Reliance Jio Infocomm reported a 14.4 per cent sequential rise in net profit in the September quarter at ₹6,231 crore and a 7 per cent rise in revenue to ₹28,228 crore, driven by the price hikes that it took just prior to the quarter. On an annual basis, net profit was up 23 per cent and revenue was up 14.5 per cent.
RJio is a major part of Jio Platforms that ended the quarter with 478.8 million subscribers and an average revenue per user of ₹195.1, the full impact of the tariff hike is expected to flow through in the next 2-3 quarters. Its user base increased 4.2 per cent on-year, while ARPU was 7.4 per cent higher, exceeding market estimates.
The company said operating revenue growth was primarily driven by the partial impact of a tariff hike and scale-up of home and digital services businesses. The EBITDA of Jio Platforms at 15,931 crore was aided by healthy revenue growth, while the bottomline was driven by the increased revenue and operating leverage.
At 45 billion GB data, traffic saw a 24 per cent rise in the quarter, while voice traffic rose 6.4 per cent to 1.42 trillion minutes.
The company observed that following the tariff hike, there was some amount of SIM consolidation, offsetting the gross additions, while the monthly churn increased to 2.8 per cent.
Around 148 million subscribers were using its 5G services, while JioAirFiber connections had reached 2.8 million homes. “Jio’s pace of home connections is the fastest of its kind globally. Scaling up distribution, continuous optimisation of the onboarding process, and technology edge would enable Jio to achieve the target of connecting 100 million homes in India at record speed,” it said.
“Right from inception, Jio has focused on deep tech innovation to create customer and shareholder value,” said Chairman Mukesh Ambani. “The ongoing transformation created by Jio True5G and JioAirFiber in India’s digital landscape is a testament to this approach. AI is creating the next runway for this transformation, and Jio is committed to developing the world’s best AI ecosystem in India, for all Indians.”
During the quarter it launched AI-Cloud, where Jio users would get up to 100 GB of free cloud storage to securely store and access photos, videos, documents, digital content, and data.
It also made available the JioTV+ app freely downloadable on all Smart TVs without a Set Top Box or additional JioAirFiber/JioFiber connection.