Idea Cellular Q3 Net doubles to Rs 467.73 cr

Country's third largest telecom operator Idea Cellular today said its consolidated net profit has more than doubled to Rs 467.73 crore for the quarter ended December 31, 2013, driven by strong growth in mobile data revenue.
This is against a net profit of Rs 228.57 crore registered in the same period last year.
The company's revenues grew 18.5 per cent to Rs 6,613.1 crore in the reported quarter from Rs 5,578.6 crore in the year-ago period.
Idea said the consolidated profit includes contribution of Rs 69.6 crore from Indus Towers.
The company added 18 million incremental subscribers (on VLR) in calendar year 2013 taking its total userbase to 129 million subscribers. The ARPU increased to Rs 169 from Rs 158 in Q3 FY'13.

The overall mobile data users base fell to 25.5 million (2G and 3G) as the company stopped reporting incidental data users.

However, mobile data average revenue per user (ARPU) improved to Rs 91 in Q3 FY'14 as compared to Rs 52 in Q3 FY'13.
It added 18,297 new sites (2G and 3G) during 2013 expanding Idea's presence to over 344,000 towns and villages.
The company added 4.6 million new 3G users during 2013 and the 3G user mobile data ARPU was steady at Rs 112 per month.