Reliance Communications, an integrated Telecommunications company today announced its results for the quarter ended June-08. Key highlights of the results and conference call are as follows,
- Wireless Business [GSM + CDMA] continues to fill the company’s coffers. 18% wireless market share on PAN India basis. Slightly over 50 mn subscribers. Brings in 67% of the company’s revenue. ~91% pre-paid customers and 9% post-paid customer base. ARPU nosedives to Rs 282 with declining Minutes of usage 424 / month which is a cause of concern for Investors. Wireless revenue per month down to Rs 0.66 from 0.74. Mr. Prakash Bajapai of RCom seemed to be comfortable with Rs 0.66 paise and said, Other players RPM have come down to RCom level.
- RCom has 60% market share of the data card and USB Modem Internet access market.
- Mr. Ambani said, We have the management bandwidth to compete and grow organically and inorganically. To a question on GSM rollout an concerns about tariff war, Mr. Shukla said, It is not just the tariffs factor over which the customer chooses a service provider. Other factors like Quality, Reach and Network Capability. RCom’s entire GSM network will be EDGE compatible.
- Reliance Globalcom business is the second largest vertical for the company with 24% revenues contribution. Total ILD Minutes usage was down sequentially to 1,726 mn from 1,769 a quarter ago. However, NLD minutes went up to 6,641 mn from 5,964. NLD is not strictly comparable as some Reliance OnNet packages offers Unlimited calling anywhere in India.
- Reliance Broadband brought in 8% of the total revenues. Reliance Broadband is the only division in the company to have reported positive growth on QoQ basis with Net revenues up 8.8% and EBITDA up by 8.9% QoQ basis. The division now has 1.15 mn customers [broadband + narrowbrand]. But look at their ARPU in broadband segment which is whopping Rs 1,715 ~ Rs 600 higher than Bharti Airtel. Reliance has wired up 0.821 mn building across 42 cities. BSNL has 2.3 mn broadband subscribers and Bharti Airtel 0.85 mn at the end of June-08.
- Coming to the bottomline, PAT was almost flat QoQ basis at Rs 15,123 mn.
RCom continues to invest aggressively in CAPEX. Reliance Infratel and Globalcom IPO on hold due to heavy volitality in the stock markets. 3G policy will be announced in few hours, lets see if it’ll be acceptable to all the telcos.