The UK’s Vodafone Group Plc has seen an outstanding year of growth in the UK market and the number of worldwide subscribers to its network increase by almost 1 million, to more than 3 million subscribers at March 31, it said. With many of its overseas businesses now performing well and turning in profits this year, the company has seen income for the year to March up 28% to 475m British pounds on revenue that rose 22% to 1,402m pounds. In the UK alone, the company has connected more than 630,000 new customers to its networks, 55% of whom subscribed to the company’s digital service. The company said the range of new digital tariffs it introduced, including per second billing and bundled air time have been well received. Vodafone said churn rates were down 10% to 25.6%. The group’s wholly owned service providers, Vodac Ltd, Vodacall Ltd and Vodacom Ltd have made investments in new administration systems in the last year which, the company says, have virtually eradicated the incidence of contract fraud that plagued it last year (CI No 2,679). Data network subsidiaries Vodata Ltd and Paknet Ltd and paging company Vodapage Ltd all had another good year, launching new products and increasing their profitability. Of the overseas businesses, Pacific Link Ltd in Hong Kong, Panafon SA in Greece, Vodacom Pty Ltd, South Africa, Telecell Ltd in Malta and Vodafone SA in France were all profitable. Overseas subscriptions more than doubled to 585,000 this year, and now represent 20% of the group’s total subscriptions. The South African company’s connections to its Groupe Speciale Mobile network exceeded expectations, up 47% to 335,000 subscribers in the past 12 months. Vodafone Group says worldwide demand for mobile telecommunications remains strong. In the UK, where it claims to operate the largest network, it reckons it is well place to retain its market leaderership. Overseas, the company’s penetration is still low, and it believes it will be able to grow this business to substantially impact group profits in the future. The company’s shares were up fourpence at 254 pence after it announced its results. It will pay a final dividend of 2.04 pence making a total for the year up 20% at 4.01p.
