The arrival of Iliad on the market and the return to 30-day pricing compress the revenues of Tlc operators and Vodafone Italia is not escaping this worsening situation. The half-year report as at 30 September 2018 presents revenues from services of 2.495 million euros down by 6,4% compared to the same semester of the previous year (-6,5% in the first quarter and 6,3% in the second). This was specified in a note from the group announcing the results and indicates that "the financial performance was influenced by theimpact of regulation on the return to monthly pricing and fierce competition on the mobile segment”. However, there are strong points with the strong leap forward in the "growth of revenues and the consumer and enterprise fixed network customer base".
In particular, on mobile Vodafone Italia has reached 12,4 million 4G customers, up 18,5% compared to the first half of the previous year with a growth of almost 2 million customers. The group is also accelerating with heavy investments in the 4.5G network which is already "available in 20 cities, 17 of which at 1Gigabit per second". The coverage of the 4G network reaches 98,1% of the population in 7.241 municipalities.
Good performance in landline services which increased by 7,9% to 523 million euros with the constant growth of customers reaching 2,8 million customers. Broadband is the driving force with 2,6 million, of which 2,6 million customers in total, 316 thousand more than in the first half of 2017 (+13,7%). But above all it is worth noting the fiber boom chosen by 1,4 million customers, 550 thousand more than in the first half of 2017 (+64,6%).
Fiber services, recalls the Vodafone press release, "are available in 1.795 Italian cities, 35 of which are covered by fiber at up to 1 Gigabit per second, through the partnership with Open Fiber".
Ebitda for the half-year amounted to 1.080 million euros, equal to 37% of total revenues.
Finally, "The 5G experimentation continues in Milan and the metropolitan area, which Vodafone plans to cover at 80% by December 2018 to transform the Lombard capital into the European capital of 5G".
Vodafone Group released its half-yearly data in London and updated the strategic guidelines with an estimate of annual Ebitda growth of 3% and improvement of Free cash flow up to 5,4 billion (against the 5,2 previously estimated). The six-monthly dividend per share was stable at 4,84 cents and that for the whole of 2018 was in line.
THEGroup organic EBITDA up 2,9% in the half year supported for the third consecutive year by the drop in operating costs. The strengths of the group were the net increase in fixed broadband customers (+384) and fixed-mobile convergent customers (616,000) as well as growth in the Business segment (+1%), driven by strong expansion of IoT services; the share of consumers from Emerging countries also increased (+7,4%) driven by data growth.
At group level, revenues amounted to 21.8 billion, down 5,5% while the group recorded a loss of 7,8 billion mainly due to the sale of Vodafone India and the merger with Idea Cellular but at organic level, revenues increased by 0,8% to 19,7 billion, the adjusted Ebitda of 2,9% and the gross result of 8,6%. Figures which overall have been evaluated very favorably by analysts: the Vodafone share is up 8% in London.
