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Vodafone India on Friday reported a six per cent decline in service revenue at £1.02 billion during the April-June quarter, compared to £1.09 billion in the year-ago period.
On organic basis, Vodafone said in a statement, its India service revenue rose 10.3 per cent during the quarter on the back of growth in subscriber base and increased voice call rates. Organic growth represents performance on a comparable basis including merger and acquisition activity and movements in foreign exchange rates, it added.
The Indian subsidiary of the British telecom giant, however, said organic service revenue growth during the April-June quarter was slower than in the previous quarter at 11.9 per cent, ‘after price increases a year ago’.
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For the quarter under review, “data revenue growth accelerated in the quarter as 3G take-up continued to grow and we made further investments in 3G network roll-out,” Vodafone India stated.
The company said 3.3 million mobile customers were added during the April-June quarter, taking Vodafone India’s total subscriber base to 169.9 million as on June 30.
Data usage grew 102 per cent during the quarter, primarily driven by mobile internet customer growth and a 46 per cent increase in usage per customer. At the end of June, its active data customers base stood at 57 million, including 10 million 3G customers and 29 million smartphone users, representing 17 per cent penetration of the customer base.
“The year has started in line with our expectations. Through our commercial actions and investments, our performance is beginning to stabilise quarter-on-quarter in several of our European markets, with customer appetite for 4G services clearly growing. We also see very strong growth in demand for data in India,” said Vittorio Colao, chief executive.
“In India, where we aim to have 95 per cent 3G outdoor coverage in targeted urban areas over the next two years, we have taken 3G coverage on this footprint to 89 per cent, with a further 2,305 sites added,” the company noted.
Vodafone stated that its mobile payment service M-Pesa continued to perform well, with national coverage through approximately 66,000 sales agents, of which about 65 per cent are in rural areas, with about 1.5 million registered customers till June 2014. Of this, about 300,000 customers are active. In April this year, Vodafone Plc acquired 10.97 per cent stake in Vodafone India from Piramal Enterprises for Rs 8,900 crore to increase its stake to 100 per cent in the Indian entity.
