Vodafone Idea’s loss narrows to ₹4,881.9 crore in March quarter

NEW DELHI: Vodafone Idea Ltd’s consolidated net loss narrowed marginally on a sequential basis in the fiscal fourth quarter as the company realised merger synergies and as revenue stabilised after the introduction of minimum recharge plans.

India’s largest telecom operator by users posted a net loss of ₹4,881.9 crore in the March quarter. It had incurred a net loss of ₹5,004.6 crore in the December quarter and ₹4,973.8 crore in the September quarter.

The quarterly performance topped a Reuters poll of analysts which pegged the net loss at ₹4,946 crore.

Revenue grew to ₹11,775 crore in the March quarter from ₹11,764.8 crore in the December quarter. It beat the other two operators on this metric as revenue from Bharti Airtel Ltd’s India mobile business was ₹10,632 crore, while Reliance Jio clocked ₹11,106 crore in operating revenue. It was the second quarterly results for Vodafone Idea, post completion of a merger of Vodafone India and Idea Cellular on 31 August 2018.

The net loss came despite the company witnessing higher data consumption on its network and signing up more 4G subscribers. Total data volumes grew 9% to 2,947 billion megabytes compared to the last quarter.