Vodafone India reports 13.9% decline in services revenue

Vodafone India's reported a 13.9 percent decline in its service revenue as a result of continued price competition from the new entrant and incumbents.

The company says that, During the quarter we grew our mobile customer base by 2.9 million, while continuing to retain our high value customers. "We ended the quarter with a closing customer base of 211.9 million. our focused investment strategy delivered a further improvement in our revenue market share in our leadership circles, based on regulatory disclosures for the prior quarter."

Vittorio Colao, Group Chief Executive, commented: "We have made a good start to the year in Europe, where our commercial momentum remains robust, and growh accelerated across AMAP. Although competition in India remains intense, service revenues stabilised compared with the prior quarter. Our substantial investments in network leadership, an excellent customer experience and even greater more-for-more' propositions for customers are enabling us to monetise strong demand for mobile data."

During the quarter, Vodafone India added 3.4 million 3G/4G customers during the quarter and average data usage has more than doubled year-on-year to 1.1GB per month, as an intensely competitive environment led to a very substantial increase in data allowances.

Vodafone India's data browsing revenue declined 20.4 percent reflecting further ARPU dilution from lower unitary prices, which declined 67 percent year-on-year. "This did, however, stimulate a 78 percent year-on-year growth in monthly data usage per customer to 1.1GB ," Vodafone said.

On 20 March 2017, Vodafone announced an agreement to combine its subsidiary, Vodafone India (excluding its 42 percent stake in Indus Towers), with Idea Cellular. The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to close during calendar year 2018.

The combined company will be jointly controlled by Vodafone and the Aditya Birla Group.Vodafone India has been classified as discontinued operations for Group reporting purposes. From an operational perspective, the Group remains highly focused on the management of the business and committed to its success, both
prior to the completion of the merger and thereafter.