Idea Cellular net profit up by over 27 percent in Q1

Telecom services provider Idea Cellular on Tuesday said its net profit during the first quarter of 2015-16 surged by 27.82 percent to Rs.930.8 crore, at against Rs. 728.2 crore in the corresponding time period last year.

Net revenue of the firm increased by 16.36 percent at Rs.8,798.3 crore compared to Rs.7,561 crore in the year-ago period.

The operator, however, said due to changes in the TRAI Interconnect (IUC) regulations effective from March 2015 which primarily reduced mobile incoming IUC charges from 20 paise to 14 paise per minute, the revenue figures for the quarter under review is not comparable to earlier quarters.

On the sequential quarterly basis, gross revenue grew by 4.5 percent during the period under consideration. The company has put the revenue growth at 6.9 percent in the aforesaid period compared to the last quarter of 2014-15 after adjusting the percentage and normalized it in view of IUC change.

The company, in a statement said the voice rate realisation remained under pressure and fell sharply by 11.2 percent to 32.9 paise per minute, including the impact of TRAI regulation changes and increase in service tax rate, but "the elasticity of demand compensated the rate decline with 18.5 percent minute growth" during the review period compared with the year-ago period.

"However, because of mobile data growth the blended Average Realisation per Minute was lower by only 1.3 percent to 44.5 paise per minute in April-June 2015 from 45.1 paise per minute during April-June 2014 and the 'Non-Voice' revenue share increased to 26.1 percent this quarter," the statement said.