Hello all interesting news on Vodafone atm. Looks like the Italy sale has been approved for 8pm euros 2nd of which will be used for buybacks rather than all of the funds used to pay down debt?
They have also announced the dividend will be halved for 2025 as expected. I hope the dividend is higher than the interest which is the reason for this move and not a desperate way to increase the SP. Either way the lower dividend should make the company more stable for the time being.
I still hold hope that this will become like Aviva which also sold off its unprofitable business to concentrate on core and is now even doing buybacks. I canāt see this becoming like Rolls Royce unless of course Africa and the Middle East takes off. I would be very happy with Ā£1 per share.
TLDR letās concentrate on streamlining the business managing the debt and concentrating on growth areas then hopefully in a few years the dividend will grow.
I think its great that we have the government approval subject to certain conditions which are not an issue. (this was always the easy one to get in my opionion)
We still need OFCOM & CMA to approve the deal I expect OFCOM will approve it but they may want Vodafone to give up/sell some spectrum to get the deal through as the new entity will have a huge chunk of high value which may not be a goer for Vodafone.
The biggest one will be the CMA as they can still block the deal fully or require certain conditions and it will depend on the conditions they require as to if the deal will go through as based on the phase 1 investigation itās not a done deal as they may impose conditions that Vodafone may not agree with, but hey will will know around September time how that goes.
I also think some of the big shareholders will resist Vodafone giving too much as being an honest objective shareholder I believe Vodafone have already given up too much to Three to get the deal anything else is going to make this a bad deal for Vodafone shareholders.
Second good day so far, the dividend got chopped in half yesterday but clearly that has been priced in.
Bought just over 1.1k worth of shares and currently down Ā£177 less 95 quid of dividends, do the arithmetic not the maths
Oh boy I donāt even want to calculate my losses in this one :). Vodafone will always have a place in my heart as my first ever purchase on FT.
If I remember correctly I bought around the 1 pound mark should have sold out when it hit Ā£1.20
Also another plus point with the share price dropping at the moment is that Vodafone can buy back more shares cheaper and therefore buying back more shares overall on the current buy back programme.
Good point there if we are doing buybacks might as well be a lower price :).
Also itās not long will dividend payment date am I right in thinking this is the last time we will get the higher amount? I thought I read they were cutting the dividend from now on.
Yes this is the last one at the current rate 0.045 (0.09 yearly).
In future it will be 0.045 for the year which is uneven number so they may do the interim slightly lower possibly one at 0.02 and one at 0.025 or they may do 0.0225 which I personally cant see
Iām far from an expert but wouldnāt voda be better paying down some of the debt before doing a share buyback ? I know it would be a drop in the ocean but you gotta start somewhere.
I understand your thinking but the level of debt they have is high but given they are one of the largest mobile companies in the world the level of debt they have would be seen by markets as sustainable.
Also buying back shares will increase the income per share etcā¦ as the shares are in treasury so donāt get used when calculating costs or profit etcā¦ per share.
Also the shares they are buying back are being held in treasury so it means when they need to issue shares for employeeās they can take them from treasury without issuing more.
The other big reason is they believe the share price will go up so for instance they buy back 2 billion in shares and say the shares go up by 25% they could resell the shares back into the market and book 2.5 billion from the shares and could clear more debt over time.
The golden question. If you have the funds I think they are a good buy at under 70p.
Iām in at 86p at the moment so Iām hoping these will recover soon.
Yes it was but donāt forget this is Freetrade you donāt normally get dividends on the payment day, and on the rare times they do pay on the day you always get them after the market closes at 4.30
Fair enough as long as we get it sometime next week Iām happy.
I wasnāt planning on reinvesting this, Iām currently using the dividend income to pay off my mortgage quicker. Probably not the best use of the money but you canāt put a value on the piece of mind.
