Vodafone blames accounting change for €800mn revenue decline

Vodafone has unveiled its quarterly results for the period ending December 31, and while a year-on-year decline of €800 million might worry some, it’s not as bad as you think.

The team claims it has performed pretty much in-line with expectations and the same period of 2017, however a shift over to the IFRS15 accounting standard, the sale of the Qatar business and FX headwinds caused the decline. In other words, it’s all the fault of the bean counters.

“We have executed at pace this quarter and have improved the consistency of our commercial performance,” said Group CEO Nick Read. “Lower mobile contract churn across our markets and improved customer trends in Italy and Spain are encouraging, however these have not yet translated into our financial results, with a similar revenue trend in Europe to Q2.

“We enjoyed good growth across our emerging markets with the exception of South Africa, which was impacted by our pricing transformation initiatives and a challenging macroeconomic environment. Overall, this performance underpins our confidence in our full year guidance.”

Addressing the elephant in the room, the €800 million decline. While suggesting a change in accounting standards is a primary cause might sound flimsy, it certainly will have contributed. IFRS15 dictates a business cannot recognise all revenues up-front; if a contract has been signed, revenue can only be recognised in the financials when it is collected. For example, if your customer has agreed terms to pay at the end of the contract, once conditions have been fully satisfied, this revenue cannot be reported until that point. In other words, Vodafone cannot claim it has the money until customers have actually paid it.

While this is a perfectly reasonable explanation of why revenues might have declined, it is also important to recognise Vodafone is under pressure in numerous markets. The team have claimed success across the European markets, with improving customer and financial trends in Italy, retail growth in Germany and reduced churn in Spain, but year-on-year revenues were down 1.1%. Again, there will be multiple factors contributing to this decline, but it would be foolish to suggest everything is rosy at Vodafone.

A couple of weeks back, RBC Capital Markets released an investment note suggesting Vodafone is not only in a slightly precarious position because of competition pressures (in Europe, Africa and India), but upcoming auctions as well. Depending on how aggressively spectrum prices continue to inflate, Vodafone could fit itself footing a bill between €4.5 billion and €12 billion.

Looking at the performance in the markets, if you ignore the difficult one’s things are going great. European service revenues declined 2% to €7.496 billion (using a consistent accounting standard), with the Spanish, Italian and UK markets all reporting drops. Germany and the ‘other’ European markets reported year-on-year increases of 1.1% and 4.1% respectively. In Italy, the team has faced the uncomfortable entry of the disruptive Iliad, while the impact of handset financing was the cause in the UK. In Spain, the team restructured various offerings to make the brand more competitive. In theory, all of these markets should stabilise over the coming months.

Across Africa, Vodacom revenues grew by 1.5%, though growth was dampened by the South African market. Here, service revenue declined by 0.9% down to the pricing transformation strategy. The aim here was to reduce exposure to out-of-bundle revenues and improve the performance of more generous promotional summer offers. Over the period, South Africa added 86,000 contract customers, primarily from the business unit.

The other tricky market is India, but we’ll have to wait for a while to see the lay of the land there. Vodafone Idea will report its third quarter results in February, though as the integration of these two businesses is a work-in-progress any results will have to be taken with a pinch of salt. Reliance Jio is running the show in India as it stands, but the Vodafone Idea merger will have to be given time to create a competitive offering.

Overall, these are results which we should have expected. Vodafone is reacting to pressure in various markets, but it is not in the most comfortable position. In the vast majority of its markets, Vodafone would be considered more of a challenger than a leader. There are certainly dominant positions in some of the African markets, but it Europe it is fighting for attention.

The business is not nose-diving, but it certainly isn’t thriving. However, there are proactive measures taking place across the world to cultivate success. The fixed broadband offering in the UK should make an effective convergence business, Vodafone Idea could challenge the momentum of Reliance Jio, while more competitive tariffs in markets such as Spain and Italy should put it is a better position moving forward.

Vodafone is making some interesting, and encouraging, decisions but it is starting to fight bloody battles on a lot of fronts.