RCom to add 300 mn users: Anil Ambani

MUMBAI: Reliance Communications chairman Anil Ambani on Thursday gave an upbeat assessment of the company’s performance in the second quarter and reiterated a strong outlook for the next six months.

Mr Ambani elaborated upon the numbers for the second quarter in perspective and shed light on where the company is headed in the near future. Mr Ambani said that the Indian telecom market is probably the fastest growing telecom market in the world with an annual run rate of 100 million net additions.

More importantly, he said that RCOM was well positioned to participate in this growth advantage and said that the company was looking to add 300 million into RCOM’s network coverage by year end. He also pointed out that close to one out of every three new subscribers in existing dual network areas signed up with RCOM.

Given the increasing presence of the company in the GSM space, he said the company would benefit to a great extent thanks to its ability to leverage from the existing infrastructure and that dual network operations would help in capex rationalisation and even stronger margins.

He also said that the aggressive growth plans would not mean a slowdown in profits and that the company was fully committed to delivering ‘profitable growth’. Given all of the above he said that RCOM was well positioned to further improve returns and drive shareholder value.

Evidence of this, he said, could be seen in the fact that the RCOM EBITDA margin is among that of the top 10 global telcos and that RCOM’s ARPU is amongst the highest in the country. Currently RCOMs asset base is Rs. 60,000 crore, operating cash flow is at Rs. 8,000 crore and liquid asset base stands at Rs. 12,500 crore.

Mr Ambani also addressed the speculation that has been rife about the listing of the tower business and Flag Telecom. Said Mr Ambani, “RTIL will be the leading telecom infrastructure player in India and will be listed by next year. As for FLAG, it will make a private placement of equity within this fiscal year.”