We missed this earlier.
Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (Jio) reported a profit of Rs 504 crore for the quarter ended December 31, 2017 (Q3 FY18). Its operating revenue for the period stood at Rs 6,879 crore, while its EBITDA for the quarter stood at Rs 2,628 crore, representing growth of Q-o-Q growth of 11.9%. The company posted EBITDA of Rs 1443 crore, up 82.1% Q-o-Q.
In the previous quarter, the company had posted a loss of 271 crores, with an operating revenue of Rs 6,147 crore and EBITA of Rs 2,628 crore.
The sudden and spectacular jump from a loss to massive profit may have more than meets the eye. This has to do with Jio’s parent company absorbing some of the shock for the telecom upstart.
“Reliance Jio is NOT profitable. The accounting is like this. Reliance INDUSTRIES takes a loan. Buys shares of Jio. Jio doesn’t have to pay interest since hey, equity. Jio shows profit because it has to pay no interest. But Reliance Industries pays the interest,” Deepak Shenoy, the founder and CEO of Capitalmind tweeted
At the end of the quarter (December 31), the company claims to have had 160.1 million subscribers, up 15.5% from 138.6 million in the previous quarter. The company doesn’t mention how many of these are active. According to data released by TRAI, in November 2017 only 81.45% of Reliance Jio’s 152.07 million connections were active: a total of 123.86 million.
Subscriber metrics
  • Data consumption:  9.6 GB per month per user. This number has not seen any change over last quarter.
  • VOLTE voice: 694 minutes of VOLTE voice per month per user, up 11% Q-o-Q
  • Video consumption: 13.4 hours per month per user, down 4.29% Q-o-Q .
  • ARPU: Rs 154 per month, down 1.28% Q-o-Q.
Operational metrics
  • 431 crore GB data consumption in the quarter. A rise of 14% from the last quarter.
  • 338 crore minutes of VOLTE voice per day. 27% higher than the previous quarter.
  • 200+ crore hours per month of video consumption. A 12.3% rise from the previous quarter.
JioPhone now on top
Data released by Counterpoint Research suggests that the JioPhone was the top feature phone brand in the quarter that ended in December by shipments, overthrowing market leader Samsung in the segment for the first time.
The Economic Times, which had access to the data reports, Reliance Retail’s JioPhone — the company’s 4G VoLTE enabled feature phone, which is being offered for effectively free with its initial paid amount to be fully refunded after three years — had a 27% share of the segment of the market that comprises of devices typically under Rs 2,000. Samsung followed with 17% trailed by Micromax at number three.