British mobile phone giant Vodafone said today its annual net profits almost trebled to £8.645 billion sterling on reduced write-downs and increased sales of its broadband Internet services.
The world's biggest mobile phone operator by revenue said profit after tax soared to the equivalent of €10.1 billion in the 12 months to March 31 - beating its own expectations. Vodafone had posted net profits of £3.078 billion in 2008/09.
The strong results also came despite Vodafone booking an impairment charge of £2.3 billion relating to its operations in India because of fierce competition.
Vodafone last year suffered impairment charges of £5.9 billion, including a £3.4 billion write-down on the value of Vodafone's Spanish assets and smaller one-off charges related to operations in Turkey and Ghana.
'We have made significant progress in implementing our strategy,' Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao said. 'We now generate 33% of service revenue from products other than mobile voice reflecting the shift of Vodafone to a total communications provider.
'In particular, mobile data and fixed broadband services continue to grow while we increased the contribution being made by our operations in emerging economies, primarily by gaining market share,' he added.
'We have reduced costs and working capital to manage better in the recessionary environment while maintaining investment in our networks,' he said.
Vodafone had in November doubled its annual cost-savings target to £2 billion by 2012, as it faced a large write-down in India. The British group had bought a majority stake in Indian mobile phone operator Hutchison Essar in 2007 as the London-listed company struggled with slowing sales in the developed world.
Vodafone said today that group revenue increased by 8.4% to £44.5 billion in 2009/10, boosted by performance in Asia and the Middle East.
It said it had 341 million mobile phone customers after gaining 8.5 million during the fourth quarter.
'Vodafone's financial results exceeded our upgraded guidance on all measures,' said Colao. 'Revenue trends have improved again in quarter four driven by growth in mobile data and fixed broadband.
Cost reduction targets were delivered ahead of schedule enabling commercial reinvestment to improve market share and further strengthen our technology platforms,' the chief executive added.
The company said it was targeting an annual dividend per share growth of no less than 7% for the next three financial years.
Vodafone Ireland said it now had 2.33 million customers, with 194,000 of these in fixed line and broadband.
Average monthly revenue from customers in the three months to the end of March was €36.10, a 7.7% drop from a year earlier.
