Telenor / Uninor India turned profitable in Q2FY15 with reported EBITDA of INR 192mn for the first time since starting operations in FY09, although revenue remains flat at INR 11bn QoQ. Traffic grew by 2.9% to 48.7mn minutes, led by healthy subscriber growth of 4.2% partly offset by a 1.3% MOU decline to 414 (unlike Idea’s 2.0% MOU improvement). Voice RPM fell by 1.8% to INR 0.226/minute, lower than Idea’ RPM fall of 2.9%. Management had said the company is a net payer of interconnect charges, due to its lower market share; the reduction in IUC gave a boost to EBITDA and has had a lower impact on RPM. RPM is still at one-third discount to Bharti Airtel & Idea Cellular, and is yet to reach profitability; this is contrary to Consensus view that low RPM may not allow Telenor to reach
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Uninor /Telenor Improving Market Position
Telenor India / Uninor reported robust revenue of INR 10.2bn, up 9.6% QoQ. This was led by healthy subscriber-led traffic growth of 4.5% and a 5.1% RPM increase. Telenor hiked its voice RPM by 5.1% to INR 0.241/min, but it was still one-third the discount to Airtel and Idea Cellular.
Traffic growth of 4.5% was led by strong 2mn subscriber addition during the quarter of about 6.6% subscriber growth. MOU fell by 3% to 449 mins after a sustained rise over the past five quarters. Telenor’s MOU was above Idea’s and Airtel’s of 401 and 433, respectively, due to its low price offerings, which was largely due to the 2nd SIM phenomena. ARPU grew by 1.9% to INR 108 despite the
Telenor India / Uninor has 16% 2G Data Subscribers
Uninor, the Indian Subsidiary of Telenor is witnessing promising trends in data growth and is now focused on growing data usage. Currently, nearly 16% of its subscribers are active data users, and it plans to continue offering data on the 2G platform as 3G data usage is limited in India.
Telenor India reported revenue of INR 9.3bn, up 8.7% QoQ, led by healthy 13.6% traffic growth on the back of 2.5 mn subscriber additions and a 4.8% MOU increase. MOU has grown 50% over the past 10 quarters, driven by a 27% price cut during the same period. Thus, the company’s strategy has been to drive traffic and improve capacity utilization by undercutting
Telenor / Uninor India Positions as Low Cost Operator, Circlewise Operations
After the Supreme Court’s Feb 2012 decision to quash all of company’s licenses, Telenor bought back spectrum in six circles (AP, Bihar, Gujarat, Maharashtra, UP (E), and UP (W)), shutting down its commercial operations in seven others. Telenor’s Indian Operations Uninor has taken a different strategy for 2G Voice operations in India positioning itself as a Low Cost Operator.
Instead of going for pan-circle network coverage to begin with, Telenor focuses on bringing its network quality at par with the leaders in the market in select clusters in a
Uninor Tariff Hikes in UP Circle in Aug / Sept
Challenger and New Entrant Uninor has also resorted to 2G Voice Call Tariff hike in August / September Quarter. Uninor is no more a PAN India Operator and has operations in limited circles. Here is a brief summary on how the company hiked tariffs in UP(E) and UP(W) circles of India. Here are the details of the Hike which shows circle name, old tariff followed by new tariff, the change and the impact.
- UP-E Minutes pack of Rs11 – 111 local mins free to own network – validity 5 days Minutes pack of Rs11 – 111 local mins free to own network – validity 4 days Reduced validity RPM impact of 25%
- UP-E Minutes pack of Rs33 – 99 mins free to local no. – validity 7 days