Vi share prices: Vodafone Idea witnessed a sharp surge in its share price of nearly 18 per cent on Tuesday after the Union Cabinet decided to remove the requirement for bank guarantees on spectrum bought-in auctions that took place before 2022.
While this might be good news for the broader telecom sector as other industry giants like Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio are also expected to benefit from the same, for Vi, this update has come as a major relief factor.
At 01:45 pm, the shares of Vodafone Idea were trading at Rs price level, up by or on the National Stock Exchange.
Besides heightened competition, debt levels have been a major issue point for the telecom giant. In Q2FY25, Vodafone Idea's net debt witnessed a massive surge of Rs 9,300 crore sequentially, to reach Rs 2.12 lakh crore. The company also owed Rs 2.23 lakh crore to the government for deferred spectrum payments.
Not so Healthy Trajectory for Vodafone Idea
While the company did experience a healthy uptick in its new subscriber base, there was a major decline in the total number of users. This was largely because of two reasons: people reducing extra SIMs after recent tariff hikes and userbase shifting to BSNL as it didn't change its price levels.
"Gross addition was healthy at 23.2 million (Bharti - 31.4 million; Reliance Jio - 29.8 million) in Q2FY25, and it has been grabbing more gross subs market share. Higher subs decline was due to SIM consolidation on tariff hikes, and unchanged tariffs for BSNL. The company indicated port-out to BSNL has been dropping in past three months," ICICI Direct stated in its report.
On a year-to-date basis, the debt-ridden company has struggled to remain in the green territory. The shares have been down by over 50 per cent since the start of the year on both the BSE and NSE.
