Tata Communications has reported a consolidated revenue of Rs 43.98 billion in quarter ended (QE) March 2020. The company witnessed a growth of 3.6 per cent in its revenue on the back of continued strong performance in the data business.

During the quarter, the company reported a year on year (YoY) growth of 26.8 percent in its consolidated earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA), which stood at Rs 8.69 billion.

Further, Tata Comm reported widening of consolidated losses at about Rs 2.75 billion in the quarter mainly due to provisioning of Rs 3.42 billion towards additional licence fees liability. It had registered a loss of Rs 1.99 billion in the year-ago period.

Commenting on the results, A.S Lakshminarayanan, managing director (MD) and chief executive officer (CEO), Tata Communications, said, “We are living in extraordinary times with the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to disrupt businesses at large. At Tata Communications, we are enabling smooth and continued operations of services for our customers, delivering service upgrades and changes in record speed, as they implement work from home measures and shift workloads seamlessly across borders as part of their business continuity plans. We are also helping our large customers and partners to rapidly expand network capacity to serve the need of their own customers. The agility, service quality and responsiveness of our teams is being recognised by our customers who continue to show their appreciation. Our customer satisfaction score during this time has seen a record high – contributing to a top quartile Net Promotor Score (NPS). As enterprises adapt and find a new equilibrium in this contact-free economy, Tata Communications is delivering secure connected digital experiences to enable them to unlock the economic value and the potential that digital transformation provides. Our platforms, solutions and services are not only enabling tens of thousands of employees of our enterprise customers to work from home, collaborate, improve productivity, and maintain business continuity, they are also keeping people and societies connected. We are proud of the work our teams have been doing in this crisis. The business results and the response from our customers are a testament to Tata Communications’ role as a key enabler in our customers’ digital future.”

Further, Pratibha K. Advani, Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Tata Communications, said, “We have registered another quarter of robust growth in these tough times with all our financial and operating metrics tracking in the right direction. We witnessed strong profitable growth in our data business; in FY20, EBITDA margins for data business expanded by 310 BPs coming in at 22.1 per cent on the back of growth services’ delivering Rs 1.99 billion of EBITDA for the year. We continue to drive the business towards sustainable profitability and positive cashflows.”

Data services portfolio

  • Strong growth in data business; fourth quarter (Q4) revenue grew by 7.5 per cent YoY on the back of robust performance in traditional and growth services aided by an uptick in usage due to the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdowns. Full year revenue grew by 8.2 per cent YoYQ4
  • Data EBITDA was at Rs 8.23 billion, up 39.8 per cent YoY led by a strong profitable gain in growth services1, robust performance in traditional services. Full Year EBITDA grew by 25.6 per cent with a margin expansion of 310 BPs
  • Traditional services saw strong growth in revenue and profitability; revenue grew by 5.3 per cent YoY and EBITDA grew by 24.5 per cent YoY with margins at 37.0 per cent. Within this portfolio, we witnessed a surge in internet traffic (23 per cent quarter on quarter {QoQ}) with enterprises implementing work from home
  • Growth services continue to scale and witness profitable growth; revenue grew by 9.8 per cent YoY. Within this portfolio, we witnessed a surge in conferencing traffic and revenue (20 per cent QoQ). We have achieved double-digit margin (11.6 percent) in this portfolio during the quarter.