Jio finally reports revenue still makes a loss

Reliance Industries has started to tell us the financials about its chaotic telecoms venture, and it doesn’t make for easy reading.

For the three months ending September, Reliance Jio reported roughly $950 million in revenue, not a bad number, on total expenses of approximately $1.01 billion. That is a total loss of around about $63 million during a period when it added over 15 million subscribers.

Now we aren’t saying that losing $63 million is a good thing, but the Jio execs must be secretly pleased with themselves. Considering it is a company which has barely charged a thing since it came to being, a loss of $63 million isn’t really that bad going. But we’ve doing the maths, and there must be some clever accounting going on here. We do not pretend to be particularly knowledgeable in this area, but running one of India largest telcos will surely cost a bit more.

In this quarter to the end of September, the outgoings of the business were $1.01 billion, but in the previous quarter it was as low as $5 million and the year up to the end of March was $7.4 million. Clearly running such a prominent telco will not be this cheap, Jio is deferring costs. One question which remains is how much has been deferred to future quarters? How much debt is Jio actually in?

If you are that way inclined, we’ve copied the financials below. Enjoy.