After Jio's deep discounts, telecom incumbents now in recovery mode

While revenue growth will still be elusive, the earlier sharp cuts in realisations are expected to reduce, with companies reporting flat to marginal drops in revenue.While this is nothing to write home about, it would be much better than the prior two quarters of a 6 to 7 per cent revenue declines                                         

Rohit Chordia of Kotak Institutional Equities believes disrupter Reliance Jio’s offers having moved from free to ‘deep discount’ presents incumbents with a chance to put up a better fight and stem the massive revenue seen in the second half of 2016-17                    While Chordia expects revenues to fall 1.4-1.7 per cent in the June quarter, Vivekanand Subbaraman of Ambit Capital estimates 1 per cent revenue growth each for Idea Cellular and Bharti Airtel.                                  

    Bharti Airtel and Idea’s India wireless voice revenues are expected to fall 12-13 per cent and data revenues by a steeper 23-24 per cent each, year-on-year. This is despite data volumes having nearly doubled for both Bharti and Idea over the year-ago period. On a sequential basis.while volumes are up 45-55 per cent, data revenues might fall — volumes essentially reflect increase in data allowances for the same..Read More