Tata Communications’ data portfolio drives business momentum; Grows +10.4% YoY despite industry challenges

Tata Communications, a leading global digital infrastructure provider, reported its consolidated financial results for the quarter and year ended March 31, 2019.

Highlights | FY2019

• Data business witnessed strong growth; revenue grew by 10.4% YoY on the back of strong performance in Growth Services and revenue uptick in Innovation Services^[1]
• Data Services now contribute to 76.6% of the overall revenues; up from 68.3% in FY18
• EBITDA grew +13.8% YoY driven by strong profitability in data business; margins came in at 16.6%, an increase of 220 bps YoY
• Growth Services^[2] portfolio witnessed strong momentum; revenue grew by 15.1% YoY to USD 398 Mn on the back of large deal wins in this portfolio
• Traditional Services^[3] remained stable despite industry headwinds with operator consolidation; revenue declined by 2.2% YoY. This portfolio has started to stabilise and is expected to grow in FY20
• Data EBIDTA for the year was INR 2,409 crore; +16.6% YoY, primarily due to Growth Services turning EBITDA positive in Q4
• Consolidated Revenue reported at INR 16,525 crore; a decline of 1.5% YoY due to decline in Voice business by 27.1% YoY. Strong performance in data business has helped mitigate this decline in voice to a large extent
• PAT loss significantly came down to INR 82.4 crore as compared to a loss of INR 328.6 crore in FY18
• CAPEX for FY2019 was at USD 267 Mn as compared to USD 235 Mn in FY18, due to additional investment towards India backbone expansion

Highlights | Q4 FY2019

• Consolidated revenue grew by 5.0% YoY and declined by 0.6% QoQ. Adjusted for one-time AFA gain in Q3, revenue grew by 1.2% QoQ
• Data business revenue grew by 14.2% YoY and 0.5% QoQ, on the back of strong performance in Growth Services. Adjusted for AFA gain, QoQ growth was 2.8%
• Growth Services reported sequential QoQ revenue growth of 9.2%
• PAT loss for the quarter was at INR 198.8 crore due to equity loss pick up in STT,  Singapore data centre business to the tune of INR 173 crore

Commenting on the results, Vinod Kumar, MD and CEO, Tata Communications, said, “The strong growth in our data business has helped us deliver consistent financial performance and create momentum for our future growth. Growth Services continue to scale up and adoption of these platform services is enabling deeper engagement with customers. Our focus remains on offering best in class digital infrastructure solutions; ensuring seamless global connectivity and effortless digital transformation for businesses around the world.”

Commenting on the results, Pratibha K. Advani, CFO, Tata Communications, said, “Our startegy to focus on our Data Services portfolio has started to show results with our Growth Services portfolio turning EBITDA positive on the back of strong topline growth and we are starting to see significant traction in our innovation services portfolio. We are confident that we are moving in the right direction and our focus remains on strengthening our cash flows and return ratios as we continue to pursue profitable growth opportunities in future.”

An investor fact sheet providing detailed analysis of the results for the quarter ended March 31^st, 2019 has been uploaded on the Tata Communications website and can be accessed here.

Business highlights | FY2019

Employee success

• Certified a Great Place to Work® in Canada, Greater China, India, Hong Kong and Singapore, ranking high as an equal opportunities employer, with inclusive workplace policies and a high-trust, high-performance culture; and recognised as an Aon Best Employers, India 2018 for third year in a row and in Hong Kong for the second consecutive year
• Focus on skills transformation organisation-wide with a 23% YoY increase on person learning days to enable employees to enhance or build relevant future skills and technological change continues to accelerate
• Serving the communities in which we operate, touching over 160,000 lives (+82% YoY) through 60,000 hours of volunteering programmes across India, APAC, the Americas, Europe and MENA

Customer success

• New customers and partners include Carlsberg, China Telecom Global, Syniverse, VivoHub, Doki Technologies, ROKiT Williams Racing, Indraprastha Gas Limited, W-Locate, MyRepublic and Antel. Over 35% of our new global customers in FY2019 opted for atleast one of our growth services
• Awards recognising outstanding customer service highlights include:
  • CX Strategy Summit & Awards – Best Customer Experience
  • Telecom Review Summit – Best Customer Service Provider
  • Stevie Awards Bronze (for sales and customer service)
  • Clarabridge Customer Experience Innovation Award
  • Customer Fest Show- CX Leader of the Year Award
• Average network uptime of 99.951% including Tx (NLD, MAN, RF) and cable network (India and International)

Awards and recognition: Analysts and Industry

• Industry analyst awards and recognitions highlights include:
  • Leader in Gartner’s 2019 Magic Quadrant for Network Services, Global
  • Major Player in the IDC MarketScape: Asia/Pacific Managed Security Services 2018 Vendor Assessment
  • Positioned in the Forrester Wave™, Managed Security Services in Asia Pacific, Q1 2019
  • Six awards at the Frost & Sullivan 2018 India ICT Awards
  • 2019 Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards – Asia Pacific: Managed UC Services Provider of the Year (third year running)
  • 2019 Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards: Global Hybrid Cloud Services Product Line Strategy Leadership Award and Sub Saharan African IoT MNVO Visionary Innovation Leadership Award
  • NetEvents 2018 IoT & Cloud Innovation Award: Innovation Leader: IoT
  • TechXLR8 Asia Awards 2018: Best IoT Partnership
  • Three MEF 2018 Awards: Wholesale Service Provider of the Year- APAC; Enterprise Application of the Year – Financial and Enterprise Application of the Year – Retail
• Industry recognition highlights include
  • Cisco Partner Summit 2018 Awards: Software Partner of the Year
  • Two Carriers World Awards: Best IoT initiative and Best IPX Service Provider
  • Telecom Asia Readers’ Choice awards: IoT/M2M Solution Innovation of the Year
  • MEF Awards – Proof of Concept: MEF 3.0 Implementation; MEF 3.0 Inter-carrier servicer for Automated Discovery and Blockchain Settlement

ENDS…

[1] Innovation Services include Mobility, IoT and NetFoundry

[2] Growth Services include IZO™, Managed Hosting, Managed Security Services, Media Services, SIP Trunking, Global Hosted Contact Center, Mobile New Services, Healthcare, Media Management and Mobile Innovation

[3] Traditional services include Virtual Private Network, International Private Line, Internet Leased Line, Ethernet, Internet Protocol –Transit, Inmarsat, Content Delivery Network, National Private Line, Mobility, Data Centre, Unified Collaboration and Conferencing