Idea Cellular announces un-audited results for Q2

Idea standalone Q2FY15 revenue at Rs. 75,673 million has YoY growth at 19.8% on back of 17% annual increase in Voice MoUs and 125.9% growth in ‘Mobile Data Volume’.

During this quarter, the company carried 162.5 billion minutes on its network, less pronounced seasonal quarterly decline of 1.7%, in comparison to 5.8% minutes decline in Q2 vs Q1FY14.

In line with the emerging digital  connectivity demand, Mobile Data volume exploded to 39.4 billion MB on its 2G+3G platform at 21.3% QoQ growth, reaffirming consumer preference for brand Idea.

While the Voice rate realization was under  pressure, but 22.5% quarterly jump in Mobile Data revenue, contributing 14.0% to service revenue, helped Idea improve ‘Average Realisation per Minute’ (ARPM) by 0.8paisa from 45.1p in Q1FY15 to 45.9p in Q2FY15.

The ‘Value Added Service‘ (VAS) contribution has improved sharply to 21.1% of service revenue, a gain of 4.9% over last one year.

The standalone EBITDA of Rs. 22,394 million grew by 29.5% on YoY basis due to multiple drivers including scale benefit, better cost management and robust net subscriber addition, voice minutes and data volume growth.

Idea improved its EBITDA margin by 2.2% during last one year to 29.6%. Including Indus dividend receipt of Rs. 1,026 million, the company has delivered excellent ‘Profit After Tax’ (PAT) at Rs. 7,794 million, nearly double the Q2FY14 PAT of Rs. 3,984 million.

Brand Idea continues its high subscriber growth momentum with 4.6 million net new customer additions in the quarter, now servicing 143.6 million EoP customer base as ‘Average Revenue Per User’ (ARPU) improved to Rs. 176 (Rs. 164 in Q2FY14) and MoU/Subscriber increased to 384 minutes (368 minutes in Q2FY14).

The company continued its journey of strengthening its competitive market standing with VLR subscriber market share climbing to 17.8% (August 2014) and Revenue Market Share (RMS) in Q1FY15 @ 17.1%, an increase of 0.9% compared to Q1FY14.

Idea managed to maintain the mobile data ‘Average Realisation per MB’ (ARMB) at 26.5paisa (vs 26.3p in Q1FY15). The explosive Mobile Data volume growth and steady ARMB has helped Mobile data quarterly revenue cross Rs. 10 billion mark.

The Mobile Data consumer base has risen in this quarter by 3.1 million to 30.9 million. The blended data ARPU (2G+3G) has also improved to Rs. 119 and ‘Usage per data subscriber’ is now at 447 MB.

The 3G (Voice+Data) customer grew steadily to 13.3 million but still represents only 9.3% of Ideas’ total subscriber base. In comparison, the 3G phone penetration among Idea subscribers is improving and over 17% of Idea users own high speed 3G devices.

In July 2014, company allotted 51.84 million equity shares at an issue price of Rs. 144.68 per Equity Share (including a premium of Rs. 134.68 per Equity Share), aggregating to approx. Rs. 7,500 million, on preferential basis to its telecom partner - Axiata Investments 2 (India) Limited, an affiliate of Axiata Group.

With additional Equity infusion and strong Cash Profit of Rs. 18,155 million in the quarter, Idea has reduced its Net Debt by Rs. 21,500 million to Rs. 118,269 million.

The Net Debt to Annualised EBITDA ratio stands at 1.32, providing the company sufficient headroom to participate in the forthcoming 900 MHz spectrum renewal auction. For Q2FY15, on consolidated basis including Indus 16% contribution, Idea revenue grew by 19.7% against same quarter year ago and YoY EBITDA rose by 27.2%, driving the EBITDA margin to 32.9%. The consolidated PAT at Rs. 7,559 million has grown sharply by 68.9% from Rs. 4,476 million in Q2FY14.