Is Vodafone Idea India’s best penny stock?

In March, India’s second richest man bought Rs 10 crore worth of the stock at Rs 3.15 a share—it now trades at thrice that.

T Surendar

Mumbai

13 July 2020

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It should be an open-and-shut case. Vodafone Idea Ltd, India’s third-largest mobile telephony provider, was the market leader two years ago. It ended the last fiscal year, 2019-20, with a loss of Rs 73,131 crore, the biggest ever in Indian corporate history. Its long-term debt is just over Rs 100,000 crore and it has had to postpone payment to vendors in the last two months. It also owes the government in back dues to the tune of Rs 51,000 crore and the Supreme Court of India wants it to do so soon.

Amid all this, the company is slowly losing its customers to rivals; it lost 19 million in the last reported quarter. With strong competitors still attracting its customers, there shouldn’t be any hope for its survival.

All this was evident late last year, when its share price sank to Rs 2.40 and its market value crashed to a mere Rs 6,896 crore, for a company with 300 million customers and a functioning telecom network. In December, two months after the Supreme Court

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