Vodafone Q1 2024: Share Price Declines Amid CEO Change and Business Challenges

 Vodafone Q1 24 – 24/07

it's been one way traffic for the Vodafone share price so far this year, with declines on declines, with the shares at 25-year lows. The departure of Nick Read as CEO hasn't been enough to stop the rot with new CEO Margherita Della Valle seemingly unable to convince markets she has a coherent plan to turn the business around. In May the telecoms company announced it was looking to cut 11k jobs over the next 3 years, as it announced its full year number. Full year group revenues rose 0.3% to €45.7bn.

 

The Germany business continues to underperform, posting a decline of 1.6%, driven by the loss of broadband customers, while the UK did much better, seeing an increase of 5.6%, which was driven by an 8% increase in mobile service revenue.

 

Its other markets in Spain and Italy also saw declines in organic service revenue of 5.4% and 2.9%. Full year pre-tax profit for the year rose to €12.82bn, however most of this was down to the gains from the disposal of the Vantage Towers business, of €8.6bn. Vodafone also generated an additional €689m from the completion of the sale of its Ghana business, as well as a loss of €69m on its disposal of Vodafone Hungary.

 

Investor concern remains primarily around the company's debt level at a time when the company seems to lack a growth strategy. On the plus side the company has announced that it is working through the final details of the merger of its British operations with Hong Kong's Hutchison Holdings, which runs the Three network.