10
Vodafone Group Plc H1 FY27 Q&A Transcript
Goldman Sachs
BNP Paribas Exane
Bank of America Merrill Lynch
New Street Research
Deutsche Numis
Morgan Stanley
JP Morgan
Citigroup
UBS
strengthening the cable performance. We have just increased the uplink speeds, for example, for our business customers in Germany. The cable roadmap has its own evolution, positive evolution. In parallel with that, we are building fibres within OXG. And this always happy to do in partnerships, as you have seen. We have now reached 1.1 million households. We expect to be at 1.4 at the end of the fiscal year. We are probably the second biggest fibre builder in the country now. We are building across more than 75 cities. So, this is progressing well. And then last but not least, our objective in every market in Vodafone is to give to our customers the broadest possible choice in making sure they access gigabit products, which is why in the DSL areas, we're also wholesaling fibre in Germany where it's available. And therefore, that gives us the possibility to essentially sell gigabit speeds to more than three quarters of German households and we will continue to do so. Anyway, back to where we started, you should continue to expect the cable network to evolve and you should continue to expect our portfolio of capex initiatives in Germany to be broadly similar. We will continue to build fibre through partnerships.
Thank you. Thank you.
David Wright Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Yes, good morning and thanks very much for taking the question. So, I mean, Margherita, my question really builds a bit more on the question from Andrew earlier around cost reduction. I don't want to kind of underestimate the difficulty and the kind of challenge you have in terms of the cost reduction and the magnitude of what you've announced. But it seems like since you announced it back in May, we've also had one very big change, which was that Xavier Niel announced that he is coming on to your shareholder register and he has obviously a kind of very kind of strong and successful reputation on being very aggressive around cost reduction. So, as presumably, you've had preliminary discussions with him and his team. Do you think your kind of €2.0 billion target is you going absolutely flat out on cost reduction from here? I mean, is there any scope at all, given, you know, the kind of maybe the fresh eyes his team might have brought to your business, that there can be any scope for that to be increased? And what can you say at this stage also about what we should expect around board representation? I think the voting rights now are just a fraction below 20%. I mean, if we use the e& select framework, that might allow him one board seat. Is that all we should expect? Or do you think he could end up taking two board seats? Thank you. James, on Vega, I think it's important to say that we never comment on engagement with individual shareholders. But in this particular case, the share transfer is still not approved. So, the effects are not completed. There is a number of regulatory processes still open, particularly the NSI (National Security and Investment) process in the UK. And this is about national security. I think Vega's expectations were for a conclusion of all these processes by the end of this calendar year. But that's not where we are. And it would really not be appropriate for me to comment or speculate on behalf of a future shareholder.
James Ratzer New Street Research
Margherita Della Valle Vodafone Group
Powered by FlippingBook