Vodafone Group Plc

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our Q1 trading update. Before going to Q&A, I would like to provide you with a brief summary outlining the key highlights from our Q1 results, as well as the broader set of actions we are taking to transform Vodafone. Overall, our Q1 results were in line with our expectations and consistent with our full year guidance, which we have reiterated today. We continued to deliver strong revenue growth in Africa and Turkey, whilst in Europe, top-line trends slowed, largely due to the lapping of higher inflation-linked price rises in the prior year and the phasing of project work in business. In parallel, Group EBITDA accelerated to plus 5.1% in Q1, as lower inflation helped drive good operational leverage across the Group. In our largest market, Germany, service revenue declined as expected as we continue to navigate the significant MDU TV law change. We have now successfully signed 2.6 million households onto the new commercial terms and customer retention is tracking in line with the around 50% guidance we provided in May. However, I'm not yet satisfied with our commercial performance in Germany. Our new team are taking the actions needed to drive better results and support the broader turnaround of the business. Finally, in B2B, while growth slowed this quarter due to project phasing, we have visibility of strong demand. Therefore, we expect growth to improve sequentially throughout the rest of the year, with our Q4 exit rate expected to be above FY24 levels. Beyond these results, we have continued to make good progress on our transactions. We successfully completed the sale of Spain in May and subsequently commenced a 2 billion share buyback program. We also continue to progress our transactions in Italy and the UK. And earlier this week, we announced the last step in our plans to deliver the co-control structure we had originally envisaged for Vantage Towers. As a result, we now have a 50-50 JV and we'll receive a further 1.3 billion in cash, taking the total net proceeds from the sell-down and IPO advantage to 8.8 billion. Finally, we are continuing to drive the broader transformation of the group through our strategic priorities focusing on customers, simplicity, and growth. This requires a continuous reallocation of resources and relentless focus on operational excellence. And we're starting to make real progress. All markets are moving in the right direction with tangible improvements in customer satisfaction across Europe. We are also taking significant steps to become a simpler business, having already actioned 7,000 role reductions and implemented a new simplified EXCO structure. And on growth, we expect good performance in business for the year as a whole, supported by our new team and the additional investments we are making to broaden our product set and expand our managed service capabilities. We are taking now the actions needed to deliver an improved performance and underpin the broader turnaround of Vodafone. With that, Luca and I are looking forward to your questions.

Thank you, Margherita. As a reminder to analysts, please only pose one question to give everybody a chance to speak. Our first question this morning comes from Robert Grindle at Deutsche Numis. Robert, please go ahead.

Good morning and thank you also for the increased disclosure surprise this morning. If I may take you straight back to Germany, service revenue growth was broadly in line, though of course slowing. TV losses similar to last quarter, and you said just now in line with plan, broadband losses also similar to last quarter. Taking a step back, how would you frame the Germany performance in the context of your turnaround plan? Are there puts and takes as to where you're hoping to get to? Thank you. Thank you, Robert.