Vodafone Group PLC (VOD) 2021 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Hi, everyone, and hope you're all staying safe.

Thank you for taking the time to join Margherita and myself for our half year results.

And you've seen our presentation, so we are open for Q&A.

Just one point around Vantage Towers.

You saw that we had a specific slide in the deck regarding Vantage Towers and importantly, the relationship with Vodafone.

We're happy to take Q&A regarding our relationship.

But we can't go into any more specifics because there's a Capital Markets Day tomorrow.

I think you will find it very informative in terms of the strategy, growth drivers, capital structure, so all your questions will be answered tomorrow.

And because we're under regulatory constraints, we can't go into that today.

So on that, I think we have one question per analyst.

They're never disciplined.

But hopefully, we can get through everyone.

And I think we're starting with Akhil.

(Operator Instructions) So your first question does come from Akhil Dattani of JPMorgan.

Yes.

The question is really around the revenue trajectory going forward.

You've had a much better service revenue performance this quarter than the consensus expected.

One of the components you've called out is B2B, so obviously very keen to understand specifically what in B2B is driving that and how we can think about that going forward.

And the second part of that is pricing.

If I'm understanding correctly, traditionally, a lot of your price increases kick in, in Q2.

But actually, this time around with the lockdown, they didn't.

And I'm looking forward and seeing that you are starting to put through a number of price increases into Q3 and Q4.

So can you maybe just talk to those pricing moves and just help us understand how that also drives the going-forward trajectory?

Good.

Akhil, I'll comment first on your point on B2B and then to give you a picture of how we see the moving parts going forward.

As far as B2B is concerned, we are very pleased with our performance.

I would say around pretty much all KPIs in that space.

If you look at the numbers, we have had the lowest ever, or at least that I can remember, churn rate in mobile.

We've had good growth in fixed with Europe growing 6% in the quarter.

We are leading in customer satisfaction, in NPS, in B2B in 4 out of 5 of our main markets now.

And so it's, I would say, broad-based acceleration after the lockdown in Q1, which we see very much being the result of effectively being very fast in Q1, in being close to our customers, deploying a range of products that we're helping them going through, through the crisis.

And I think we are now reaping the rewards of that.

So competing well, I would say, is the headline in B2B.

In terms of how we see the trend lines then, overall, I would split the answer into 2 parts, maybe near term, so the remainder of this fiscal year and then more longer term.

As we look into Q2 and Q3, I think it's fair to say there are still some drags that we can expect on our service revenue.

As you have seen, the lockdowns have somehow restarted in different ways across our markets.

And this, for us, is relevant on revenues on 2 fronts.

First one, obviously, international travel.

There was a bit of a recovery over the summer in Europe.

I suppose we need to expect that this will now fall back down again with the lockdown.

And then the second element, when there is still uncertainty for the remainder of the year, is government support packages and for how long they will last and how, particularly in Africa.

So these are the moving parts sort of going forward.

I think on the back of the fact that we had good commercial momentum, good demand for our services in B2B, we definitely see that the second half is going to look better than the first half, but still a degree of oscillation, as you would expect, likely.

I wanted to also point out the medium term because I think this is a bit of a special moment in terms of trends because we have a significant drag from COVID, in particular, on roaming.

As you have seen and you have seen in our release, we keep referring to service revenue growth, also ex roaming.

The reason why we do that is that as we move into next year, from April, you will see that the roaming drag will lapse.

We will compare ourselves to a year where there was already very little trouble.

And therefore, this will allow our underlying performance ex roaming, which at the moment as you have seen is positive with 1.5% service revenue growth across the group, ex roaming, Europe now stable.

This underlying performance that we are seeing is going to be emerged and let alone be accelerated then if there was any recovery in international travel into next year.

So clearly, return to growth on total service revenue performance expected for the coming year.

That's great.

Just on the pricing bit, I mean, are there any specific markets you'd call out just to understand the pricing dynamics?

No, it's a very good point, actually, that you are raising on pricing because, you're right, COVID did create a bit of rephasing, repositioning around these moves.

What I would say in terms of near-term service revenue growth, don't see this as being a big driver of acceleration because, as you mentioned, in prior year, we also were going through pricing cycles, maybe a little bit earlier or a little bit in a different time frame but of similar size.

But I think it's fair to say we will be looking to next year to see where the opportunities are, just like we would normally.

Your next question comes from Emmet Kelly of Morgan Stanley.

Yes.

So a similar question from me, except on the EBITDA side.

So you have reported EBITDA of minus 2% in H1.

And if I look at the guidance, it suggests I guess positive EBITDA of roughly plus 0.5% to maybe plus 3% in the second half of the year.

Can you maybe just say a few words on what the key drivers are of the EBITDA improvement?

And maybe just refer to your cost-cutting plan as well, please.

Sure.

In general terms, you're right, we expect EBITDA in the second half of the year to be, let's say, on the right side of 0. And this is what we have factored in upgrading our guidance to what I would call the upper end of our outlook range that we gave immediately post-COVID.

I mean a number of drivers are the same as the one we just mentioned with Akhil.

So on a positive front, strong commercial momentum and good demand for our services in B2B, clearly offset by some further drag on roaming, should be lower in the second half than in the first half of the year because of seasonality.

But as I said, probably the volumes will fall back down again.

We need to see.

In terms of cost progress, well, as you can imagine, anytime someone asked me about cost, we are very pleased with our results so far.

All the KPIs around our cost-reduction programs have been either progressing at the same pace as before in the first half or have been accelerated.

And you can look at things like digital transformation, integration of activities into shared service.

I would say, COVID has not slowed us down in this journey.

