Vodafone Idea Q3 loss widens to ₹7,990 crore, ARPU rises to ₹135

ARPU (average revenue per user) for the quarter under review came in at ₹135 as compared to ₹131 in Q2FY23 and ₹115 in Q3FY22, a YoY growth of 17.4%.

The firm’s revenue surged 9% to ₹10,621 crore in the quarter as against ₹9,717 crore in Q3FY22.

“Separately, our board has approved issuance of Optionally Convertible Debentures amounting to ₹16 billion to ATC India. With these positive developments, we continue to remain engaged with our lenders for further debt fund raising as well as with other parties for equity or equity linked fund raising, to make required investments for network expansion and 5G rollout,” VIL CEO Akshaya Moondra said.

The Board of Directors of Vodafone Idea has allotted 42,76,56,421 equity shares to Euro Pacific Securities Ltd, a Vodafone Group entity and promoter of the Company, the company said in a filing.

“We wish to inform you that the Board of Directors of the Company at its meeting held today (i.e. 14 February 2023), has allotted 42,76,56,421 equity shares of face value of Rs.10/- each fully paid-up at an issue price of Rs. 10.20 per share to Euro Pacific Securities Ltd, (a Vodafone Group entity and promoter of the Company), pursuant to exercise of option attached to the Warrants by the warrant holder,” the statement read.

The warrant holder had already paid 100% of the warrant issue price of ₹10.20 per warrant, aggregating to ₹436.2 crore at the time of subscription of Warrants on 25 July, 2022.

VIL’s subscriber base

The overall subscriber base of the firm dipped to 22.86 crore during the December quarter from 23.44 crore in the previous (September 2022) quarter.

The company said that its 4G subscriber base continued to grow and with 10 lakh 4G customers added during the quarter, 4G subscriber base of the company stood at 12.16 crore.

“We continue to see high data usage per broadband customer at about 15.1 GB per month with the total data traffic witnessing sequential growth of 0.8 per cent.” VIL said.

The firm has made capital expenditure of ₹750 crore during the quarter under review. VIL said that it has shut down around 2,800 3G sites during the quarter and added about 2,000 4G sites.

“Our overall broadband site count stood at 443,450 as of December 31, 2022,” the company said.

The company’s total gross debt (excluding lease liabilities and including interest accrued but not due) as of 31 December, 2022 came in at ₹2.22 lakh crore, comprising of deferred spectrum payment obligations of ₹1.39 lakh crore and adjusted gross revenue liability of ₹69,910 crore that are due to the government.

The debt from banks and financial institutions stood at ₹13,190 crore.