And says good morrow to Morrow
Vodafone has said the quarter ending June 30 was in line with its expectations, delivering organic mobile revenue growth of 6.4%. However, the operator had a tough time in Europe, generating only 1.3% growth in mobile revenues, and has also bid farewell to its European head and chief Mr Fixit, Bill Morrow, who will leave at the end of the month, shortly after adding the job his list of posts in a 10 year career at the operator.
Arun Sarin, who faces a opposition to his re-election from institutional investors holding around 10% value of the company, according to press reports, described the results as “robust” in the face of “testing markets.” He also said he was sorry to see Morrow make his decision to go “so shortly after announcing our new organistional structure.”
Further change of management is unlikely to play well with those already critical Sarin, who have been looking for stability.
Things were clearly particularly testing in Europe, where Vodafone said it endured tough competition. Vodafone’s European operations recorded 891,000 net customer additions in the quarter, bringing the total proportionate base to 94.1 million. Registered 3G devices increased by 1.2 million to 8.7 million.
Total revenue growth was 0.5%, with 2.0% organic growth in mobile service revenue. The operator blamed the timing of Easter for lower service revenue growth. It said that underlying trends for service revenue were similar to the quarter to March in Italy, with a “slight improvement” in Germany and the UK, and “continued strong performance” in Spain.
Of interest to Mobile Europe readers will be the news that the company also said it is close to signing two major vendor agreements in IT application, development and maintenance, before the end of the calendar year.
Sales of 3G devices, crucial to the future revenues of the company, were again described as being “in line” with expectations. That meant the oeprator shipped 1.3 million 3G units, and now has 9.1 million devices in the market, 8.6 million of which are consumer devices. Nearly all of those devices are in the European markets.
Data revenue growth for the Group’s mobile businesses in the quarter was 40.2% compared with the same quarter last year.
The first fruits of Vodafone’s “New Business” section, which is primarily ots broadband fixed play, were 894,000 registrations for its Zuhause proposition in Germany.