Vodafone India is likely to postpone its planned initial public offer or IPO in 2012, if the government accepts the proposals of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India or TRAI on auctioning of telecom spectrum, reports said, quoting MD and CEO Marten Pieters
He said, "TRAI proposes to have spectrum auctions three times over the next 12 months and considering that situation, it is highly unlikely that we will go in for an IPO in the middle of spectrum auctions, adding that there is much uncertainty around spectrum allocation and pricing."
Vodafone India reported a 20 percent growth in revenue for the year ended March 2012 at Rs.32,184 crore, while the operating profit was up by 22 percent at Rs.8,549 crore. The operating margin moved up by 0.5 percentage point to 26.3 percent. Vodafone's Indian operations are not yet profitable at net level.
"We have had a really good year with strong operational performance, continued revenue market share (RMS) growth and an improvement in margins. Our new circles have performed well and we now have over 10 percent RMS in four of the seven circles," he said.
The company reported an average revenue per user (ARPU) of Rs.180 in the January-March 2012 quarter and in terms of mobile number portability, it added 1.7 million new customers and its customer base crossed 150 million during the year, including 60 million rural subscribers. In 2011-12, It incurred a capital expenditure of Rs.6,220 crore and had a net debt of Rs.30,000 crore.
Vodafone had invested Rs.50,000 crore in Indian operations since 2007 and it will invest more, but spectrum is the absolute raw material and the TRAI recommendations are economically unattractive, he said.
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