RCom net drops 77% in Q2

Company has said it has taken a write-off of about Rs 400 cr last year

Anil Ambani-led Reliance Communications (RCom) on Friday reported a 77 per cent drop in net profit in the quarter ended September to Rs 153 crore, compared with Rs 675 crore reported in the year-ago quarter.

RCom’s performance suffered as it got fewer new customers during the quarter under review than its competitors. While Idea Cellular added 1.7 million fresh subscribers, RCom got just half a million. All the competitors – Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular - reported better than expected profits during the July-September quarter.

RCom said it took a write-off of about Rs 400 crore last year.

Like its competitors, RCom also reported an uptake in data usage during the quarter, which is partly reflected in the company’s margins during the period. In the July-September quarter, RCom said its data traffic grew 75 per cent.

Revenue from Indian operations stood at Rs 4,680 crore, 0.8 per cent down from the previous quarter (Rs 4,718 crore). Total revenue stood at Rs 5,403 crore in the July-September quarter. This includes revenue from its global operations.

The firm’s average realisation per minute increased by 1.4 per cent to 44.4 paise, while realisation stood at 33.6 paise. The company said its realisation rose on tariff hike and increase in data usage. Average revenue per user (Arpu) marginally improved to Rs 137 from the previous quarter. However, RCom’s Arpu is much lower than its competitors.

At the end of the September quarter, RCom had 29.7 million data users, of which 15.1 million are on its 3G network, the company said.