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Shares of Vodafone Idea Ltd. gained as much as 13 percent in trade on Wednesday marking the stock's first advance after a seven-day slump.

The shares also gained on heavy volumes, which were quadruple its 20-day average. Over 239.5 million shares of Vodafone Idea have been traded so far, quarduple of the 20-day average of 55.7 million shares.

The last instance of the stock gaining more than 12 percent in a single session was back in May 2022.

Recently, Vodafone Idea and the American Tower Corporation (ATC) mutually agreed to extend the last date for subscribing optionally convertible debentures (OCDs) worth Rs 1,600 crore to February 28, 2023. The proposal to issue infrastructure debentures to ATC had lapsed just a few days prior.

Currently, the telecom service provider owes over Rs 3,000 crore to ATC and an additional Rs 7,000 crore to Indus Towers.

The telco needs to raise over $3 billion in the next 6-12 months to meet short-term liquidity pressures, given that it needs to quickly clear sizeable dues to tower companies (Indus and ATC), and also invest in 4G/5G capex in the near term to stay competitive vs peers, according to a report by ET quoting Nitin Soni, senior director (corporates) at Fitch.

The Indus Towers board has already warned Vodafone Idea of service closure over non-payment of dues.

Shares of Vodafone Idea are down over 40 percent this year after two successive years of positive annual returns. The stock has no buy recommendation from analysts. Five analysts who track the stock have a "hold" rating while 16 of them have a sell call.

The stock currently trades 10.8 percent higher at Rs 8.75.

First Published:Dec 14, 2022 2:55 PM IST