Reliance Jio net up 13% at Rs 2,844 crore

Reliance Jio posted strong numbers, in line with analyst estimates for the July-September quarter with net profit growing by 13% on a sequential basis at Rs 2,844 crore. Revenues was up 5.6% at Rs 17,481 crore, while ebitda was up 5.7% at Rs 7,701 crore driven primarily by a lift in Arpu (average revenue per user). The company’s ebitda margins remained flat at 44% during the quarter.

Hike in tariffs undertaken in December 2019 and upgradation by customers to higher value plans reflected in the 3.3% sequential increase in Arpu which stood at Rs 145, in line with analyst estimates of Rs 143. However, the Arpu came in significantly lower compared to Bharti Airtel’s Rs 162.

On other operating metrics, Jio continues to perform on expected lines. Its data traffic at 1,44,20,000 million MB was up 1.5% compared to the preceding quarter. Data usage per customer, per month, however was flattish at 12 GB against 12.1 GB in the preceding quarter. Bharti has beaten Jio on the usage per customer front as well as it reported over 16 GB of per customer usage.

Jio’s voice volume at 9,32,230 million minutes registered an increase of nearly 5% compared to the preceding quarter. Usage per customer at 776 per month registered an increase of 2.6% sequentially.

Jio’s monthly churn, though was slightly higher this quarter but continues to remain the lowest in the industry at 1.69% per month. The churn was higher due to follow through impact of Covid-19 on SIM consolidation and recharge cycle of migrant population.

The company continued its strong subscriber growth trend with gross adds at 27.2 million and net additions of nearly 7.3 million and total subscriber base at 405.6 million. With this, Jio has become the only operator outside of China to have reached the milestone of 400 million subscribers in a single country market.