Idea Cellular has announced its un-audited results for the first quarter ended June, 2011. The company registered gross revenue in excess of $1billion for the quarter and witnessed a 6.7 per cent revenue growth on a sequential quarterly basis. This follows 7.0 per cent and 8.2 per cent sequential revenue growth in the preceding two quarters.
The company has witnessed a ~ 1 per cent growth in the average realised rate (ARR) trend to 41.0p for the quarter against 40.6p in the previous quarter. Idea Cellular carried 108.6 billion minutes on its network, registering a growth of 6.5 per cent, compared to the previous quarter. The company?s EBITDA margin grew by ~1.2 per cent on a quarter to quarter basis to 23.4 per cent.
The introduction of 3G services in this quarter, additional expenses of amortisation of 3G spectrum fee (Rs 656 million) and charging of related interest cost (Rs 1,228 million) has impacted the company?s profits.
Profit after tax for the quarter stands at Rs 1,541 million, compared to Rs 2,576 million in the previous quarter. Cash profit for the quarter stands at Rs 8,609 million, against Rs 9,031 million in the previous quarter.
The company had over 92 per cent of its subscriber base on visitor location register (VLR), as per TRAI?s data and gained over 930,000 subscribers via mobile number portability.
Idea?s 3G footprint currently covers over 825 towns in 15 service areas, which includes bilateral roaming arrangement for the service areas of Mumbai, Bihar, Karnataka, Delhi, Kolkata and Tamil Nadu (including Chennai), with various operators. The company plans to reach to 3,000 towns across India by the end of this financial year, through a combination of home network and roaming arrangements.
