Source: Vodafone Group trading update, Q1 FY 2021/22 Vodafone brought some cheer to the EMEA telecoms sector Friday with news of a 5.7% year-on-year increase in revenues to €11.1 billion in its fiscal first quarter that ended 30 June, aided by the return of roaming revenues as people started travelling again in greater numbers as the pandemic subsides.
The operator saw an uptick in revenues across the board, from consumer and business customers and across its European and African markets, with Italy the exception (revenues there dipped 3.6% as Iliad continues to fuel price-based competition).
Group service revenues grew by 3.1% to €9.39 billion, a hefty chunk of which came from the German market, where service revenues increased by 1.1% to €2.87 billion.
Roaming and ‘visitor’ revenue jumped dramatically, by 56% compared with the same period a year ago (which was prime lockdown time in many European countries), but is still only about half of pre-pandemic levels, so there is still some likely improvement still to come if international mobility continues to increase (that’s a big ‘if’).
Vodafone Group ended June with 272.4 million mobile customers (not including VodafoneZiggo in the Netherlands and Safaricom in Kenya), of which 108.2 million are in Europe, 88.6 million in Vodacom’s markets across Africa, 24 million in Turkey, 42.2 million in Egypt and 9.4 million in Ghana (see chart above). The operator says it has launched 5G services in 243 cities in 10 markets.
In Africa, where the operator’s stake in Vodacom accounts for the bulk of its business, its M-Pesa mobile money service continues to grow in popularity, adding 6.9 million new users in the past year to reach a total of 49.7 million (including Safaricom in Kenya). During the quarter the M-Pesa platform processed 4.5 billion transactions compared with 3.1 billion in the same period a year ago. According to Bloomberg , Vodafone Group CEO Nick Read hinted during a briefing with reporters this morning that M-Pesa could be spun out in the future.
That the market is still in recovery mode was reflected in comments from CEO Read. “In Europe, the operating and retail environment has not yet returned to normal conditions, but we are delivering a good service revenue performance. In our Business segment, we are seeing stronger growth with our public sector and corporate customers, whilst further building a pipeline of demand for our digital services, such as IoT, security and cloud.”
Vodafone Business, which […]
