10 Vodafone Group Plc
Deutsche Numis
Morgan Stanley
New Street Research
Goldman Sachs
BNP Paribas Exane
Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Barclays
JP Morgan
UBS
Berenberg
Citigroup
Margherita Della Valle Vodafone
Thank you.
Paul Sindey Berenberg
It is really on the value over volume strategy that you flagged in Germany, which I was personally very pleased to hear. We have seen a number of operators over the past 12 months giving strong indications of wanting to play that value game to investors and competitors: DT and yourselves in Germany, KPN in the Netherlands, Swisscom in Switzerland, the list goes on. Do you think this is now the way forward and the approach we should take in all of your markets for both mobile and broadband? I appreciate emerging markets might be a little bit different. But certainly for Europe, is this the approach the industry should take in your view to try and get the whole market up in value and not obsess about volumes? Obviously, a very open question, Paul. I cannot speak for the market. But what I would love to see and I can’t speak for the market, but what I would love to see and encourage, and you have heard me in November making the same speech is, I would love to see telcos performance judged on overall value, service revenue trends, and move beyond the headline of net adds. Now as you heard me say before, this is particularly true for mobile because in mobile, the range of quality of what is behind scene numbers is just so huge that it is truly and entirely distracting. Considering the full equation of value is also very important, as we discussed earlier, in broadband, because ultimately, volumes are only half of the revenue equation. As operators, our job is to always, in dynamic markets, manage that equation for the best overall trajectory. It would be fantastic if we moved from an analysis and reading perspective to a balanced view that mixes all the KPIs together. Certainly, that is what we do and that is what makes sense in our markets, not just look at one side of the equation. I would love to hear your comments on the recent EU Digital Networks Act and also the Cybersecurity Act, in particular, your thoughts on the potential for spectrum period elongation and also on the usage of high-risk vendors. What kind of impact could the proposals make in the medium and longer term? It is worth saying that this year is probably an important moment because after 10 years in which we did not see much change, this year we would have the opportunity in the EU to see reform for telcos, which, as you know, is very much needed. I would say we are judging all the proposals that are coming through, and it is important to say we are just at the beginning of the processes. As you know, it may take quite some time to get to a conclusion and to know exactly the direction we are taking. But to tell you about our reaction to what is going on. We judge, if you want, the direction of travel in three areas: consolidation and competition, investment, and innovation. On consolidation, as you know very well, no news at this stage. We have to wait for the merger guidelines review. It looks like we will not see any real-world impact from any changes until at least 2027. On investments, the news are mixed, and you called out the important parts. On one end, we look very positively at the idea of perpetual spectrum licenses with automatic renewals that would create a much better environment in terms of certainty for investment. On the other hand, the draft Cybersecurity Act is actually injecting a degree of uncertainty.
Margherita Della Valle Vodafone
Carl Murdock-Smith Citigroup Margherita Della Valle Vodafone
Powered by FlippingBook