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Vodafone Group Plc FY26 Q&A Transcript
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Pilar López Vodafone
From our guidance perspective. If I take, guidance for FY27, we are guiding for good Adjusted free cash flow growth this year. This is ultimately driven by good Adjusted EBITDAaL growth and then broadly a stable capital intensity by market. You need to take into account that capex will peak this year in the UK, and then it will go down from then onwards. I leave Margherita to comment about Europe. I mentioned about Europe before. For the rest of the world, you need to take into account that we expect to continue having good growth supported by a strong performance in Africa. You saw the Vodacom guidance, the double-digit over the mid-term, also continued growth in Türkiye in euros. It's important to take into account that we manage our business in emerging markets for euro growth, as you've seen in the last couple of years. If I step back, this is what we see in the rest of the world. As I mentioned, for capex, small capex moves. Important to take into account the peak in the UK in FY27. From then onwards, really a stable capital intensity more or less everywhere, market-by-market. Yes. You also mentioned currencies. Obviously, our guidance has to be organic because we cannot make assumptions on currencies. As Pilar has just mentioned, our focus, and we have put this also on the slide, is euro growth. Yeah, that's what we are looking at, is adjusted free cash flow growth in Europe year after year. What do we expect for Europe? FY26 and also implicit in the guidance of FY27, you see that we have now stabilised Europe. We see momentum building. We have just talked about Germany today, but also Germany in the longer term. We see in Europe another fantastic growth driver, as you know, in the UK. UK had good growth in EBITDAaL this year. We are guiding for stronger because of the synergies in FY27. As you know, we have 700 million cost and capex synergies, £700 million to go for by 2030. We see significant opportunity, and we are pleased with the momentum overall. Mergers and European environment. I think we have an opportunity now in terms of what's being discussed in Europe to create possibly the most significant shift in the industry for a couple of decades. I need to say, the first reading of the draft of the Merger Guidelines, I think, is encouraging because it addresses the basics, which is broadening the assessment of the mergers from just one angle, pricing, to a broader view, which includes investments, includes innovation, and includes resilience. The other point which I think is really important to us is that it specifically says that for sectors like ours, the assessment period has to be different because it takes time to see the evolution on these parameters. There is more to do, and we are engaged in the consultation, yeah. We have this couple of months. I think there are a couple of things that can be better. The first is being specific on these timelines and really recognise the length. You remember that the UK CMA led the way there with 8 years so, let's be specific. The other aspect is also to address the remedies side of the equation. Today there is this still narrow focus on a blunt instrument, which is structural remedies. We would advocate, again as per the UK, a move towards the more sophisticated behavioural remedies, which I believe are actually better also for our consumers and for investments. If I go back to Vodafone in a way, as I said before, we have already been proactive in this space. We are proactive in our markets, and we are focused on driving in Europe and in Africa and Türkiye growth going forward on an organic basis.
Margherita Della Valle Vodafone
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