MUMBAI:
Vodafone India, one of the leading total telecommunication service providers in the country announced its Half Year financial results (IFRS) for the year ended September 30, 2017
Key Financial Highlights: Vodafone India Standalone figures Financial Performance
Due to the continued price competition from new operator and incumbents, seasonality and GST, Vodafone service revenue at INR 19,002 crores in H1 FY18 (down by 15.8%)
EBITDA at INR 4,075 crores in H1 FY18; strong performance on cost delivering EBITDA margin of 21.4%
Operating Free Cash Flow (OFCF) at INR 1,543 crores in H1 FY18; Continuous targeted capital investments and reduced margins due to competitive intensity impacting cash flow
Sustained and prioritized capital investments of INR 2,915 crores in H1 FY18; (Capex intensity of 15.3%)
Operational Performance
A base of 207 million customers (up 3.3% YoY) serviced through a network of ~140,000 total sites (including ~128,000 3G/4G sites)
Substantial rural presence with a customer base of 114 million in Sep17
Growing Revenue Market Share (RMS) at 23.1% (Q1FY18); gain of 0.6ppt vs Q1FY17
Service Revenue ARPU at INR 146 in Q2 FY18; stiff price competition impacting ARPU
Robust performance by strategic business areas with Data usage growing by c.250% Q2FY18 YoY;
Vodafone Business Services now contributing to c.19% of Service revenues ( H1FY18)
Vodafone Business Services (VBS) –a Total Telecommunications Solution Provider; Powering Digital India
VBS growing more than the industry growth, led by strong enterprise portfolio catering to large enterprises, SME, Start Up and Government segments.
Strong foray into Internet of Things (IoT) solutions and investing in Cloud (SaaS) with the addition of Workforce Essentials and Vodafone CRM
Actively engaged with Public Sector Enterprises and State Governments contributing to the vision of Digital India and setting up of smart cities
Expanded wireline services with the introduction of SuperWifi, enterprise grade managed wifi service
Launched Ready Start-up proposition to empower start-ups on their growth and innovation journey
Stable Performance in Data Driving Growth
67.7million data users, of which 44.6million use >1MB
Added 10 million broadband users YoY to close at 46million 3G/4G subscribers
Data usage exploding and usage/sub (for users >1MB for Q2FY18) at 2.7GB
Data usage growth led by higher smartphone penetration at over 38% of total customer base(Sep‘17 exit)
Driving data usage with innovative value propositions, strong content offerings with Vodafone Play, Netflix
and Magzter in addition to strategic partnerships with handset manufacturers and application providers
Driving Digital
New MyVodafone App launched to reenergize customer experience through digital interface – intuitive and feature rich to access services on the go; convenience to discover, access, self-manage and avail all Vodafone services via the mobile; and a zero scroll journey for a quick recharge
IoT- Offering the rich experience and benefits of our global platform to Start-ups and SMEs, in addition to large and global corporates
Future Ready Technology – Upgraded entire radio network to all-IP technology, ready even for 5G
Started Massive MIMO trials- Massive MIMO ramps up a base station by five to seven times and reduces interference substantially helping boost transmission signal to the devices, resulting in much higher data speeds
Driving Content
Vodafone Play – your one window to the world of entertainment with 300+ Live Streaming of HD & SD TV Channels in 14 languages; International & Indian TV Shows; a huge catalogue of over 14,000 movies across languages; rich content from original creators and assimilators Eros Now, Ditto TV, Hooq, Hungama play, AltBalaji, Yupp TV etc.
Vodafone Red – Netflix – Partnership with Netflix to exclusively offer Vodafone Red postpaid customers a complimentary Netflix subscription of up to one year on select Red Plans.
Vodafone – Magzter – Partnership with Magzter, the world’s largest digital magazine newsstand – for Vodafone customers to access over 100,000 issues of 4,000+ best-selling International, Indian and Regional magazines across the globe.
Vodafone Games – Partnered with Opera to launch Vodafone Games – an online gaming platform that lets customers access a premium catalogue of 400+ popular games.
Driving Convergence
Successfully completed acquisition of You Broadband. Brings several synergies and complementing strengths with its fixed line network that offers high speed data and content to a rich customer base of ~219,000 customers across 16 cities including Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Surat, Vadodara and Vishakhapatnam.
Driving Financial Inclusion– M-Pesa, a new currency for India
Pan-India footprint, largest business correspondent in the country with over 141,000 authorized agents (equivalent to all bank branches in India, Sep’17 exit)
A base of ~13.85 million registered customers
Awards and Recognitions
Won Excellence in Compensation and benefits, Excellence in Talent Acquisition and Best HR Team Of The Year (Jury’s choice) awards at the Businessworld HR EXCELLENCE AWARDS 2017
Won the coveted Client of the Year award at Emvies 2017
Awarded India’s No 1 telecom brand in 2017 by International Brand Corporation USA
Vodafone wins Gold for #MakeMostOfNow at the IndIAA 2017 awards (India Chapter of the International Advertising Association)
Vodafone India ranked 20th in the LinkedIn Top Attractors 2017 Award – only telecom service provider
to be featured
Won Silver for the Best Farmer Connect initiative and Bronze for the Best use of Social Media at the “Flame Awards Asia 2017” for #Saluteourfarmers campaign
Merger update
On 20th March, 2017 Vodafone Group Plc and Idea Cellular announced an agreement to combine their operations in India (excluding Vodafone’s 42% stake in Indus Towers) to create India’s largest telecom operator with complementary footprint and amongst highest overall spectrum holding of 1,850 MHz across multiple bands. The merger transaction is subject to approval from the relevant regulatory authorities. During the quarter, approvals were received from (a) ‘Competition Commission of India’ (CCI) and (b) SEBI & Stock Exchanges. The merger is on track and is expected to complete in calendar year 2018.
As a part of the Idea & Vodafone India merger announcement of 20th March, 2017 both the parties had announced their intention to sell their standalone tower businesses to strengthen the balance sheet of the combined entity. Yesterday, Idea and Vodafone, through a joint press release announced the companies have separately agreed to sell their respective standalone tower businesses in India to ATC Telecom Infrastructure Private Limited (“American Tower”) for an aggregate enterprise value of Rs. 78.5 billion. In the event that the completion of the sale of the standalone tower businesses precedes the completion of the proposed merger, Vodafone will receive Rs. 38.5 billion.
