Idea Cellular bottomline drops

Idea Cellular is currently finding itself amongst the top losers on the BSE. The stock slipped over 4% down intra day to Rs.121.40 and remains around the same levels.

The stock tumbled down after the disappointing performance for Q4FY16 wherein consolidated net profit slipped 25% (QoQ) to Rs.576 crore. But apart from the bottomline, the rest of the parameters showed an improvement. Total income rose 5% at Rs.8484 crore. A 22% rise in depreciation and interest outgo burgeoning almost 130% to Rs.768 crore is what pulled down the net profit.

With reduced consumer promotions this quarter, the subscriber & volume growth was slower as only a) 1.9 million net quarterly subscriber addition, customer EoP base of 183.8 million (on VLR, 31st March, 2016) b) QoQ Voice minutes growth @1.2% to 201.6 billion minutes and c) Net mobile data volume (2G+3G+4G) QoQ growth @1.5% to 82.2 billion MB. Inspite slow volume growth, the sequential quarterly revenue growth is robust @5.2%. The improved revenue growth led by better rate realisation helped Idea deliver strong 16.4% sequential quarterly EBITDA growth at Rs. 33,199million for Q4FY16 and QoQ EBITDA margin improvement of 3.4%, from 31.6% in Q3FY16 to 35%.

Realised rate for voice was up 4% (QoQ) at 33.3p/minute, while for mobile data it was at 22.9 p/MB compared to 22.3p/MB in the third quarter.

The company ended FY16 with a consolidated net profit at Rs.3080 crore, down 3.5% on a 14% rise in total revenue at Rs.35981 crore.