Vodafone Group Plc Q1FY26 Q&A Transcript
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However, as I said before, it has going beyond that from an engagement perspective into other sectors that have become concerned with the topic as well. What do you need to be able to offer? Well, customers, I think, want to have a partner that can be more than just a provider of SIMs or a reseller of software solutions.
Strengthening our ability to have a secure managed service that we can provide is the key opportunity here. And luckily, this is an area that is clearly prioritised as part of our strategy.
Margherita Della Valle
Just stepping back, we are currently growing double-digit in Europe in Digital Services. And if you look at what is in Digital Services in our reporting, ultimately it has three things. It is IoT, cloud and cyber. And I would say beyond the big declarations of the funding on sovereignty and defence, all these trends for us are supportive of further growth in this space. And we are a European company, so we have a lot of cards to play going forward. Can I just clarify one thing? I mean, if we look at Telefonica, they are quite openly saying that they want to do M&A to strengthen and bolster their capabilities in the space. Do you think that is something that Vodafone needs, or do you think this is much more organic and additive rather than revolutionary? I think incrementally it has possible, but what I would call small bolt-ons, where you acquire certain capabilities in certain areas. Do not see it as, I would say, normal M&A we talk about on mobile and the like. However, you know that we have increased our investment more broadly. We have been talking about this in the last two years. We are starting more people, sales specialists, to have legs on the ground of people that understand these areas. As Luka was mentioning, we have opened organically cyber operations centres and the like. And here and there, rather than build, maybe acquiring competencies could be the right route.
Vodafone Group
Akhil Dattani
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Margherita Della Valle
Vodafone Group
Akhil Dattani
Great. Thank you.
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David Wright
Thank you. I did actually really appreciate Akil's question. I think it has super relevant. And I guess the concern is that non-incumbents could be pushed out of this opportunity. And I wonder whether your shareholder base as well could even be a sort of compromise to concerns around national security and the provision of those services. However, following on from that, I did note a letter you sent regarding regulation of the incumbent telecoms, which is not unconnected with this, which is that you want the regulation of fixed wholesale access to be sustained or the rigour around that to be sustained. And I guess this might even come back to James's question. We are all together today. Is this basically protecting your right or even pre-empting a move to more wholesale fibre access? Because the concern would be as the incumbents invest, if there is a little bit more regulatory
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