Vodafone Idea Shares: The ghost of AGR dues has once again stood in front of telecom companies. The Supreme Court today with its one decision broke almost the last remaining hope of these companies. Vodafone Idea and Indus Towers suffered the most from this decision. Within an hour of the decision, the market value of Vodafone Idea had decreased by about Rs 13,500 crore. At the end of trading, its stock fell 19% to close near Rs 10.50. This is the biggest fall in Vodafone Idea's stock in the last two and a half years i.e. since January 2022. At the same time, Indus Towers' stock also saw the biggest fall since June 4 and it closed down by about 9 percent. After all, what was so special in the Supreme Court's decision and what is the whole matter of AGR dues? What is expected next in Vodafone Idea's stock? Let's know

What are AGR dues?

First of all, let us know what is these AGR dues. There has been a dispute between the government and telecom companies about this since 1999. AGR means 'Adjusted Gross Revenue'. It is a part of the total income of telecom companies. It is of two types. First - income coming from telecom service, which includes income from calls, SMS, and internet data. The second is non-telecom income. Like if the company has deposited some money in the bank, interest is coming on it or it has given any of its building on rent, the income is coming from that. All this is non-telecom income.

The government decided to combine these two incomes and charge license fees and spectrum usage charges from telecom companies on that basis. And this is where the dispute started. Telecom companies wanted to pay only on the income from telecom services. Whereas the government wanted to charge fees on the entire income. Later the matter went to court and was heard for years.

Finally, in 2019, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the government and ordered telecom companies to pay the outstanding license fees and spectrum charges on the entire revenue, i.e. AGR.

Due to this decision, Vodafone Idea, Bharti Airtel, and other telecom companies have dues of thousands of crores of rupees. Vodafone Idea alone currently has dues of about ₹ 70,300 crore, while Bharti Airtel has dues of ₹ 36,000 crore.

Amidst this huge debt, Vodafone Idea once again mustered courage and filed a curative petition in the Supreme Court. It also got support from other companies in this matter. These companies said that the government has made many mistakes in calculating the AGR dues and if it is added according to them, then this due amount will be reduced significantly. This was the last hope of these companies, but the Supreme Court today rejected this petition as well. The court said that it did not find any concrete case in the documents presented by the telecom companies.

The Supreme Court gave these companies 10 years to pay the AGR dues. In such a situation, the matter has again come to the same point for these companies. Vodafone Idea is in the most trouble, and is facing challenges on almost every front. The company's customers are continuously decreasing and its financial crisis is also increasing.

Experts said that if this decision had come in favor of Vodafone, its share could have increased to about Rs 5. But this did not happen. On the contrary, now this share has fallen to below Rs 11. The company had raised about Rs 18,000 crore from investors at this price in April.

What should investors do?

Now the question arises that what should the shareholders of Vodafone Idea do? Goldman Sachs had recently said in a report that the company's cash flow could remain negative till 2031. It had also warned that its stock could fall by 83 percent to Rs 2.5. Other experts also do not see any improvement in Vodafone Idea shares at present.

Sachchidanand Uttekar of Tradebulls said that the company's stock has fallen below the important support level of Rs 13. This means that further decline can be seen in the coming days. He has predicted it to fall to Rs 7.

On the other hand, Anand Rathi's Jigar Patel says that Vodafone Idea's chart is currently looking very weak, as its 200-day exponential moving average has been broken. Although the RSI has entered the oversold territory, it would be better to avoid investing in the stock in the current situation.