The country’s largest telecom operator reported higher-than-expected revenues on the back of benefits from tariff hikes taken by the industry last year.
Reliance Industries’ subsidiary Reliance Jio Infocomm on May 6 reported a 13.6 percent quarter-on-quarter increase in net profit at Rs 4,313 crore for the quarter ended March, which was below the CNBC-TV18 poll of Rs 4,400 crore. The year-on-year growth in bottomline was 22.9 percent.
The company’s revenues for the quarter grew 8 percent sequentially and 21.8 percent year-on-year to Rs 22,261 crore, which was higher than the CNBC-TV18 poll of Rs 20,800 crore.
The country’s largest telecom operator reported higher-than-expected revenues on the back of benefits from tariff hikes taken by the industry last year.
The revenue growth was driven by higher ARPU (average revenue per user) and ramp-up of wireline services, said Jio.
ARPU of Rs 167.6 per month saw a healthy 21.3 percent growth on a YoY basis and 10.5 percent growth on a QoQ basis led by tariff hike, better subscriber mix, and ramp-up of FTTH services, it added.
The company had reported total data traffic at 24.6 billion GB during the quarter, a 47.5 percent growth compared to the year-ago period, and total voice traffic at 1.2 trillion minutes increased 16.8 percent YoY during the quarter.
Jio had a total subscriber base of 410.2 million at the end of March 2022.
On the operating front, Reliance Jio had a resilient quarter as its operating profit for the reported quarter came in at Rs 10,918 crore as against Rs 10,008 crore reported in the previous quarter. The sequential growth was 9 percent and year-on-year 27.4 percent, driven by strong revenue growth and margin improvement.
The telecom major’s operating margin in the quarter expanded 40 basis points on quarter to 49 percent reflecting the impact of higher tariffs.
“EBITDA margin increased 210 bps YoY led by ARPU increase in connectivity business,” said the company.
For the full year, the profit at Rs 15,487 crore has grown by 23.6 percent compared to the previous year, on the revenue at Rs 81,587 crore, which increased by 11 percent over the fiscal year 2020-21.
On the operating front, too, the numbers posted by Jio were strong with EBITDA rising 21 percent to Rs 39,112 crore compared to the previous year, driven by revenue growth and steady improvement in margins, said the company in its BSE filing. EBITDA is earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation.
EBITDA margin in FY22 expanded 390 bps to 47.9 percent led by the full impact of change in the IUC (interconnection usage charge) regime and operating leverage.
Disclosure: Moneycontrol is a part of the Network18 group. Network18 is controlled by Independent Media Trust, of which Reliance Industries is the sole beneficiary.
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