Telecom Lead Asia: Sistema Shyam Teleservices (MTS India), despite regulatory challenges, has reported 31 percent increase in 2012 revenue to Rs 1619.2 crore from Rs 1234.9 crore in 2011.
The net loss of Sistema Shyam Teleservices, which is owned by Russian conglomerate MTS and India’s Shyam Group, has reduced to Rs 2982.1 crore in 2012 against Rs 3531.4 crore in 2011, said MTS in a statement.
The growth is significant as main competitors such as Airtel, Idea Cellular, Reliance Communications, Vodafone, etc. are showing single digit growth (mainly due to their large revenue base).
The telecom regulatory challenges have forced the company to reduce its operations to 9 circles in Indian mobile market against 23 earlier.
MTS India says its presence in 9 circles — Delhi, Kolkata, Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh (West), West Bengal and Rajasthan — will enable the service provider to address 40 percent of country’s population, address around 60 percent of data potential and also safeguard 75 percent of the company’s current revenues.
Vsevolod Rozanov, president and CEO of SSTL, said: “During the quarter, our focus was on retaining subscribers, controlling expenses and preparing for auctions. Post Auctions, SSTL secured spectrum in 8 of its core circles. We now look forward to turning the page on last year’s uncertainties and building an even stronger business in India through continued focus on our data centric-voice enabled strategy.”
MTS says its non voice revenues now contribute 36.8 percent of total quarterly revenues and the contribution has increased by 15bps for the quarter.
The company’s blended mobile ARPU for the quarter increased by 2 percent to Rs 79.
Meanwhile, SSTL’s data card subscriber base for the quarter declined by 2 percent to 1.78 million subscribers. The data card subscriber base declined mainly due to uncertainties and the new regulatory requirements for customer registration, MTS said in a statement.
SSTL’s mobile subscriber base declined by 10.5 percent and reached 14.89 million customers as of December 31, 2012. SSTL’s mobile subscribers’ MoU for Q4 2012 improved to 268 min vs. 263 min in Q3 2012. The MoU increased due to increase in traffic in the festive season.
The Capex investments made by SSTL in India at the end of 31 December 2012 stands at Rs 6568 crore. It includes investment of Rs 18.2 crore during Q4 2012. Consolidated debt from banks and financial institutions at the end of 31 December 2012 stands at Rs 56.7 billion.
