Vodafone Idea Ltd’s (VIL) consolidated net loss rose to ₹11,643.5 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2020, compared with a net loss of ₹4,881.9 crore recorded during the same period a year ago.

During the quarter under review, VIL posted gross revenue of ₹11,754.2 crore, as against ₹11,775 crore recorded during the comparable year-ago period, it said in a statement.

The company also said it had adopted Indian Accounting Standard 116 from April 1, 2019, and hence the fourth quarter FY19 figures are not comparable with later quarters.

“Our focus on rapid network integration, as well as 4G coverage and capacity expansion, has further improved customer experience. We thus continue to lead the league tables on 4G data download speeds across several states, metros and large cities. We have achieved our full opex merger synergy target,” VIL Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Ravinder Takkar said.

“On the Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) matter, the next hearing is scheduled with the Supreme Court in the third week of July. Meanwhile, we continue to actively engage with the government seeking a comprehensive relief package for the industry, which faces critical challenges,” he added.

VIL had increased pre-paid tariffs in December 2019 across all price points for both unlimited plans and combo voucher. This helped in improving the revenue by about 6 per cent from December quarter revenue of ₹11,089.4 crore, it said.

The company’s EBITDA for the quarter rose to ₹4,380 crore, (₹2,110 crore excluding IndAS 116 impact versus ₹1,280 crore in Q3) a QoQ rise of 28.1 per cent driven by higher revenue and incremental synergy realisation.

The underlying operating expenses for the quarter (excluding license fees, spectrum usage charges, roaming and access charges) were about ₹2,100 crore lower compared to Q1FY19, after adjusting for inflation driven cost increases and incremental network rollout.

The subscriber base fell to 291 million in the reporting fourth quarter from 304 million in the third quarter. In the reporting quarter, subscriber churn remained stable at 3.3 per cent, while Average Revenue Per User rose to ₹121 from ₹109 in Q3FY20, driven by the prepaid tariff hike effective December 2019.

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4G Investments

VIL said it would continue to invest in 4G to increase coverage and capacity. During the quarter, it added about 21,000 4G Frequency Division Duplexing (FDD) sites, VIL’s highest addition in a single quarter since the merger.

During the year, it added more than 53,000 4G FDD sites which helped drive significant improvement in 4G population coverage, which now stands at 992 million compared with 871 million over a year ago.

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