Telecom stocks crash over DoT move

Mumbai: Faced with huge payments obligation to the Department of Telecom-munications (DoT) post the Supreme Court order last month, telecom stocks, led by Vodafone Idea, fell 5 to 22 per cent on Thursday.

Telcos came under pressure as DoT issued a notice to the operators to pay their adjusted gross revenue (AGR) dues within three months as directed by the Supreme Court.

Rough estimates indicate Vodafone Idea may have to pay Rs 28,300 crore and Bharti Airtel, Rs 21,000 crore as per the Supreme Court order.

Vodafone Idea shares fell a whopping 21.62 per cent to an all-time low price of Rs 2.90 on the BSE and Rs 2.85 on the NSE and closed finally at Rs 2.95.

Bharti Airtel fell 4.88 per cent intra-day on the BSE, but recovered later to close 1.59 per cent down at Rs 362.65. Another Bharti Group company Bharti Infratel fell 4.42 per cent to Rs 208.70 and state-owned MTNL fell 4.92 per cent, closing at Rs 11.02.

The BSE Telecom Index was the top loser among the sectoral indices, falling 2.76 per cent.

The fall in the share price of  Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea came ahead of their scheduled second quarter results announcements on Thursday and extremely negative outlook for Vodafone Idea after the comments made by the top executives of both Vodafone and Aditya Birla Group.

Vodafone Idea is already burdened with a debt of around Rs 1 lakh crore.

Vodafone Idea shareholders were disappointed as reports citing senior executives said Aditya Birla Group will not infuse fresh equity into its telecom joint venture with Vodafone Group of UK and let the company go insolvent if the government doesn’t help.

Bharti Airtel and Vodafone announced their results after the market hours.