INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Vodafone Idea: The shares have plunged around 40 per cent in the past three sessions alone
Vodafone Idea shares tumbled as much as 24 per cent on Thursday, a day after the troubled telecom operator's
board accepted Kumar Mangalam Birla's request to step down as non-executive chairman
Mr Birla had engineered the merger of Idea Cellular, which was part of his Aditya Birla Group, and the Indian operations of Vodafone in 2018
to form Vodafone Idea, creating what was the country's largest telecom operator at that time
Mr Birla, who has a net worth of $14 billion according to Forbes, will be replaced by Aditya Birla Group-nominee Himanshu Kapania
as non-executive chairman, Vodafone Idea said in a stock exchange filing on Wednesday.Vodafone Idea has declined to comment on why Birla
sought to step down, and representatives at the Aditya Birla Group did not immediately respond to an email from Reuters.The shares have
nosedived around 40 per cent in the past three sessions alone
The shares plunged 27 per cent in the previous two sessions after Mr Birla offered to hand over his stake in the company to the government
or "any other entity that the government may consider worthy to keep the company operational."Investors were not willing to invest in the
company in the absence of clarity on AGR liability, an adequate moratorium on spectrum payments and most importantly floor pricing regime
above the cost of service, Mr Birla had said in his letter.Vodafone Idea's problems centre around the computation of adjusted gross
According to the Department of Telecom, Bharti Airtel owed more than Rs 43,000 crore as AGR dues, while Vodafone Idea's balance payment
The two companies approached the Supreme Court seeking corrections of what they called errors in the government's calculations of dues,
but the top court rejected the plea.Telecom companies pay a percentage of their revenues as license fees to the government
According to them, non-core businesses such as rent, income from sale of handsets or roaming charges should not be included in the revenue
of which they pay a percentage - they only wanted to pay on revenues earned from their core business.Moreover, Vodafone has been struggling
data rates globally, till very recently.As of May 31, Vodafone had 277.6 million wireless subscribers, a distant third to rivals Reliance
Jio and Bharti Airtel, with 431.2 million and 348.3 million, respectively, data from India's telecoms regulator showed.At 11:40 am,
Vodafone Idea shares were trading at Rs 5, weaker by 11 per cent, on the BSE.
