H1 FY26 Q&A Transcript

10 Vodafone Group Plc

Morgan Stanley

BNP Paribas Exane

Bank of America Merrill Lynch

New Street Research

Deutsche Numis

Forward-looking statements

Barclays

JP Morgan

Citigroup

UBS

Berenberg

It is obviously a great opportunity for us to leverage, what I would describe as our overall asset superiority in the market. We have, I was talking earlier, the largest fibre footprint available to our customers with 22 million households. But obviously, fibre in the UK is not everywhere yet, whilst we will be offering FWA to all the population in the UK, thanks to the capabilities that we have today. And we see it as an opportunity because it allows us to bridge the time until fibre comes and maybe cover areas also where fibre may not come at all, in the most rural areas. If fibre comes, it is great to get our customers first on FWA and then moving them on as the time progresses. So we really see it as an opportunity in the market. As I said before, it is now open to everybody, whether they are in Three brands or, I would say, ex-Three brands, ex-Vodafone brands, and we look forward to see this support our growth. Just a technical question, I suspect. Just for yourself, Luka, super straightforward. In the first half, adjusted EBITDAaL common functions was maybe, a little, surprisingly negative. It shows minus €14 million. It has been running a fairly consistent clip of €22-€23 million in the last couple of halves. So just any explanation there and just how we should think about that full year number and maybe even into FY27? That’s it from me. It reminds me of the old days because when I was CFO, that it was a recurring question. Ultimately, it is actually quite structural. Maybe you want to go to that? Yes, exactly. If I go back in the history to Margherita's days before I arrived, I think, historically, common functions EBITDAaL was actually always negative. Then in the last two years, it turned positive as a result of some of the M&A activity that was going on, which created one-time effects. And last year, it was also helped through a quite sizable central provision release, and that is obviously creating headwinds in the year-over-year. But structurally, from a go-forward perspective, should actually expect common functions EBITDAaL to rather be negative to neutral to positive. The reason for that is just simply that the help from the M&A transition to also above the line EBITDAaL recognition essentially is dissipating. Just to come back to why it has been structurally negative. It is a very simple thing, David. It is because, you know that our shared operations costs are paid for in the market but that is not the case for what we call corporate services, so just the HQ cost. I mean if I take ourselves and the IR team supporting this call, right, these stay at the central EBITDAaL level, which is a cost, but do not see these as big movements.

David Wright Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Margherita Della Valle Vodafone

Luka Mucic Vodafone

Margherita Della Valle Vodafone

David Wright Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Okay. Can I take that H1 number and just double it for the full year? Is that reasonable, just to get a proxy?

Margherita Della Valle Vodafone

Well, it is an area that, again, because we are talking about small numbers, can have variations. So I think we would not be very specific at that level of detail, to be honest.

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