36.8% Growth in Q3 for OnMobile

OnMobile Global has said that a focus from its telecom customers –  from promoting Mobile Value Added Services to focusing on Mobile Number Portability, is likely to have an impact on business for the time being. The company reported a quarterly decline in Net Profit at a consolidated level, and a 86.44% year on year increase, even as total revenue grew significantly both sequentially (by 12.99%) and year on year (by 36.8%). In a note accompanying the results, OnMobile says that its overall Gross Margin and core business gross margins remain stable at around 73%, it’s Operating Profit Margin is flat – marginally up from 11.4% to 11.8%, and Operating Profit Margin on the core business has improved from 23.8% to 25%.


Download: OnMobile Q3-11 details
Standalone Results: Why OnMobile Is Focusing On International

While OnMobile’s revenues appear to be growing quarter on quarter, if you see the chart below, the broad trend is that profitability for the Indian business is in decline. The company usually advises that investors look at their business at an annual basis, not quarter on quarter. So, here’s the performance for the company in the Indian market, on a four-quarters timeline:

While revenue is growing, the net profit tells quite another story: as if OnMobile is running to stay at the same level of profitability, and its investments aren’t really bearing fruit. Also note that OnMobile’s entry into the content business would have led to an increase in topline, as well as increasing content costs (shown in the chart below).
On the conference call, OnMobile CEO Arvind Rao reiterated what Anil Pande, Head of VAS for Reliance Communications, had told us earlier – that growth for telecom operators in India is not coming from VAS, but from data services. This explains OnMobile’s international focus, and in India, the bet that OnMobile has taken on Dilithium, and video serving, which telecom operators will also depend on, for on-deck VAS, alongwith Caller Ringback Tunes, but it also does paint a worrying picture for the Indian market. The larger global trend, though, is moving towards off-deck, and a fragmented market, and there’s little doubt that India will follow.


International Business
Given the turbulent environment in India, OnMobile strategy of focusing increasingly on international business appears to be serving it well:
- As much as 31% of its total revenues for the quarter came from International business. They are now live with 6 countries in Latin America with Telefonica, including Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela, covering 80% of its subscriber base. Remember that last year, the company had said that it intends to complete deployment in the 13 countries, in a worst case scenario, by June 2011. Revenue from Latin America was higher by 80% year on year, and the company says that it is experiencing early adoption rates. Last quarter, the company had launched in Mexico, and registered new offices in Panama, Chile, Nicaragua and Spain.
- During the quarter, it registered new offices in Uruguay, Egypt and China. In China, the company says it won an embedded deal with a major handset OEMs for “video stacks”.
- It launched ‘Music Burst’ an ‘unlimited music download and play’ product on subscription in Indonesia.
- They launched an enhanced version of their ‘My Synchronization Space’ service in one of their European Operators, which included embedding of the application on Android devices. Note that Android has a host synchronization services – Google Sync. Additionally, OnMobile expanded their offerings in the Personal Data Management space for both Android and Apple iOS devices.
Dilithium Update
- Post acquisition of Dilithium assets at the beginning of this quarter, teams have been integrated as a new product unit within OnMobile.
- Restarted the delivery of Dynamic Content Adapter product for one of the top Internet Companies in the North American market.
- Received and delivered their first order of 3G Video Gateway from a leading Telco in North America.
- This acquisition has increased OnMobile’s geographic presence by 21 countries.