Idea Cellular posts Rs. 308 crore profit in Q4

Buoyed by strong growth in voice usage and data consumption, telecom operator Idea Cellular Thursday posted 29 percent jump in consolidated net profit at Rs. 308.18 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2013.

Given the strong performance, the company has announced a dividend for the first time in 16 years.

The company's net profit stood at Rs. 238.98 crore in the same period last fiscal.

Total revenues during January-March 2013 quarter rose by 12.88 percent at Rs. 6,061.38 crore against Rs. 5,369.69 crore in the corresponding period last fiscal.

Besides, the company generated cash profit of Rs. 4,696.8 crore in FY'13, up 30.2 percent over FY'12.

The net debt stood at Rs. 11,588 crore and for FY14, it plans to invest Rs. 3,500 crore for its network and fibre network, the company said.

"A combination of growth in minutes and data helped the business and EBIDTA growth of nearly Rs. 200 crore this quarter and Rs. 970 crore for the full year. The growth has also come on account of better cost management and razor sharp execution," Idea Cellular Managing Director Himanshu Kapania told reporters here.

Meanwhile, Kapania said: "On the last day of the financial year we received a tax demand on Idea Cellular and its subsidiaries. We believe the demand is not in line with current tax practices and the demand is erroneous.We have appealed at appropriate forums for squashing of the demand."

For the year ended March 31, the company's net profit rose by 39.82 percent to Rs. 1,010.93 crore, while revenues increased to Rs. 22,457.6 crore from Rs. 19,541.1 crore in FY12.

The consolidated revenues include financials of Idea Cellular and proportionate consolidation of Indus Tower (16 percent share).

The company saw minutes of usage growing by 8.5 percent.

"The reason for high growth was a very high VLR. The company has reported 8.3 million additional VLRs during this period," he added.

VLR or Visitor Location Register is a temporary database of subscribers who have roamed into the particular area, which an operator serves.

Idea also attributed growth in revenues to strong rise in consumption of data services. "Our data subscribers during this period has increased by 4.5 million, the highest ever growth. Data revenue on sequential basis has risen by 25 percent. The reason is two components volume growth 13.8 percent and rate improvement by 9.5 percent," Kapania said.

Data services now contribute 6.6 percent to service revenue. The active 3G subscriber base for the company stands at 5.1 million (of which about one million were added in the reported quarter) and average revenue per user for data stands at Rs. 55, he added.

"Significant change has taken place in telecom business is the mechanism in which we acquire customers. We have been stating that we have been cautious on the payout to channel partners," Kapania said.