence to overcome the current volatile and uncertain phase of Indian wireless business and benefit from emerging triple play telecom opportunities in Voice, Data and Video
