The two top British mobile phone companies, one the largest in the world, the other soon to be swallowed up by Spain’s Telefónica, were at the opposite ends of press analysis this morning. O2, in its swan song before takeover, posted an impressive set of results. Customer numbers in the third quarter were up 1.75 million, taking total numbers to 27.4mn, which is 18% higher than a year earlier. In fact it was the best ever quarter at 02 as an independent company.
In the UK, customer numbers were up 895,000 to 16mn, while in Germany, it put on 823,000, taking the total to 9.8mn.
In all it would appear the company is gearing up nicely for it £17.8bn sale to the Spanish telecom giant.
Meanwhile, Vodafone has been on the receiving end of growing negative publicity. The FT and a host of other publications reported on a view, which seems to be gaining increasing acceptance, that the company should sell off its 45% shareholding in Verizon Wireless, giving up on the US market. Some have been speculating that it should also divest itself of its Japanese Venture.
Apparently, the company is too heavily geared to increase its stake in Verizon, and so goes the argument it should focus on the areas where it is already strong.
But this morning, the company released its latest customer numbers for the last quarter, and preliminary analysis indicated it was a better quarter than markets had expected. With both the US and Japn performing well.
In total 4.9% more mobile phone customers were signed up in the quarter, taking the total up 8.33 million to 179.3milion. That performance was 30% up on the same period last year.
As the market in Europe matures, Vodafone is looking to expand in Europe by launching 3G services such as TV onto mobile phones, and it’s looking to grow overseas through acquisition. Since October it has forked out $8.5 billion on acquisitions, building stakes in companies based in in India, Turkey and South Africa.
A Vodafone statement said: “Underlying trends for service revenue, excluding the impact from changes in termination rates in Germany, Italy and the UK, saw lower growth as a result of the impact of increased competition and price declines. Offsetting this were good performances from Spain and the US with Vodafone’s emerging market operations also continuing to perform well with strong service revenue growth of 39% in Romania, 36% in Egypt and 22% in South Africa.
“3G sales continue to develop in line with expectations, with 3.1 million net additions in the quarter, bringing the closing total to 8.0 million, including 7.4 million consumer devices. 3G net additions in the quarter are over 80% higher than recorded in the quarter to September. Non-messaging data revenue growth in the quarter was 24% year on year, including 53% growth outside of Japan.”
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