Apr

24

TRAI to Telcos: Get Written Consent from Users on VAS

Filed Under India Business, Indian Government, Mobile Telecom, Regulations | Leave a Comment

To prevent accidental activation of value added services (VAS) like call ring back tone and hallo tunes, Telecom regulator TRAI has directed the operators to seek explicit consent from users who have subscribed such services in writing.

TRAI thinks there could be chances of accidental activation of VAS through Out-Bound- Dialer (OBD)-call method, as children at home, can unintentionally pressed a particular key.

Also a customer, without listening to the announcements fully or without understand the offer may press a particular key unintentionally, thereby activating the chargeable service.

Now, operators will have to convey to the customer in writing or through SMS or FAX or e-mail, all the details of the offer of a value added service.  [source: Asian Cerc]

Most Indian Mobile Service providers are banking on VAS for future revenue growth in next 5 years. The above move will introduce extra work for the Indian Telecom value added services (VAS), but it may not be a hurdle that can pull down the margin from VAS, since SMS has also been called as an acceptable way to get User consent, which is similar to how its being done in Europe and other places.

Apr

20

TCS Earning Updates FY 2009

Filed Under IT BPO KPO Services, India Business, India Investment Opportunities | 2 Comments

TCS announced its FY09 and fourth quarter results today. Here are the key points:

  • FY09 Indian GAAP consolidated net profit up 4.5% at Rs 5256.4 crore vs Rs 5026 crore last year

  • Indian GAAP consolidated net sales up 21.6% at Rs 27812.9 crore vs Rs 22863.4 crore last year

  • Seven large deals in January-March and added 163 new clients in FY09.

  • Reduced their outstanding debtor days by 12 days

  • TCS made 24,885 campus offers for FY10 and net additions of 13418 staff in Q4 FY09 — so total employee strength is 143761.

  • Employee utilization excluding trainees in January to March was at 79.7% and at 69.4% including trainees.

  • FY09 retail, manufacturing ops sales were at USD 500 million each and forex losses stood at Rs 781 crore (!!)

  • Citigroup BPO added 1.6% to the FY09 volume growth.

  • TCS cash and cash equivalents is Rs 4300 crore as on March 31, 2009

  • TCS board has approved a 1:1 bonus issue (subject to shareholder approval). It pegs the company’s Q4 EPS at Rs 13.54 and said it would pay Rs 5 per share as final dividend.

Our Quick Analysis

The TCS numbers look good given that last 6 months have been bad for new orders, and still sales have increased 21%.

By the way, I hope you saw that:  TCS forex losses stood at Rs 781 crore!Do you think if they outsourced forex hedging to some Forex experts, this could be less? This is such a drag on their performance.

The new client acquisition number is always of interest because that is a leading indicator for future growth. And TCS has done well on that. So its a Buy for tomorrow morning, and also a long-term Buy. Its the short-term that we are not sure if we should hold the share of buy it later once more details in the US come out.

Of course, the Indian may be very volatile in the next few sessions if you factor the US market today…. its going down from the start with the new updates from the banking sector about more write downs.

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