Chairman’s statement
Your company is driven by strong cash generation, a sound liquidity position and a diverse and geographically spread customer base.
This year your Company has delivered adjusted operating profit of £11.8 billion and generated £5.7 billion of free cash flow before licence and spectrum payments, helped by foreign exchange movements and despite pressure on revenue in challenging economic circumstances. This has allowed us to buy back £1 billion of shares and pursue a progressive dividend policy. The Board is recommending a final dividend of 5.20 pence, making a total for the year of 7.77 pence. Regrettably, the share price has declined by 17% since the beginning of the year, from 154.3 pence to 127.5 pence, but has nonetheless outperformed the FTSE100 which has declined by 24% over the same period. We have seen continuing growth in proportionate customer numbers to 303 million at year end, as well as growth in mobile voice minutes of use and particularly data services.
There is considerable evidence that the economic crisis has had a significant effect on the environment in which we operate, across our various markets. Inevitably, during rapid economic decline and rising unemployment, our customers – enterprise and consumer – are looking carefully for ways to reduce their expenditure. We have responded to the pressure on household and business expenses with pricing plans designed to address customers’ needs.
So the telecommunications sector is not immune from the impact of the global recession but it has demonstrated a greater degree of resilience than certain other parts of the economy. The services we provide have assumed increasing importance in the day to day lives of our customers. We see this particularly in the way in which our services, particularly data services such as email and internet access, offer new flexibility in the way people lead their business and personal lives. When more stable economic conditions return, this new flexibility should also support more sustainable growth, unlocking important potential social and ecological benefits.
In addition to the impact of the economic downturn, we continued to see pricing pressure lead to reductions of around 15% year on year in Europe. The period of rapid growth in new mobile customers in much of Europe is now over and we need to adjust our resources accordingly. We are well on our way to delivering the £1 billion reduction in operating costs to which we are committed. We will maintain this focus over the coming year and expect to deliver on our commitment by the following financial year. Sadly, this involves reducing our workforce but we nevertheless remain intent that Vodafone should continue to be a good place to work.
With prudent control of capital expenditure and reductions to operating expenditure, your Company is positioning itself to benefit from the re-invigoration of the economy when it comes, driven by strong cash generation, a sound liquidity position, and the diversity and geographic distribution of our customer base.
Your Company will continue to promote innovation in products and services across the range of our markets. For example, over 6 million people are now using the Vodafone Money Transfer system (branded M-PESA in Kenya) in Kenya, Tanzania and Afghanistan. In total, they are sending approximately US$200 million a month, mostly as small transactions of less than US$20. With over 4 billion people owning mobile handsets, we believe that for the majority of the world’s population, mobile is likely to be the primary means of access to the internet. Higher speed networks in markets such as South Africa and Egypt increase the speed and range of internet access. Using economies of scale to work with handset manufacturers has allowed approximately eight million customers to gain access to communications through our ultra low cost handsets during the year, at the same time helping to make Vodafone the second largest handset brand in India.
In our developed markets, we will continue to enhance our customers’ communication capability, with innovative products such as netbooks and laptops with embedded SIM cards to connect directly to higher speed mobile data networks. We continue to see very strong growth in mobile data usage, over 100% in our European markets. Our industry is undergoing an important change away from the predominance of voice traffic; within a few years most of the traffic on our European network will be data. We will promote services, particularly for small and medium enterprises, which increase workforce flexibility and enable greater efficiency and cost control.
The rapid economic decline has inevitably led to calls for greater regulation and some have questioned whether an open competition based economic model is sustainable. We continue to believe that it is.
Total shareholder return April 2008 to May 2009
Vodafone–13%
FTSE 100–20%
Vodafone share price +7% vs FTSE 100
We have engaged with governments and policy-makers to urge them not to lose sight of the benefits in terms of investment, innovation and customer service which competition brings, of which the mobile industry is a leading example. We believe that a descent into protectionism and national preference would damage the prospects for the industry and for our ability to serve our customers’ needs. Regulation and taxation of the telecommunications sector continues to have a significant impact on our business, our customers and our shareholders. We have worked to ensure that legislators and regulators appreciate the need to maintain a balance between the short term benefit to the consumer and the long term interest of the consumer in investment and innovation.
Your Board refreshed the Company’s strategy in November 2008 and set strategic priorities which it believes will help your Company come through the economic crisis. The review did not lead to any radical change of direction but put renewed emphasis on operational performance, tight control of costs, free cash flow generation and a cautious approach to further footprint expansion. The past year has seen us expand into two new markets (Ghana and Qatar), slightly increase our shareholding in Polkomtel in Poland and attain majority control of our long-standing joint venture Vodacom in South Africa. An important step towards in-market consolidation came with the agreement to merge our operation in Australia with the fourth largest operator, Hutchison 3G Australia, underlining the value creation which such consolidation can bring.
The past year has seen our new Chief Executive, Vittorio Colao, who succeeded Arun Sarin at last year’s AGM, put his deep knowledge of the mobile industry to good effect in steering your Company through economic recession. I am delighted that your Board has also been joined by a leading African businessman, Samuel Jonah. As we increase our interest in Africa, with the integration of Ghana Telecommunications into Vodafone, and our increased shareholding in Vodacom, Sam will bring invaluable insights to our work. Since the end of the financial year, Michel Combes, the Chief Executive of the Group's Europe Region, and Steve Pusey, the Group Chief Technology Officer, have been appointed to the Board with effect from 1 June. Their appointments will help ensure that there is a good balance on the Board of both executive and non-executive directors and I am confident that they will be major contributors to the future of your Company.
Finally, your Board has continued to fund the work of The Vodafone Foundation, which is an important way of supporting the communities and societies where we make our profits. We invested £48 million in The Vodafone Foundation programmes during the 2009 financial year. The Vodafone Foundation and the network of national affiliates in our markets continue to achieve high recognition for the contribution they make. Highlights from The Vodafone Foundation programme over the past year include World of Difference, which helped individuals from 12 of our markets to take a year to work for the charity of their choice; a public health mobile data gathering system (“episurveyor”) helping to prevent the spread of disease in 22 African countries; and the mHealth Alliance, announced in February 2009 with the Rockefeller Foundation, which will promote the use of mobile technology in finding solutions to healthcare challenges.
On behalf of the Board, I would like to thank all Vodafone staff around the world for their tremendous work and commitment against a difficult economic background.
Your Board is pleased with the resilience of the Company and confident that the Company will be well positioned for economic recovery when it comes.
Sir John Bond
Chairman