Member Article

Vodafone figures drop in Southern Europe

Mobile phone network provider, Vodafone, has posted disappointing results for the last six months, with a 7.4% drop in group revenues to £21.8bn.

The firm said that although falls in service use in Southern Europe had impacted the business, it expected to have a strong return from it’s joint venture in the U.S, Version Wireless.

A buyback scheme of £1.5bn is expected to commence once the firm has received this substantial dividend.

Vodafone said the number of calls, texts and internet visits were down by 9.8% in the Southern part of Europe, and a loss of £1.98bn was incurred year-on-year.

The group suffered a pre-tax loss of £492m, however the company remained positive after data growth of 13.7% in emerging markets.

India used 11% more data in the last quarter, while customers in Turkey boosted data growth figures by 18%.An optimistic outlook was reflected in Vodafone’s interim dividend which rose 7.2% to 3.27 pence per share.

Chief Executive, Vittorio Colao, said: “We have continued to make progress on our strategic priorities over the last six months, with good growth in data and emerging markets in particular.

“We remain very positive about the longer-term opportunities, and our Vodafone 2015 strategy reflects our confidence in the future.”

The CEO said Vodafone’s newest approach would increase its focus on “unified communications in enterprise”, and would open itself up to emerging markets.

He continued: “Fundamental to the success of this strategy will be an ongoing enhancement of the consumer and enterprise customer experience through continuous investment in high speed data networks, and an increased drive towards standardisation and simplification across the Group to maximise cost efficiency and accelerate execution.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Miranda Dobson .