Organic (service) growth, the company said, reflects performance on a comparable basis, both in terms of merger & acquisition activity and foreign exchange movements.
Vodafone Group PLC said on Friday its first quarter revenue dropped from the prior year, but said it saw organic service growth and reiterated its full-year outlook.
Outside Europe, meanwhile, the picture was mixed, with service revenue growth of 24.6% in Egypt partially offset by a 13.9% decline in the same metric in India, where Vodafone continued to feel the effects of a bitter price war.
The operator’s mobile customer base increased by 420,241 on the year to 9.58 million at the end of June, as about 8.87 million were mobile customers, Vodafone Romania said in a press release. It ended the June quarter with a customer base of 211.9 million.
Vodafone India’s data browsing revenue declined 20.4% reflecting further ARPU dilution from lower unitary prices, which declined 67% year-on-year.
Data usage doubled for the quarter ended June 30th, 2017, compared to the same period of a year ago.
Vodafone excluded its India business from the total quarterly revenue amount but said services revenue in the nation fell 13.9% due to competitive pricing, triggered by India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, and his new operator Reliance Jio. “Our substantial investments in network leadership, an excellent customer experience and even greater more-for-more’ propositions for customers are enabling us to monetise strong demand for mobile data”. “In South Africa, the number of active data users increased by 6.2% to 19.2 million, and average usage per 4G device rose to 1.4 GB per month”, it said. “We expect the transaction to complete in early August, following which Vodafone’s ownership in Vodacom will increase from 65% to 70%”, Vodafone said.
The combined company will be jointly controlled by Vodafone and the Aditya Birla Group.
“Rising competition has seen India hit a significant speedbump, jolting Vodafone to the extent that it took a multi-billion euro write-down and split the Indian operation from the wider group”, said George Salmon, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown. Voice revenue declined 14.2% as the benefit of higher incoming revenue, and a larger customer base was offset by a 32% year-on-year decline in voice prices as the market moved to unlimited voice tariffs.