Indus Towers Q2 up 38% on year; colocations rise

New Delhi: Indus Towers posted a net profit of Rs 1,559 crore for the July-September quarter, up 38 per cent on year, with telcos adding more locations to tap strong data demand amid the pandemic.

Consolidated revenue for the fiscal first quarter stood at Rs. 6,877 crore, up 8 per cent on-year and consolidated earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) increased 17 per cent to Rs 3,641 crore.

“This was a significant quarter for the telecom industry in the backdrop of announcement of major reforms which has resulted in sharp improvement in business sentiments…We continued to improve our operational performance with an increase in net colocations during the quarter and delivered a strong financial performance,” said Bimal Dayal, managing director at Indus Towers.

Co-locations are points where a tower company deploys mobile telecom antennae of multiple carriers on a single structure.

In the fiscal second quarter, Indus added net 2,465 towers on quarter and 11,368 on year across 22 telecom circles in India. Co-locations increased 7,196 sequentially and 18,445 on year.

The company said that the reporting of towers and colocations has been changed from a notice basis to actual exit basis from July 1, 2021.

During the consolidation phase of the telecom industry, Indus had adopted a conservative approach in December 2018 of reporting exits basis notices received vis-à-vis the earlier method of reporting basis actual exits. Now with the stabilization in the industry and reducing trend of exits, Indus has moved back to the earlier approach of reporting churn based on actual exits to represent actual colocations billed,” Indus said. This has resulted in one-time addition of 3,630 colocations for the quarter ended September 30, 2021.

As of September 30, Indus owned and operated 184,462 towers with 332,551 co-locations across India.

The world’s largest tower company, formerly known as Bharti Infratel, was merged in November last year after which Vodafone Idea sold its 11.15 per cent stake in Indus for a cash consideration of Rs 3,760.1 crore.

The company’s stock fell 4.6 per cent in Monday’s trade to close at Rs 288.65 per share on BSE. Results were declared after market hours.