Vodafone Idea (Vi), the third-largest telecom operator in the country, has just announced its financial results for the last quarter of FY22 as well as the complete financial year. From the data, it can be seen that the telco’s average revenue per user (ARPU) jumped to Rs 124 from Rs 115, up by 7.5% QoQ. In addition to this, the telco’s average daily revenue also grew 7.7% QoQ (the highest for a quarter since the merger). EBITDA (earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortisation) improved to Rs 21.2 billion compared to Rs 16.2 billion in Q3 FY22. The telco’s ARPU jump during the quarter was largely owed to the prepaid tariff hikes implemented during the last leg of Q3 FY22.
Vodafone Idea’s Loss Narrows for the Quarter
After taxes, Vi’s loss for the quarter stood at Rs 65,449 million compared to Rs 72,309 million in the previous quarter. The subscriber churn rate during the quarter was 3.4% which is the same as the previous quarter. This is an area where Vi needs to work. The subscriber churn rate of the telco needs to go down to stop losing subscriber market share to Jio and Airtel. While the subscriber churn rate hasn’t worsened during the quarter, it hasn’t improved either, which is also a sign of worry. The telco’s VLR subscriber base has also been declining for continuous quarters, which poses a great threat to its overall revenues. Vi said that its total broadband sites (3G + 4G) went up from 450,330 million to 455,264 million. 4G data users are also consuming more data on average. In Q4 FY22, the average data consumption from the 4G users of Vi was 13.9GB which is more than 12.9GB compared to a year ago. The subscriber churn rate needs to go down while the ARPU needs to go up fast for the telco to self-sustain in the short-to-medium term.
