Vodafone Group Plc Q1FY26 Q&A Transcript
Deutsche Numis
Goldman Sachs
New Street Research
Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Bernstein Societe Generale
Kepler Cheuvreux
1
Barclays
Citigroup
Berenberg
JP Morgan
BNPP Exane
Ottavio Adorisio
Perfect. Thank you.
Bernstein Societe Generale
Javier Borrachero
Yes, good morning, Margherita and Luka. I guess it is a little bit too early in the year to discuss maybe about the future share buyback shareholder remuneration. I think you always said end of the year is probably the time to do so. However, at the same time, probably quite soon you make it, or in the next months, you make it close to €1 billion, probably from Zegona. You sound pretty upbeat in terms of the second half of the year of the following quarters. So maybe, I do not know if there is something you could share with us, particularly in terms of potential extension of the share buyback programme. And also, your main shareholder is increasing its stake indirectly, simply because they are not somehow participating. I do not know what is the view, or how could this somehow have an influence in future share buyback programmes? And somehow related to this, are you happy, satisfied with your current footprint, I am thinking about the associates, and always comes to my mind, VodafoneZiggo, but also others. Any potential disposal, anything that could also shore up a future share buyback programme? Thank you. Yes. Let me try to take this and let me try to be brief. So first of all, you are right, we are executing on the commitment that we had given. Actually, the entirety of our capital allocation framework that we had defined last year is super important for us to continue to execute on. As you know, we had set our investment needs on the organic front, and we are following up on them. Capital intensity by market, staying where it is, we have moved to get into the leverage range that we had defined, and we are clearly there now. And what we also have been clear about is that by satisfying those two objectives and executing the share buybacks that we have agreed for Italy and Spain, which are now in the second half, so to say, but actually with the first €500 million already execut ed, that we have retained some strategic flexibility. Now, where we will go with this, we will clearly have to see later on. If we have excess capital, then we would certainly consider additional returns, but that is way too early. And certainly, I would not be the appropriate person to make a decision on that, given that I will leave at the end of November. So from that perspective, we have optionality, but we will take the right decisions, always in light of what drives most value for our shareholders, and we will then look for the right balance between organic opportunities, potentially some tuck-ins, as Margherita has said, and if we then have excess capital left, we can certainly do that. I do not want to speculate, honestly, speaking on things that we cannot really control. At what point in time we might get the redeemable preference shares distributed to us, let us see. And in terms of e&, I think you have mentioned this, yes, their shares indirectly increased, but that has no bearing on how we think about capital allocation. We are very happy with the fact that they are a strategic investor, and we have with them a great expert of the industry and with us on the board, but that is not influencing our choice in that respect.
Kepler Cheuvreux
Luka Mucic
Vodafone Group
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