Route Mobile rebounds 23% from 18-month low as board mulls buyback plan

The company said the board is scheduled to meet on Tuesday, June 28, 2022, to consider a proposal for buyback of fully paid up equity shares of the company

Shares of Route Mobile jumped 9 per cent to Rs 1,287 on the BSE in Friday's intra-day trade, surging 18 per cent in the past two trading days, after the company announced buyback plan.

The stock of other telecom services provider has rebound 23 per cent from its 18-month low of Rs 1,052.60, touched on Thursday, June 23, in the intra-day trade. In comparison, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 0.92 per cent at 52,747 points at 09:30 AM.

"A meeting of the Board of Directors of the Company is schedule to be held on Tuesday, June 28, 2022, inter alia, to consider a proposal for buyback of fully paid up equity shares of the Company," Route Mobile said in an exchange filing on Thursday after market hours.

The primary objective of a share buyback programme is to arrest the fall in the value of a stock by reducing the supply of the stock, which essentially pushes up the share price through a better price to earnings (P/E) multiple.

Between May 17 and June 22, the stock slipped 27 per cent after the company reported a weak operational performance for the quarter ended March 2022 (Q4FY22). The stock hit its lowest level since December 2021. The market price of the company more-than-halved or tanked 56 per cent from its 52-week high level of Rs 2,388 touched on October 12, 2021.

Route Mobile said the contraction in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (Ebitda) margins from 14.2 per cent in Q4FY21 and 13.7 per cent in Q3FY22 to 11.1 per cent in Q4FY22 is partially attributable to seasonality of the business especially of Masivian and certain one-off expenses.

However, Ebitda margin expanded from 12.5 per cent in FY21 to 12.9 per cent in FY22. The management said it is confident of delivering a 150 basis point improvement in Ebitda margin and 40 per cent year on year growth in revenue in FY23.

Route Mobile had made a stock market debut on September 21, 2020. The company had raised Rs 600 crore through initial public offering (IPO), issued shares at price of Rs 350 per share.

The company is a cloud communications platform service provider, catering to enterprises, over-the-top (OTT) players and mobile network operators (MNO). The company's portfolio comprises solutions in messaging, voice, email, SMS filtering, analytics and monetization.