On the back of a robust data growth and subscriber additions, Vodafone India on Tuesday reported a 12.6% increase in its total revenue at R42,526 crore for the financial year 2014-15.
Vodafone India MD and CEO Sunil Sood announcing the company’s annual financial results said its operating profit in the period stood at R12,605 crore against R10,847 crore in the same period last year.
“Our prime focus areas were data, M-pesa and Vodafone Business Services, and we have performed well and maintain a high growth trajectory. We have maintained a strong service revenue growth of 12.6% y-o-y. Our data growth has been robust at 65.5% y-o-y. Ebitda margin improved to 29.6% from 28.7 % last year,” said Sood.
Stating that the net profit has been “positive in FY15”, Sood said the subscriber base has grown to 184 million as of March 31 with a 10.4 % addition in FY15. “We have also tripled M-Pesa base to over 3 million registered customers,” Vodafone India’s chief financial officer Thomas Reisten said.
The company’s average revenue per user (Arpu) stood at R202 in FY15 against R199 in FY14, showing an annual growth of 1.69%.
The capital expenditure was R8,598 crore, mainly on new site rollout in FY13. The net debt for the company stands at R47,807 crore as of March 31, he said.
In an affirmation that the Vodafone Group remains committed to doing business in India despite the multi-thousand crore tax dispute, Sood said it had made R6,000 crore of fresh equity infusion into the Indian company.
Sood also informed that Vodafone India is now the third largest contributor to the Vodafone Group’s service revenues.
Sood said the company plans to roll out 4G service in the later half of the year. “We have started 4G trials and we plan to launch these services later this year in select cities and based on our experience through trials we would further expand our 4G network,” said Sood.
It also has plans to gradually give up on 3G intra circle roaming (ICR) in seven circles where it has ICR arrangements with Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular after it starts 3G services on its own network in these circles.
Vodafone expanded its 3G spectrum footprint from 9 to 16 circles winning fresh spectrum in the recently concluded auction. These 16 telecom circles represent 88% of Vodafone India’s service revenues. Currently, it has 19.4 million 3G customers of the 40 million data users with 24% of its 184 million subscribers using smartphones, a growth of 75% y-o-y.
The company is betting big on data growth with its data browsing revenue at R5,690 crore in FY15, a 65% growth y-o-y at R3,437 crore. “We are seeing good growth in 3G. Our 3G revenues has grown 140% y-o-y. Our 3G users have also grown 175% from 7 million in FY14 to 19.4 million in FY15,” said Sood. The company has installed 35,012 3G sites of the total 1,30,131 sites.
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