Vodafone Part IV
Vodafone sees UK penetration surging
LONDON, June 2 (Reuters)- Vodafone Group Plc (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: VOD.L), Britain's biggest mobile telephone company, said on Tuesday it expected UK penetration levels to jump to 50 percent from 16 percent by 2005.
Chief executive Chris Gent told Reuters that the market needed to see an acceleration in growth towards five percent per year -- and it looks like it was heading in that direction this year.
''We believe overall about half the population will adopt cellular by the year 2005,'' he said.
Unveiling a 21 percent in annual pre-tax profits to 650.2 million pounds, Gent said he expected strong customer growth in the second quarter.
Gent said he expected healthy Q2 subscriber growth this year to more than treble last year's Q2 figures. The company reported net new subscribers of around 50,000 in Q2 after changes in contract terms.
Vodafone, which saw overseas operations contributing a total operating profit of 122.4 million pounds this year compared to 18 million last year, said it expected continued strong growth internationally and was actively seeking acquisitions.
''We are looking at a couple of things,'' said Gent, declining to divulge Vodafone's budget for international cellular acquisitions or pinpoint the company's target area. But he did say the group was interested in the Pacific Rim, Africa and western Europe.
It is not interested in America, Latin America or eastern Europe.
Gent also said Vodafone would bid for one of Britain's high-tech mobile licences, UMTS, which the government will auction next summer.
Gent said the licence which will allow the company to offer products such as high-speed internet access and video services over a broad band cellular network was fundamental to the group's business.
With three to five UMTS licences expected to be up for grabs, analysts had expected bids to be made by consortiums, but Gent said, ''We will be bidding alone.''
The group expects to spend around 200 million pounds per year on deploying UMTS alone. |
