Vodafone Idea’s shareholders approve issuance of ₹1,600 crore optionally convertible debentures to ATC

The special resolution to this effect was cleared at an Extra-ordinary General Meeting (EGM) of Vodafone Idea on Saturday.

“The following items of business as set out in the notice dated January 31, 2023, were transacted at the EGM… issue of securities on a preferential basis,” the company said in a BSE filing.

According to the voting results, overall 99.99 per cent of the votes were in favour of the resolution, which pertained to issue of optionally convertible debentures of up to ₹1,600 crore to American Tower Corp.

The telco had earlier said that these funds would be used to pay amounts owed to ATC India under the master lease agreements and, to the extent of remainder, for general corporate purposes.

The company has reported widening of its consolidated loss to ₹7,990 crore for the third quarter ended December 31, 2022.

The consolidated revenue from operations of Vodafone Idea (VIL), however, increased by 9.29 per cent to ₹10,620.6 crore from ₹9,717.3 crore in the December 2021 quarter.

“On a YoY basis, revenue growth is strong at 9.3 per cent aided by improvement in subscriber mix, tariff intervention and 4G subscriber additions,” the company said in a statement.

The government during the quarter converted ₹16,133 crore interest related to deferment of spectrum auction instalments and AGR dues into equity, and now holds around 33 per cent stake in the company.

“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 earlier.

VIL’s average revenue per user, a key performance indicator of telecom operators, improved by 17.4 per cent on a year-over-year basis to ₹135 during the December 2022 quarter from ₹115 a year ago on account of tariff hikes and migration of subscribers to unlimited tariff plans.

The overall subscriber base of the company declined to 22.86 crore during the reported quarter from 23.44 crore in the September 2022 quarter.

VIL 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.” the company said.