Jio Platforms completes barnstorming FY21 clearing $1.7 billion in net profit

Jio Platforms has completed its fiscal year to March 31 with ₹12,537 crore in net profit, around $1.7 billion, from revenue of ₹86,493 crore, or $11.8 billion.

As of the end of March, the Indian telco said it had a customer base of 426 million, which represented a net increase of 38 million over the preceding twelve months, with gross additions sitting at 99.3 million. Across the year, its customers had consumed 29% more data, taking its yearly total to 62.5 exabytes of data.

For the fourth quarter, Jio Platforms reported revenue of ₹21,650 crore and net profit of ₹3,508 crore, with 15.4 million net customers from 31.2 million gross additions coming onto its network in the last three months of the year. Average revenue per user was sitting at ₹138.2 or $1.87.

The company said based on Telecom Regulatory Authority of India data, the telco now has approximately 45% market share and was leading in 19 out of 22 circles.

Reliance did not provide comparisons to the prior year, when it reported on its Reliance Jio telco arm, rather than the Jio Platforms holding company. For the 2020 fiscal year, Reliance Jio reported standalone net profit increased 88% to ₹5,562 crore.

Earlier in the year, Jio picked up almost 490MHz worth of spectrum for ₹57,100 crore, with a total of 2,251MHz on offer.

"Through this acquisition, [Reliance Jio]'s total owned spectrum footprint has increased significantly, by 55%, to 1,717MHz," the company said.

"It has the highest amount of sub-GHz spectrum with 2x10MHz contiguous spectrum in most circles. It also has at least 2x10MHz in 1800MHz band and 40MHz in 2300MHz band in each of the 22 circles. [Jio] has achieved complete spectrum de-risking, with average life of owned spectrum of 15.5 years."

For the Reliance petrochemical giant that the telco is but one arm of, revenue for the 2020 fiscal year was reported at ₹539,238 crore, around $73.8 billion, down 18%, while net profit was up 35% to ₹53,739 crore.

See also: Modi government chokes dissent on India's COVID apocalypse with social media blocks

With India caught in a COVID surge, Reliance touted it is producing 11% of India's "medical-grade liquid oxygen" after converting plants used for petrochemical-grade oxygen once the pandemic hit.

The 1,000 metric tons it is now able to produce each day provides enough oxygen for 100,000 people, the company said. In April, Reliance provided 15,000 metric tons of oxygen for free.

"These are extraordinarily challenging times for India. Our immediate priority is to help our country and community tide over the COVID crisis," Reliance Industries chair and managing director Mukesh Ambani said.

"We have also taken urgent steps to bolster the nation's capacity to swiftly transport medical oxygen. These efforts complement our other initiatives such as distributing free meals to the needy, supplying PPEs to frontline workers and setting up world class COVID-care facilities.

"To me, these contributions are far more satisfying than our Company's strong, overall operational and financial performance for the year."

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