RCom net drops 15% to Rs 171 cr

Revenues during the quarter fell by 3.1% yearly to Rs 5,227 cr

 

Reliance Communications (RCom) on Friday posted a 14.9 per cent drop in net profit at Rs 171 crore for the quarter ended December 2015, against Rs 201 crore in the year-ago period owing to shrinking margins in the competitive telecom sector.

Revenues during the December quarter fell 3.1 per cent on a year-on-year basis to Rs 5,227 crore from Rs 5,435 crore in the same quarter a year ago.

The company stated that the revenue decline has on account of 2G licence expiry in five circles. “We have successfully migrated the profitable customers to 3G in these five circles and achieved significant improvement in network coverage and quality through ICR (intra-circle roaming) arrangements with Vodafone and Aircel.”

In March 2015, RCom had failed to win back 900 MHz spectrum it used for 2G mobile services in West Bengal, Bihar, Assam, Odisha and the north-east service areas, and its right to use this spectrum ended on December 12. RCom lost 470,000 customers in July-September 2015 in Bihar.

Usage stood at 100.4 billion minutes, down two per cent quarter-on-quarter (q-o-q), while average revenue per user was up 2.9 per cent on a quarterly basis at Rs 142.

The total data customer base grew 4.3 per cent q-o-q to 38.8 million, including 23.1 million 3G customers during the quarter.

The total data traffic was up six per cent at 103.2 billion and data usage per subscriber also grew 1.2 per cent at 905 MB q-o-q.

The traffic has increased thanks to growth in data subscribers and higher data usage per customer, said the company, which has about 110 million subscribers.

RCom is sitting on huge debt and has entered into several agreements to raise money. During the quarter under review, it signed a strategic deal with Reliance Jio Infocomm.

“As part of the enhanced strategic collaboration, both companies also intend to enter into reciprocal intra circle roaming arrangements. RCom’s customers will benefit from access to Reliance Jio’s nationwide 4G LTE network under the reciprocal sharing and ICR agreements,” the statement read.

It also paid Rs 5,383.84 crore as liberalisation fee to the Department of Telecom in relation to spectrum in the 800/850 MHz band held by it in 16 telecom circles.

Besides, it entered into a 90-day exclusivity period with Maxis Communications and Sindya Securities & Investments, the shareholders of Aircel, to consider the potential combination of the wireless business of RCom and Aircel.

RCom also signed a non-binding term sheet with Tillman Global Holdings and TPG Asia for the proposed sale of its mobile towers. The deal was to close on January 15, but it has been extended for 15 days till the month-end.

Shares of RCom closed at Rs 66.65 apiece, up by 0.68 per cent, on the BSE on Friday.