Vodafone Idea on Wednesday once again posted a big loss of Rs. 7,023 crore during the January-March quarter, wider than the Bloomberg consensus estimate of Rs 6,241.07 crore. The loss has widened significantly compared with the previous quarter of Rs 4,540 crore.

The company continued to lag on the operational front as well. The revenues declined sharply by nearly 12 per cent on a quarter-on-quarter basis to Rs 9,608 crore, much below analyst expectations of Rs 10,040.50 crore, The Financial Expressreported.

Ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation), however, increased 2.8 percent sequentially to Rs 4,408 crore. Ebitda margins came in at 45.9 per cent, a sharp increase of 660 basis points quarter-on-quarter.

The company’s average revenue per user (Arpu) during the quarter declined to Rs 107 compared with Rs 121 in the preceding quarter. Minutes of voice usage also declined to 657 minutes against 673 in the preceding quarter.

Average data consumption, however, rose to 13,068 MB against 12,288 MB in the previous quarter. Subscriber churn rose to 3 percent compared with 2.3 percent in the preceding quarter.

In a statement, Ravinder Takkar, MD & CEO, Vodafone Idea Limited, said “FY21 has been a transformational year for Vodafone Idea with several important milestones achieved including launch of our unified brand “Vi”. In the year of the pandemic, when people and businesses were hugely dependent on telecom connectivity, we delivered superior network experience and improvement in several operating metrics supported by Vi GIGAnet, which remains the fastest 4G network in India, as per Ookla, as well as the network with highest rated voice quality as per TRAI.

“We enter FY22 with renewed focus on executing our strategy to keep our customers ahead, and our cost optimization plan remains on track to deliver the targeted savings. We are in active discussion with potential investors for fund raising, to achieve our strategic intent.”