Vodafone Idea jumps 15% intra-day on heavy volume; gains 46% in a month

Shares of Vodafone Idea rallied 15 per cent to Rs 4.78 on the BSE on Monday on heavy volumes in intra-day deals, as the pace of decline in the active subscriber base slowed significantly during January 2020. Most analysts also expect a rise in mobile and data users in India amid the lockdown period.

At 02:03 pm; the stock was trading 12 per cent higher at Rs 4.68 on the BSE, against 0.78 per cent rise in the S&P BSE Sensex. In past one month, the stock has rallied 46 per cent, against 2.2 per cent gain in the benchmark index.

The trading volume more than doubled on Monday with a combined 832 million equity shares, representing 10.4 per cent of total free-float equity of Vodafone Idea, changing hands on the NSE and BSE. As of March 2020, public shareholders held 27.95 per cent or 8,031 million equity shares in Vodafone Idea, shareholding pattern data shows.

After the decline seen subscriber base across the industry in December 2019, subscriber adds turned positive once again in January 2020, as per the latest data collated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) and issued Friday. CLICK HERE TO PREE RELEASE

“The gross subscriber base increased by 4.9 million (v/s a 3.2m drop in December’19) to 1,156 m, led by the addition of 0.9m/6.6m by Bharti/RJio, partially offset by decline of 3.6m in Vodafone Idea’s subscriber base,” Motilal Oswal Securities said in telecom sector update.

Vodafone Idea’s gross/active subscriber base continued to decline by 3.6m/0.3m to 329m/297m; however, the pace of decline in the active subscriber base slowed significantly from 3.1m in November’19 and 1.1m in December’19. Subsequently, the company’s gross/active subscriber market share fell to 28.5 per cent/30.1 per cent (v/s 28.9 per cent/30.3 per cent in Dec’19).

Meanwhile, last week reports had indicated that Vodafone Idea has received interest from a few PE players, including marquee names like Brookfield Asset Management and KKR, for its optic fiber business. The company been looking at selling this business as a part of its plan to monetise assets and raise capital, reports suggest.