Whilst Vodafone’s new strategy has some merits, its attempts to appease everyone involves inherent contradictions, ambiguity, and contrived attempts to prove its value as a conglomerate.

Its rapidly declining FCF outlook is calling dividend sustainability into question but there is much insistence that financial prospects will improve from here. We view this year’s guidance as achievable, but not easily so, and growth thereafter as on the optimistic side.

Corporate break-up is off the table for now with e& in the strategic driving seat and in empire-building mode. Consolidation in the UK and Italy remains on the agenda however, and arguably is the most tangible potential upside for investors.

Service revenue growth was flat at 1.9% this quarter—a reasonable performance considering waning boosts from roaming and UK price rises, and a challenging macroeconomic backdrop.

Looking ahead, operators in most markets are now implementing price rises, providing a welcome (albeit transitory) tailwind to revenue growth—although EBITDA momentum remains subdued.

We expect a consolidation deal to be announced between Vodafone UK and H3G in the coming weeks and a decision from the EC on the Orange/MásMóvil deal in August—crucial issues for the sector’s prospects.

Providing home broadband connections via a mobile network (FWA) is gaining traction in certain markets where local conditions make it a viable alternative to fibre, such as New Zealand, Italy and the US.

FWA is a time-limited opportunity for most, with mobile traffic growth absorbing capacity for it and fixed traffic growth depleting the economic case. An ultimate shift to fibre is the best exit strategy.

In the UK, H3G's spare capacity could support up to 1 million FWA customers on a ten-year view—enough for a meaningful revenue fillip for H3G, but not enough to seriously disrupt the fixed market.

Pressure to deliver guidance is suppressing commercial activity which in turn is making guidance more challenging to reach. Although the dividend is well covered for now, the deteriorating cashflow outlook is unhelpful.

The change in strategy to give autonomy to country markets and to be more customer-centric has its merits but is not consistent with many Group initiatives and will take a long time to bear fruit.

Vodafone reiterated its intention to merge with H3G in the UK. Recent setbacks to approval prospects may not be as detrimental as they appear, and there is much to be gained with the potential to increase cashflow four-fold.

Vodafone Europe’s revenue growth was very similar to the previous quarter at just under 1%, but this was impressive given the considerable drag of roaming cuts, with ‘more-for-more’ tariffs coupled with data volume growth driving underlying improvement

Flat-ish revenue was enough to send EBITDA surging 13%, or around 9% excluding some one-off distortions, driven by good cost control and falling handset costs, with this trend previously disguised by profitability issues in the UK

Looking forward, the question is whether Vodafone is doing enough to cope with future competitive threats. Competitive indicators (churn, NPS) have not improved; its new initiatives are quite mixed; and competitive intensity is likely to increase across a number of markets

The Federal Communications Commission’s Privacy Order (FCC) was overturned by the Senate, clearing the way for ISPs to ramp up consumer data-driven advertising revenue.

While Google and Facebook dominate digital advertising in the US as in other markets, the US is alone in removing regulatory barriers to ISPs taking a piece of the pie.

US ISPs now have a self-regulatory regime for consumer rights on transparency, security and data breaches; but in the UK and EU, privacy advocates prefer enforceable rights.

European mobile service revenue growth witnessed a rare growth spike this quarter, rising to 0.5%, likely due in large part to the reduced impact this quarter from the European roaming cut regulation, but also helped by a slight softening of MTR cuts and continued ‘more-for-more’ price increases

This roaming regulation holiday will end next quarter and the full impact of ‘free roaming’ will be felt, thus the spike in mobile service revenue growth is likely to more-than-reverse

What is likely to prove lasting is the zero-rated data offers introduced in several markets in Q2, which we expect to see more of given their reported success at improving ARPUs

Vodafone Europe’s revenue growth bounced back from a weak previous quarter, but its top 4 markets combined were broadly flat in underlying terms. There are nonetheless promising underlying signs, including reduced churn, (slowly) improving subscriber growth and steady NPS

Vodafone has launched all-you-can-eat social/music/video bundles under the ‘Vodafone Pass’ moniker in several markets, which appear both popular and ARPU-enhancing, and being early to market with such an innovation is laudable

Next quarter Vodafone will be hit by the full force of the EU roaming regulation, but excluding this factor the performance is likely to be steady at least, helped in part by the UK business recovering from its recent weaknesses

Across Europe, markets are becoming more competitive. Incumbent pay-TV paltforms (e.g. Sky or Canal+) face increasing threats from both internet-based services (e.g. Netflix and Amazon), and telecoms operators

Telecoms providers are proving the most potent challengers as they enter the premium football rights market to create attractive triple and quad play bundles – examples include BT, SFR and Telefónica. The latter is now the main pay-TV operator in Spain whereas France’s Canal+ has entered into a strategic alliance with Orange

Across the top five markets (UK, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy), Sky remains the leading operator with an estimated 21.5m video subscribers, twice as many as Netflix

European mobile service revenue growth remained stuck at zero in Q1, with a heightened impact from the mobile termination rate cuts in Germany and price promotional activity in southern Europe mitigating improving markets in the UK and France

‘More-for-more’ price rises continued both during the quarter and after, and appear to be more widespread than the 2016 increases. This should be driving revenue growth at a healthier rate than zero, and may well do as out-of-bundle revenue declines fade away in significance and regulated MTR and roaming cuts annualise out

On the downside, there remain clear disruptive threats from consolidation in Italy, the potential for improved non-incumbent competitor performance in Germany and Spain, and the potential for further consolidation, with its distinctly mixed blessings for competitors, in the UK and France