Tata Comm To Focus On WiMAX

Tata Communications’ net profit has risen to Rs. 3,158 million from last year’s net profit of Rs. 103 million after it sold its shares in sister firm Tata Teleservices. Net sales have risen by 20.6% to Rs. 99,631.7 million, up from Rs. 82,629.8 million in FY 08 and consolidated EBITDA rose by 53.4% to Rs. 13,500 million. Earnings per share are also up from Rs. 0.36 to Rs. 11.8. Standalone operating income has dropped by 10.4% to Rs. 8,869.3 million from Q3, and by 4.3% from Q4 08 to Rs. Expenses have halved to Rs. 3,623.3 million this quarter. Net profit rose by 2.7% from Q3 to Rs. 3,023.7 million. Its global voice segment revenues rose 9% to Rs. 13,850 million from Q4 08 while data segment saw a 25% rise from Rs. 8290 million to Rs. 10,370 million. Details: Release | Consolidated Financials | Quarterly Financials Tata Communications sold a total of 36,542,378 shares in sister company Tata Teleservices Ltd to NTT DoCoMo for Rs. 4,242.2 million at a profit of Rs.3,466.5 million. The board has agreed to a dividend of Rs 4.50 per equity share. Going forward, it has set a goal of 15% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) in organic sales till FY 2012 and expects to keep a 20% EBITDA margin. It will also focus on emerging markets - India, Asia and China, South Africa Data & Voice Segments Voice, which contributes to 58% of gross revenue but 28% of net revenues for the company, experienced a drop of 7.8% compared to Q4 08, registering revenues of Rs. 4,087.1 million in the quarter. For the fiscal, it grew by 2.7% to Rs. 17,405.9 million from FY 08. The company in a presentation claims its wholesale international long distance voice traffic forms 44% of the market share in India and its national long distance traffic 53%. It has recorded over 24 billion minutes of international voice traffic and over 10 billion minutes of Indian NLD traffic. It serves 1500 carriers, mobile operators and ISPs worldwide. Data business - Ethernet connectivity and managed services -grew by 4.9% to Rs. 3,298 million. From FY 08, the segment registered a 18.3% growth to Rs. 14,504.6 million. The segment contributes to 40% of the company’s gross revenues and 69% to net revenues. The company largely deals with service providers, who form 81% of the clientele compared to enterprises and retail who form the rest 19%. According to the company, it owns 23% of the market share in enterprise data services in India. WiMAX, Ethernet Services & Live Broadcast
Prateek Pashine, COO of the company’s retail broadband unit, has joined the WiMAX forum as a director and will step up efforts to promote India as a market for WiMAX. The company will encourage development of low cost WiMAX products, it has said to the BSE. It is betting on WiMAX even as 3G is being rolled out in the country. It completed setting up its intra-Asia submarine cables which link up Singapore, Hong Kong, Philippines and Japan. It partnered with UAE telco Etisalat to offer enterprise network services and dedicated Ethernet links between India and the Gulf. The acquisition of South African operator Neotel and their ongoing deployments of Telepresence in association with Cisco and CII are also mentioned. Last year, it launched a content delivery network service called Live Broadcast, which recently bagged a contract with French television channel TV5MONDE to broadcast over the Internet. WiFi Back in February 2008, Tata Indicom had 350 hotspots in India and covered 20 cities. Now Tata Indicom Broadband has coverage in 500 Wi-Fi hotspots in India and offers roaming access to broadband or dial up users in 300 cities/ towns. The company has hired ad agency PDM to conduct demos and promotional campaigns in Cafe Coffee Day outlets all over India. PDM will be setting up kiosks in 121 outlets across the country to promote Tata Indicom’s Photon+ broadband, reports Medianewsline. Read more about Photon+ on Medianama. iPass Tata Comm launched a single billing service and offered internet connectivity ‘on roaming’ to 160 countries. Last year, Tata Indicom had tied up with iPass, an international third party aggregator of internet connections, for Wi-Fi connectivity in India - and is now leveraging the sharing agreement to offer its own customers global roaming connectivity through iPass’ network. Using the iPass client, Tata Indicom users can now latch onto connections in 433 airports, 100,000 partner Wi-Fi hotspots and 22,000 hotels and conference venues in 70 countries. Investments Tata Comm could soon own 50% of a Chinese VAS firm called CEC, subject to closing. It also has a 26.6% stake in Nepal telco UTL which is a CDMA operator. It established a data centre at Singapore in February.