Vodafone Spain continues on the path of limiting the drop in income after the sharp declines last year. Its income stood at 965 million euros in the second quarter of its fiscal year, 1.3% below the same period of the previous year, according to the results presented this Tuesday by the operator that has just been sold to the British fund Zegona .
In semiannual terms the decline was somewhat more pronounced. Income fell 1.8%, to 1,929 million euros, “due to the stabilization of service income and higher income from the sale of terminals,” as the company explains in a note issued this Tuesday.
Service revenues reached 861 million euros, 2.7% below the previous comparison, but marking the fifth consecutive quarter of improvement. In semiannual terms, service income stood at 1,731 million euros, 2.8% below those recorded in the same period of the previous year. “Due to hypercompetition in the low-cost consumer segment, a smaller customer base and the reduction in mobile termination rates, partially offset by the growth of digital services for companies and the updating of price plans with the IPC”, points out the Spanish division of the operators.
Vodafone Spain’s gross profits (ebitda) in the company’s fiscal year stood at €394 million, down 11.6%. Of which 4.1% are due to the comparison with extraordinary tax benefits included in the previous year’s accounts and 2.9% to the increase in energy costs, partially offset by savings in commercial and interconnection costs, as explained the operator.
During the second quarter of its fiscal year, Vodafone implemented tactical measures such as reinforcing convergent rates in September, better management of the customer base and the recovery of advertising investment that allowed it to increase its mobile customer base by 78,000. and reach a total of 13.9 million.
On the other hand, fixed broadband customers fell by 20,000, to 2.8 million, and the television customer base fell by 16,000, to 1.4 million.
The base of active Internet of Things lines reached 6.1 million, leading this segment in Spain.
In the field of the low cost market, Lowi continued to gain mobile customers, 19,000 more, due to the inclusion of 5G in the rates and speeds up to 1Gbps in fiber, although it continued to accuse the competitive intensity of ultra low cost.
At the beginning of the first quarter, Vodafone closed 15% of retail stores and several distributor contracts were not renewed to increase channel efficiency.
In early September, Vodafone announced organizational changes to its Executive Committee including the appointment of Ignacio Román as director of the consumer unit for individual customers and Mário Vaz as president, as well as CEO, of the company. Likewise, in October the appointment of Jesús Suso as director of the companies business unit was announced.
At the end of last month, the British fund Zegona reached an agreement with the Vodafone Group to acquire 100% of the operator’s business in Spain for 5,000 million euros.
