Vodafone Idea climbs 5%; What’s really changing?

Vodafone Idea share price: Shares of Vodafone Idea moved up on Friday after latest data showed that the company is losing fewer users than before.

The stock rose 5.6 per cent during the day to touch Rs 9.45 on the NSE. It was later trading at Rs 9.40, up Rs 0.46 or 5.15 per cent. The company’s market value stood at over Rs 1 lakh crore.

Fewer users leaving the network

Data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) showed that Vodafone Idea’s subscriber losses slowed in January 2026.

The company lost about 4.1 lakh users in January. This is lower than the loss of around 9.4 lakh users in December.

Its total user base now stands at 19.83 crore.

This means people are still leaving the network, but at a slower pace. This has given some confidence to investors.

Competition remains strong

Vodafone Idea is still behind its bigger rivals.

Reliance Jio Infocomm remains the largest player with over 517 million users. Bharti Airtel is second with about 359 million users.

Vodafone Idea is in third place with around 129 million broadband users.

At the same time, competition in the sector remains high. Nearly 1.6 crore users switched their mobile operators in January using mobile number portability.

Industry still growing

The total number of wireless users in India stood at around 1,172 million in January.

Broadband users also saw a small increase. The total base rose slightly to 1,052.72 million.

However, most of the growth is going to larger players.

Bharti Airtel added over 44 lakh new users in January, while Reliance Jio added about 24 lakh users.

Q3 highlights

Vodafone Idea reported some improvement in its December quarter (Q3FY26), though losses still remain high.

The company’s net loss came down to Rs 5,286 crore. This is lower than Rs 6,609 crore reported in the same period last year.

Revenue saw a small rise. It increased to Rs 11,323 crore, up 1.85 per cent from a year ago. This shows that the company is slowly improving its earnings, but growth is still limited.

Operating performance was slightly better. EBITDA stood at Rs 4,816 crore, compared to Rs 4,712 crore last year.

What helped the numbers

One key reason for the improvement was lower finance cost. The company’s interest expenses came down slightly to Rs 5,632 crore.

Another positive was higher earnings from users. Average revenue per user (Arpu) rose to Rs 186. This was higher than Rs 173 last year and Rs 180 in the previous quarter.

This increase was supported by higher data usage and some customers upgrading to better plans.