Analyst’s take on Jio Q4 FY23 results

Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. saw its revenue rise 1.72% over the previous three months to Rs 23,394 crore in the quarter ended March 31. Net profit increased 1.68% sequentially to Rs 4,716 crore. The telco added 6.4 million subscribers in JFM 2023 quarter, taking its total subscriber base to 439.3 million, March end.

With Air Fiber, 5G broadband to the home, the telco expects to accelerate the growth of its home broadband base. The telco has validated AirFiber’s service stability, radio frequency planning, and installation model through pilots in a few locations. It is now aiming to connect 100 million connected homes (fibre+5G) with its FWA solution.

Analysts comments
Kotak Institutional Equities
“Blended ARPU grew at a modest 0.3% QoQ to ₹178.8 (versus our estimate of ₹178.2) as subscriber mix improvements and rising contribution from FTTH (fibre-to-the-home) offset the lesser days in quarter q-o-q.”

IIFL
“We estimate Jio to have added 0.75 million FTTH subscribers in Q4, implying 5.65 million net mobile subscriber adds in Q4. Jio’s blended ARPU (Mobile + FTTH) will in all probability touch Rs 186 in FY23 and Rs 213 in FY25.”

ICICI Securities
“For the March quarter, the per capita data consumption was 23.1 GB per month as compared to 22.4 GB a month in the preceding quarter.

JP Morgan
“It is unlikely that Jio will go in for a tariff hike in the near term. ARPU growth is likely to come from increased data consumption.”

“We are clearly seeing that with a differentiated offering present in more than 2000 cities, and by the end of the year across India, we will have not just the best 4G networks in the country, probably arguably anywhere in the world, but also one of the best 5G networks as an offering in those markets. We are already seeing that there is a great increase in consumption, sometimes as high as three or four times from a very high consumption base that we have with 4G. And even without any change in tariffs. What that means is that we can see or we can anticipate a growth in ARPU just driven by consumption alone. And that’s on the mobility side,” Kiran Thomas, CEO, Jio Platforms had remarked in the earnings call after the results had been announced.

CT Bureau