RCom Q3 net profit falls 43.5%
Total income of the company, however, rose 5% to Rs 5,301 crore
Anil Ambani owned Reliance Communications saw a 43.5 per cent decline in its consolidated third quarter net profit to Rs 105 crore, from 186 crore in the same quarter last year.
“This is due to increase in finance charges for re-financing foreign currency convertible bonds (FCCBs) with interest-bearing loans,” said Gurdeep Singh, president and chief executive officer of wireless business at Reliance Communications. The company’s net debt stood at
Rs 37,361 crore.
The company re-financed a tranche of FCCBs worth $1.1 billion in February last year. It had also re-financed yet another in $500 million in May 2011.
The company’s total income grew at five per cent to Rs 5,301 crore, from Rs 5,055 crore in the same quarter last year. Its earnings before interest depreciation tax and amortisation (EBIDTA) grew by 2.4 per cent.
According to Thomson Reuters, analysts had expected the company to report a net profit of Rs 183 crore.
The company says that its EBIDTA margins at 31.2 per cent are amongst the highest in the industry. “This is with strong contribution from both wireless and global enterprise business,” Reliance Communications said in a press release.
RCom’s revenue per minute or RPM stood at 44 paise. “We have successfully achieved RPM stability for the last 11 consecutive quarters amidst increasing competition and over supply of minutes in market place,” the company said.
On a quarter-on-quarter basis, the average revenue per user (ARPU) increased by 17 per cent to Rs 119. Its minutes of usage also went up by 15 per cent to 271 minutes per use per month.
The company has around 27.6 million data customers. Of this, 6.1 million use their 3G services. “The total data traffic at 22,512 tera bytes and data usage per subscriber at 280 mb, which is highest in the industry,” the company claimed.
RCom’s stock traded flat in today’s trade, going up by 0.6 per cent to close at Rs 88 per share, as per data available on the Bombay Stock Exchange.