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Monday, January 29, 2007

Vodafone: Already 3.5 million net adds in the bag

Voda will report their 3Q KPI’s on Wednesday, but some of their associated companies have already reported:
  • Vodacom in South Africa added 2.454m customers of which Voda has a 50% share;
  • Verizon Wireless in the USA added 2.305m customers of which Voda has a 44.4% share;
  • Egypt added 771k customers of which Voda has 54.9% share. Voda will also add 381k through the stake increase in Egypt of 4.8%; and
  • In India Bharti added an amazing 4.910m customers in the quarter of which Voda has a 10% share.
Probably the biggest net growth in the customers for the quarter will come from Turkey which I estimate to be the only subsid to beat the 1.227m net customers in South Africa.

The most interesting markets are in the UK where people will be focused on the lack-of-Carphone distribution effect and Germany which is the source of much doom and gloom in the press.

Of course, all the above has to be balanced by the sale of stakes in Belgium & Switzerland which will reduce the overall figure.

I think this will mean that Voda will probably fall a couple of million short of the magical 200m subscriber figure. And anyway with Voda, people should really discount the overall figure to account for the dubious policy of counting inactive customers…