Idea Cellular slumps 7% post Q2 earnings; Motilal Oswal maintains 'neutral' outlook

Shares of Idea Cellular slumped nearly 9 per cent in trade on Friday after the mobile operator posted quarterly net profit slightly below analysts' expectations, hit by cheaper call rates.

The stock ended the day 7.29 per cent down after hitting an intraday low of Rs 138, down 8.97 per cent.

"We maintain 'Neutral' with a revised price target of Rs 165 per share from the earlier Rs 185, based on 6.0x EV/EBITDA for core business," said brokerage firm Motilal Oswal Securities.

The company reported a tepid 7 per cent rise in its consolidated net profit at Rs 809.3 crore for the September quarter driven by a surge in customer base and data usage.

On a standalone basis, the post-tax profit grew 5 per cent, excluding a dividend gains in the year-ago period to Rs 710 crore, managing director Himanshu Kapania told PTI.

He attributed the marginal rise in bottomline to the industry-wide factors like the drop in interconnect and roaming charges, and rising competition from newer players in the broadband space.

Kapania also announced that the company will be launching its 4G services by June next, and has also started working on digital offerings in music, movies, wallets and games space to complement the high-speed services.

At present, 2 million of its over 166 million customers have 4G-enabled handsets, he added.

Kapania hinted that there can be a misuse by customers if the current call-drop guidelines which provide for a penalty of Re 1 per dropped call are effected, as a bulk of the consumers are on a one paisa per second plan.

This issue impacts the entire industry and it will be restarting its dialogue with the watchdog Trai on the same, he said, stressing that current technology cannot ensure zero call-drops.

The Aditya Birla Group company's total revenue rose to Rs 8,689.06 crore for the reporting period compared to Rs 7,569.92 crore a year ago.

Idea said it could contain, on a sequential basis, the voice rate decline by 0.2 paisa per minute to 32.7 paisa a minute during the second quarter but the blended mobile data average realisation per MB fell by 1.2 paisa to 23.4 paisa per MB in the reported quarter even though data consumption was up 82 per cent.

The non-voice revenue contribution improved to 27.9 per cent this quarter against 21.1 per cent a year ago, it added.

(With inputs from PTI)