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Improving conditions in Spain and Italy, coupled with a number of new synergies in the UK, mean that Vodafone has reiterated its full year projected targets, despite falling revenues in Q3
Vodafone Group has reported revenues of €10.9 billion for the last quarter of 2018, down €800 million on a year-on-year basis.
Vodafone pointed to the adoption of the IFRS15 financial reporting criteria, the sale of its business unit in Qatar and challenging foreign exchange rates.
Despite the fall in revenues, Vodafone said that it was seeing an improvement in performance in its European operations as competition in Spain and Italy eased. In a statement to the press, Vodafone said that this contributed to "stable mobile prepaid portability in Italy, and to stable mobile contract and fixed portability in Spain, during the month of December".
“We have executed at pace this quarter and have improved the consistency of our commercial performance. Lower mobile contract churn across our markets and improved customer trends in Italy and Spain are encouraging, however these have not yet translated into our financial results, with a similar revenue trend in Europe to Q2," said Nick Read, group chief executive, Vodafone Group.
Despite the fall in revenues, Vodafone Group reiterated its target of growing adjusted operating profits by around 3 per cent and generating €5.4 billion of cash, not including the money that Vodafone intends to spend on spectrum in the period.
Vodafone will continue with its plans to become leaner and more efficient in its European operations, having already announced plans to make redundancies in Spain and redistribute elements of its existing workforce in the UK.
"We are moving to implement a radically simpler operating model and to accelerate our digital transformation, as demonstrated by the organisational changes we have announced in Spain and the UK. We are also assessing opportunities across our markets to improve asset utilisation through partnering," Read said.
Earlier this week, Vodafone announced a 5G network sharing partnership with Telefonica, which should help to lessen the cost of 5G rollout in one of Vodafone’s key markets.
"This week we announced the intention to extend our existing network sharing agreement with Telefonica O2 in the UK to include 5G services. This will enable us to deploy 5G services to more customers over a wider geographic area, and to do so at a lower cost. After these arrangements have been finalised, we also intend to explore opportunities to monetise our UK tower assets,” Read concluded.
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Vodafone signs 5G network sharing agreement with O2 in the UK
Vodafone and IBM sign $550m partnership to drive network innovation
Vodafone and Orange keep the faith with Huawei for 5G trials in Spain
