Idea Cellular , the third largest wireless operator in India on Monday consolidated net profit of 468 crore for the quarter ended December 31, 2013 as compared to Rs 229 crore in the same period last year.

The company's total revenues grew 18.5 per cent to RS 6,613.1 crore from Rs 5,578.6 crore in the same period a year ago. On a standalone basis, the company's net profit rose to Rs 398.1 crore (Rs 191.1 crore in Q3 of last year), helped by voice and data businesses.
 
“Continuing with its long term trajectory of expanding market share, Idea Q3FY14 standalone revenue grew by 17.8% from Rs. 56,135 million (Q3FY13) to Rs. 66,105 million (Q3FY14) on back of 9.4% annual growth in ‘Total Minutes of Use’ and 107.6% in data volume”. It said in a statement.

According to Idea Chief Executive Himanshu Kapania , he reason for the aberration was an accelerated investment in expansion of third generation (3G) network. Adding leased sites for signal emission increases operational expenditure.

Consumer preference for brand Idea continues to rise as company added 18 million incremental subscribers (on VLR) in calendar year 2013, now serving 129 million subscribers. Idea supported its consumer centricity vision by launching highest ever 18,297 new sites (2G+3G) during calendar year 2013 expanding Idea presence to over 344,000 towns and villages. The company maintains its enviable 5 years track record of ‘fastest growing Indian mobile operator’ with ‘VLR Subscriber Market Share’ @ 16.7% and ‘Revenue Market Share’ @ 15.8% in Q2FY14, an improvement of over 1% in last one year. The quality of Idea subscribers improved as ARPU increased to Rs. 169 (v/s Rs. 158 in Q3FY13) and subscriber churn fell by 1.2% to 5.6% (v/s Q3FY13).

The ‘Value Added Services’ (VAS) contribution increased to 16.1% of ‘Service Revenue’ (14.6% in Q3FY13), despite steep decline in ‘Non Data VAS’ service contribution from 8.9% (Q3FY13) to 6.6% in Q3FY14. The higher ‘Mobile Data’ adoption has primarily led to VAS growth with Data revenue as % of ‘Service Revenue’ improving by 3.8% to 9.5% in last one year.

From this quarter, Company eliminated incidental data users reporting; thereby overall mobile data users base has fallen to 25.5 million (2G+3G), but the mobile data ARPU has improved to Rs. 91 in Q3FY14 (v/s Rs. 52 in Q3FY13). The blended mobile data usage per user grew to 309 MB (2G+3G) as total data volume exploded @ 107.6% to 20.8 bn MB in Q3FY14 (v/s 10.0 bn MB in FY13). However, with a grim battle for data supremacy, the ‘Average Realised Rate per MB’ (ARMB) fell sharply by 1.3 paisa from 31.0p/MB (Q3FY13) to 29.6p/MB (Q3FY14).

The company added 4.6 million new 3G users during 2013 with 3G EoP user base (Voice and/ Data) now at 8.7 million. The 3G user mobile data ARPU is steady at Rs.112 per month.

The double bottom line drivers of Voice and Data business helped Idea more than double its ‘Profit After Tax’ (PAT) from Rs. 1,911 million in Q3FY13 to Rs. 3,981 million in Q3FY14. The Cash Profit for the company remained healthy at Rs. 15,663 million a growth of 41.3% over Q3FY13, helping reduce Net Debt by Rs. 27,364 million during 2013 to Rs. 89,458 million.