Chances of Vodafone Idea (Vi) getting much-needed funds from investors seems less likely as it continues to lose customers , say analysts.
Vodafone Idea lost a huge subscriber base of around 1.7 million in November 2023 , As per the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) data .The telco has been experiencing this attrition of two to six million subscribers per quarter in the last few quarters due to the migration of subscribers to other telcos.
Vi reported a net loss of Rs 6,985.9 crore for the December quarter, narrowing down the loss percentage to 12.56 from Rs 7,990 crore in the year-ago period , On Monday.
On January 29 , Akshaya Moondra, CEO of Vodafone Idea Limited said the telco has engaged with various parties for fundraising to make the required investments for network expansion, including 5G rollout. Notably, the cash-strapped company failed to get funding from the US’ International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to deploy OpenRAN and related technologies for the 5G network, the telecom department has said in an internal telecom department report.
So far , the cash strapped telco has missed several internal deadlines to raise funding from external investors.which is mainly because of investors , who have so far remained vigilant about the company’s ability to stem the ongoing mass customer departure.
Some postive pointers for Vodafone Idea despite huge loss…
Revenue came in at Rs 10,673.1 crore , slightly up by 0.49 percent from Rs 10,621 crore in the third quarter of the previous financial year.Vodafone Idea’s ARPU improved to Rs 145 in the third quarter, up 7.4 percent year-on-year from Rs 135 in the same period last year, primarily become effective by a change in the entry-level plan and subscriber upgrades.
“Investors will be driven more by the actual revenues of Vodafone Idea rather than the actual number of subscribers” , said Mahesh Uppal, Director of a telecom consultancy firm ComFirst (India) . “It is a concern for investors that they are losing subscribers. However, I believe the larger issue for investors is the company’s revenues. While the company loses subscribers, they still have many premium subscribers.” , he added.
As per the analysts , the lack of adequate funds will continue to shrink its customer base going ahead, too, unless the company is able to devise a plan to concentrate on priority circles and safeguard its customer base to significantly increase its Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) to attract investors.
As per the latest data recorded on 31 December 2023 , Telco’s overall subscriber base stands at 215.2 million.
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