Idea Cellular, the fourth private telecom player is aiming to expand and strengthen its existing mobile network in India to become a pan-India player. For this, it will raise funds to invest in the expansion.
Since last two years, the telecom arm of Aditya Birla Group has expanded its network four fold, said Sanjiv Aga, the managing director of Idea while explaining immediate plans to reach new areas.
‘The company has approval to raise more funds and Idea Cellular can easily raise up to Rs 12,000-13,000 crore funds to meet the demand of forthcoming 3G spectrum auction,’ said the Chief Financial Officer Akshay Moondra.
Idea Cellular on Thursday posted a net profit of 9.5% to Rs 274.26-crore on Year-on-Year (YoY) after deducting the tax for fourth quarter (Q4) ended March 31, 2009 of the fiscal year (FY 2008-09) while for the whole fiscal year, it registered a net profit of Rs 900.87 crore, a dip of 13.56%. Last fiscal, the telecom firms had registered a net profit of Rs 1042.31-crore.
This decline in profit is a result of rising cost of the net interest on debt and finance cost that went to 47% to Rs.407 crore, Moondra added.
However, the slowdown in the market has not affected the revenue of Idea as its figures show.
The total minutes on the network grew 10% more to 44,224-million in comparison to previous year, while the average realized rate per minute continue almost flat at 63 paise.
In terms of revenue, company reported a total income of Rs 2936.49 crore on Y-o-Y for Q4 while for whole FY08, it posted a total revenue of Rs 10148.41 crore. The quarter ended March 31, 2009, against Rs 1985.26 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2008.
During FY08-09, Idea has added 15 million more subscribers raising its national market share to 14.5% from 13.6%.
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