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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
Emmet Kelly Morgan Stanley
I had a question again on the Group. You are moving to a majority of Safaricom via Vodacom, and that obviously brings you control in Kenya, brings you M-PESA and also a growth business in Ethiopia. It looks like Vodafone and Orange have now emerged as the big leaders in African telcos. Can you maybe just give a few thoughts on what you think this move brings to you in terms of the portfolio, in terms of the growth outlook for the Group technology? And given where your balance sheet is post the sales of Spain and Italy, whether Africa is an area where you could look at further portfolio expansion going forward? Thank you, Emmet. In terms of opportunities in Africa, I think you have heard it in my introduction. We think we are in a really good position for making the most of the exciting growth opportunities in the continent. We have very healthy growth on population, data, demand for financial services and in B2B, actually strong demand now for digital services. Vodacom, I would like to say is what I would call the resident technology company in Africa, good and scaled network but also good and scaled platforms for the continent. The reason why it was a natural step for us to move to a controlling position in Safaricom was that this further simplifies the Vodacom estate and also strengthens it. In particular, we see big opportunities to continue across the continent to leverage our best practices, leverage our scale platforms. I was actually just two weeks ago in Egypt, for example. You might remember us having similar discussions when we merged Egypt into Vodacom a few years ago. We were in Egypt, and one of the outstanding element of our performance there is Vodafone Cash, which, again, comes from cross-fertilising idea and leveraging platforms across the continent. I am very happy with Africa, as you can imagine. You are right, it is taking a bigger role. It has a strong performance today, double-digit guidance upgraded now probably a year ago, everything double-digit and some of the most exciting growth opportunities. Now, you mentioned M&A, and it is important, however, to contextualise that. From our perspective, M&A now is more about what I would call bolt-on acquisition in the B2B space, where we are increasing, expanding our capabilities, and that is sometimes is faster done with B2B acquisition like you have seen with Skaylink. So I think there could be more moves like this also in Africa. Just have one question on the UK broadband market, because there has been lots of reports about potential consolidation with owners of VMO2 looking to acquire Netomnia and also TalkTalk starting an M&A process. If there is consolidation, how you think that this will impact both Vodafone and also the broader UK broadband market? For example, do you think pricing could improve? Or do you expect there to be more competition? Any thoughts much appreciated. The general thought is that a degree of consolidation, obviously, in the current environment makes sense in that space. What I can tell you is that we are looking at it from a Vodafone perspective. From our perspective, we are really pleased with our position in the UK, which is essentially a multi-partner play wholesaling from a range of partners. Actually, this is a play in the UK, but you can see it in different ways. We have the same objective ultimately in every market in which we operate, delivered in slightly different ways, but we are always keen to give our customers access to the largest gigabit footprint available in the country. The best way for doing this in the UK is to wholesale from multiple partners: OpenReach, CityFibre, Community Fibre. Who knows there could be more in the future. With 22 million households, this is one of our key drivers for growth. So we expect to continue to manage the markets in exactly the same way. It is working for us. It will continue to work through a degree of consolidation.
Margherita Della Valle Vodafone
Polo Tang UBS
Margherita Della Valle Vodafone
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