Idea Cellular has reported a net profit of Rs 260.3 crore in the first quarter of the financial year 2018–19 (Q4FY18), on the back of its tower sale to ATC. For context, Idea made a loss of Rs 930.6 crore last quarter. Revenue for the telco slumped to Rs 6,137.3 crore in Q4FY18, down from Rs 6,505 crore in Q3FY18. The numbers will likely go back down in Q2 since the tower sale was a one-time transaction. "During Q1FY19, Indian mobile industry continued to decline under pressure from heavily discounted unlimited voice and bundled data plans & subsidized 4G feature phone offerings from one of the operator[s], forcing commensurate response from other existing mobile operators to retain subscribers," the company said in a press release. Usage Trends Idea added 8.6 million subscribers overall in Q1FY19. ARPU stood at Rs 100 for this quarter, down from Rs 105 in Q4FY18. Voice minutes for Idea grew to 349.5 billion this quarter, growing 39.4% year-over-year. Overall mobile data volume grew to 992 billion MBs of data being carried by the network this quarter, over four times higher than the amount this quarter last year. The EBITDA for the quarter stands at Rs 659.5 crore. Merger Update In July, the Department of Telecommunications gave its final approval to Vodafone and Idea’s merger. The Vodafone–Idea merger had already received statutory approvals from SEBI (August 2017), NSE, BSE, CCI (July 2017), National Company Law Tribune Mumbai and National Company Law Tribune Ahmedabad.Vodafone expects to complete the merger fully by the end of August. The…
