Impacted by the free data offering of the new entrant Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJio), Vodafone India posted a dip in service revenues at €5.8 billion for the financial year ended March 31, 2017.
This is a 4.9 per cent fall from €6.1 billion posted during the previous financial year, which the company termed as “maintained” despite the “aggressive new operator launch”.
Globally, the company posted a €6.1-billion loss for the year, which was attributed mainly to its proposed merger with Idea Cellular.
The company’s data average revenue per user (ARPU), a financial metric for a telecom company, for users above 1 MB fell to ₹140 in fourth quarter ended March 31. In comparison, Vodafone India’s data ARPU for the fourth quarter of FY16 stood at ₹160, it said in a statement.
“This is due to free data offer by new entrant,” the company said.
“Amidst an unprecedented and intensely competitive environment, we delivered a stable performance while recording a strong gain of 0.7 percentage points in revenue market service year-to-date December 16. Increasing our customer base past the 200-million subscriber mark and expanding our Vodafone SuperNet 4G presence to 2,400 towns by utilising the spectrum bought during the year,” Sunil Sood, Managing Director and CEO, Vodafone India said.
The positives for Vodafone India were a 27.3 per cent rise in EBITDA margin and 5 per cent rise in data (browsing) revenue at ₹8,467 crore. It added 10 million broadband users during the year to close at 37.7 million (Q4FY17), while its data usage rose 30 per cent year-on-year.
On March 20, 2017, Vodafone Group had entered into a merger agreement with Idea Cellular, to create the largest telecom operator in India. The deal is awaiting regulatory approval in India.