Vodafone Idea narrowed its losses in fiscal Q4 2021 (ending 31 March), but warned continued weak performance with drops in revenue and ARPU impacted its ability to pay down its sizeable debt.

The company highlighted its financial condition in a stock market filing, stating its performance makes it difficult to generate the cash flow needed to settle liabilities.

This is “resulting in material uncertainty that casts significant doubt on the company’s ability to make payments…and continue as a going concern”.

Net loss declined from INR116.3 billion ($1.6 billion) in fiscal Q4 2020 to INR69.8 billion ($939 million), on revenue of INR117.5 billion, down 18.3 per cent in large part due to the removal of interconnect usage charges in January.

Its mobile subscriber base decreased 23.3 million year-on-year to 267.8 million, though it added 2 million in the period, its first quarterly gain in two years. LTE users rose 7.9 per cent to 113.9 million.

Blended ARPU dropped 11.6 per cent to INR107.

MD and CEO Ravinder Takkar said as it enters fiscal 2022 its cost optimisation plan “remains on track to deliver the targeted savings. We are in active discussion with potential investors for fundraising, to achieve our strategic intent”.

He said it targets achieving INR40 billion of annual cost savings by end of this calendar year and through several initiatives had “already achieved about 65 per cent of the targeted annualised savings”.

Fiscal 2021 capex was INR41.5 billion, with the addition of 16,650 broadband taking the total to 452,650.