RCom logs 46% rise in Q4 profit

MUMBAI: Telecom firm Reliance Communications (RCom) has recorded a 46% rise in its net profit at Rs 228 crore in the fourth quarter of the previous fiscal (2014-15) as against Rs 156 crore in the year-ago period.

The consolidated revenue and EBITDA stood at Rs 5,703 crore, up 1% from Rs 5,671 crore in Q4 of previous year.

The forth quarter EBITDA stood at Rs 1,976 crore, up 6.7% from Rs 1,852 crore in Q4 of previous year. The EBITDA margin was at 34.7%, up from 32.7% in the year-ago period.

India operations revenue and EBITDA was at at Rs 4,907 crore, up 5.5% from Rs 4,649 crore in Q4 previous year.

Q4 EBITDA stood at Rs 1,713 crore, up 3.3% from Rs 1,659 crore in Q4 previous year.

The global operations revenue revenues stood at Rs 1,294 crore during the period, up by 2.7% from Rs 1,261 crore in Q4 previous year.

RCom continues to be free cash flow positive. It generated operational cash flow (EBITDA) of Rs 1,976 crore in Q4, paid net finance charges of Rs 666 crore and invested Rs 505 crore on capex during the quarter. It remains free cash flow (FCF) positive and this is expected to continue, a statement said.

The total data customer base has grown 26.2% Y-o-Y to 33.7 million, including 17.4 million 3G customers in Q4.

The total data traffic was at 87,211 million MB, up 73.6% Y-o-Y. The traffic has increased due to increase in data subscribers and higher data usage per customer.