Tata Communications delivers strong fiscal profit, highest in 11 years

Mumbai: Tata Communications today announces its financial results for the FY2021 and for the quarter ended March 31st, 2021.

Highlights| FY2021
·        Consolidated revenue was at INR 17,100 Crore (USD 2,303 Mn); up by +0.2% YoY. Business environment has been impacted due to pandemic and this has also affected our growth.

·        Data revenue was at INR 14,309 Crore (USD 1,927 Mn); up by +4.5% YoY supported by a healthy performance in Traditional services.

·        Consolidated EBITDA came in at INR 4,261 crore (USD 574 Mn); up +29.5% YoY as a result of strong focus on right operating structure and cost efficiencies.

·        Profit for the year was at INR 1,251 Crore (USD 168 Mn) as compared to a loss of INR 86 Crore in FY20 due to strong operating performance during the year. This has been the highest profit in last 11 years, translating into an EPS of INR 44 per share.

·        Strong cash flow generation has helped bring debt at comfortable levels. Net Debt to EBITDA is now at 1.8x as compared to 2.8x a year earlier. Net Debt is now at INR 7,786 crore.

·        Return on Capital Employed for FY21 is at 24.6% as compared to 11.5% in FY20; and improvement of over 13 percentage points.

·        The Board recommends a dividend of INR 14 per share.

Highlights|Q4 FY2021
·        Consolidated revenue was at INR 4,073 Crore (USD 559 Mn), decrease of -7.4% YoY. This has been largely due to degrowth in Voice business and Data business.

·        Data revenue was at INR 3,515 Crore (USD 482 Mn); down by -2.2% YoY. This reduction is primarily due to longer deal conversion and execution cycle due to COVID-19 and moderation of UCC traffic.

·        We maintained profitability despite slower revenue growth, EBITDA at INR 1,015 Crore (USD 139 Mn); up +16.8% YoY, EBITDA margin at 24.9%.

·        Profit at INR 299 Crore as compared to a loss of INR 275 Crore in same quarter last year.

A.S Lakshminarayanan, MD and CEO, Tata Communications said, “FY21 has been a great year; making excellent progress on our well-defined strategy. Execution on financial fitness is yielding good results and the shifts from products to platforms, deeper customer engagements are a work in progress and we anticipate continued progress on these strategic levers to achieve our goals. Our teams have gone the extra mile in delivering benchmark level Net Promoter Score (NPS) in a difficult year and are committed on execution to deliver on our strategy.”

Commenting on the results, Kabir Ahmed Shakir, Chief Financial Officer, Tata Communications, said, “Our focus on right operating structure and cost efficiencies have started to show results during the year. There has been significant improvement in profitability making our business fit to compete effectively. Profit and cash flow generation has improved dramatically. We now have a stronger balance sheet providing us the flexibility to invest for future growth of business.”