Vodafone saw Group revenue decline 3.2% (on a management basis) to £22bn for the six months to end September. H1 EBITDA was down 4.1% to £6.6bn. Tough economic conditions in Europe are taking their toll – with Southern European revenues down c15%. However, CEO, Vittorio Colao, says Vodafone is “encouraged by the forecast return to economic growth over the next two years and the potential for a shift in regulatory focus to support greater industry investment and consolidation”.
Today’s results offer little insight into how the cloud and hosting business is performing. Vodafone’s acquisition of Cable and Wireless (CWW) back in April 2012 (see Vodafone finally bags CWW for £1bn) formed the platform for the business, which also includes capabilities from the Telstra acquisition in New Zealand and Vodafone’s part ownership of Vodacom in South Africa.
Internally, the ex-CWW folk have been working hard to raise the profile of the cloud business and articulate the potential for pull-through on other Vodafone offerings, such as WANs. Today’s H1 release mentions that “integration costs and synergies remain on track and technical integration continues to progress well”. My insight into the integration process indicates that Vodafone has put quite some resource into fixing some of the fundamental issues facing CWW before it was acquired – for example, around customer service. Furthermore, the cloud business is also benefiting from Vodafone’s £7bn Project Spring investment programme.
In a forthcoming HotViewsExtra piece, I will take a more in-depth look at the cloud and hosting business as it currently stands. Available to subcribers only.