Vodafone FY1H07 results

Green light for Vodafone. FY1H revenues increased by 9% to £17bn, with a profit of £3.3bn, vs a huge loss of £5bn a year ago. EBITDA rose over 5% to £6.6bn. Revenue growth is driven by operations (+40%) in emerging markets (S. Africa, Romania, Egypt, Turkey, India, ..), while operations in Western Europe hardly grew 1.5%, hit by competitive environment, price pressure, new European law, but boosted by strong mobile data sales. Vodafone pursues its strategy of fixed-mobile convergence and now offers fixed broadband services to 3.1m customers in 13 markets.

CEO Sarin said outlook has been improved and revenues are expected to be up around £35bn, with operating profit expected to be also higher to about £9.7bn.