Vodafone meets core earnings expectations, beats on cash flow

London: Vodafone met market forecasts on Tuesday by reporting a 2.2 per cent increase in organic earnings for the year to end-March after excluding the Spanish and Italian operations that it has agreed to sell.

The British company posted core earnings of 11.02 billion euros ($11.89 billion), in line with forecasts, and adjusted free cash flow of 2.60 billion euros, ahead of market expectations of 2.44 billion euros.

Chief Executive Margherita Della Valle said following the disposals, Vodafone was delivering growth in all of its markets across Europe and Africa, including Germany, its largest.

Germany returned to growth with service revenue increasing by 0.2 per cent for the full year and 0.6 per cent for Q4, the company said, but adjusted core earnings dropped by 5.8 per cent due to higher energy and other inflationary costs.

"Much more still needs to be done in the year ahead," she said. "We will step-up investment in our customer experience, improve our underlying performance in Germany and accelerate our momentum in Business, whilst also continuing to simplify our operations."