Actually, in some instances, we have seen some supportive trends, particularly around digital coming from the change of behaviors that the customers have had due to COVID, and we are locking those behavioral changes in going forward.

So very positive progress.

Clearly, some further opportunities ahead of us, both in the near-term and in the longer.

You may remember my another EUR 1 billion of cost reductions in Europe between FY '21 and FY '23.

And I think that we have some really strong assets to deliver these further improvements into the group operating model.

You have seen in the presentation, we're talking about what a good machine we have now to effectively standardize similar processes across market, integrate them, package them, decide what's the best location to carry them through and automate them.

And on the back of that, linked to also an integrated procurement process, we think that, if anything, the opportunities there post-COVID to further accelerate our cost-reduction programs.

Your next question comes from Andrew Lee of Goldman Sachs.

Yes.

I had a question on portfolio management.

There's a lot of detail and really helpful detail in the presentation around the parameters for this and how you think about it.

Can you give us any kind of more color on what this practically means to how you're thinking about underperforming assets such as Spain at the moment?

Yes, Andrew, thanks for recognizing.

In the presentation, we try -- laid out a framework, and it really sort of had 3 core principles to it.

And these 3 core principles have been there since I came in as group CEO.

We decided this is the way we need to look at our portfolio going forward.

So the first principle is that we need to ensure that an asset has benefit from regional scale, but also must be of local scale.

It must have a credible and actionable long-range plan that delivers return on capital employed greater than market WACC over the long-range plan that we agree with.

And then thirdly, we have to be the best owner of the asset.

We have to make sure that both the asset and group are benefiting from being part of the portfolio.

So if we take Spain as an example, Margherita and I, 2 years ago, did a very deep dive on Spain and we looked at the long-range plan.

And frankly, we felt they weren't on the right trajectory.

We didn't have that confidence in the return on capital over the long-range plan.

And so we did a very radical restructuring and alternative transformation strategy, totally different commercial plan, making sure we're competing in high, mid, low-end, dual-branded.

We came out of football.

We drove digital transformation.

We did network sharing on a more drastic and radical basis.

I think today is really good demonstration.

And frankly, the last number of quarters have been really a good demonstration of progress that we've made.

I think the team have executed that transformation through excellently.

And I think that you're now seeing us on the front foot in Spain.

I think when you see us relative, results, to others, I think they are a good set of results.

We are now #2 on retail, having just passed Orange.

We have for 5 consecutive quarters either stable or improving mobile, TV and fixed broadband.

And we've had 2 halves of EBITDAR expansion.

So I think we've got a good organic plan, and that will prove to improve returns over time.

Of course, yes, were there to be consolidation opportunities, we will always evaluate those opportunities if they're value-accretive for our shareholders.

And we've always taken that sort of pragmatic view market-to-market on how to strengthen positions.

Can I just ask a very short follow-up?

I take it from your comments then that the big improvement in Spanish trends that we saw in the quarter are sustainable into the second half of the year?

Yes.

Well, I think you're seeing that we've got momentum as a business.

If you remember, in quarter 4, I think that was the first acknowledgment, yes, you're a business with momentum.

We were growing in the second half EBITDA.

We said we'd be growing in the first half.

We are growing.

And I think even though the market has intensified from a competitive perspective, both at the high and the low end, I think we are competing very effectively.

Your next question comes from Jerry Dellis of Jefferies.

Yes.

I wanted to ask about 5G please.

We understand that 5G delivered over mid-band spectrum brings performance gains.

But the mid-band spectrum is not fully available in all of your markets.

So is the commercial case for launching 5G in the low-band spectrum first?

And is there a sort of a commercial necessity to being first to deploy 5G market by market?

And perhaps related to that, as there is some enduring Huawei uncertainty, differs a bit market by market, to what extent is that uncertainty about Huawei holding you back from fully investing?

Jerry, I think we made -- if you like, we went on to the front foot on 5G.

We were one of the first to launch across Europe.

I think we landed that message in the minds of businesses and consumers very effectively.

Of course, it wasn't mass scale.

It was small, but it was widely dispersed through our European market.

So actually, from a perception perspective, we are very much seen as a leader in 5G.

Then the question is, as it starts to now ramp up -- and as you see we're deploying in, I think, it's 126 cities currently across 9 markets in Europe, the question is how should we deploy?

Some operators are taking dynamic spectrum sharing, so DSS, which is effectively giving you a 5G symbol, but 4G performance.

And what we said as a company is, no, we don't want to do that because it will be misleading to consumers and businesses.

What we want to do is 5G built right.

So we want the real 5G performance.

We know that if we deploy the significant 3.5 gigahertz type level spectrum, along with 700 ultimately when it's available in each of the markets, that is real 5G.

We're starting with the cities.

We're starting with the business part where there is an economic case, because the demand is there from a data usage perspective and also the user cases from a business perspective.

I'd say 3G was browsing.

4G was video.

5G, this is about enterprises, about businesses enabling their capability moving forward in an IoT world, and we have the world's largest IoT platform.

So I think it's about us focusing not on coverage messages with an inferior product, it's about a superior product where the economics really count.

And does the Huawei uncertainty matter?

Does that create a constraint?

Well, clearly, you would not want clarity, and we're working with each of the European countries and governments to implement on the European 5G toolbox.

They're in the process of doing that.

But the toolbox made a distinction between core and RAN.

We've already made our decision on core.

We're taking Huawei out the core over the next 4 to 5 years.

But RAN, very much different from core, and I think we're engaged with each of the governments on that.

So what I would say is I wouldn't say it's been any material delay.

Maybe in some markets, we pause for a few months, but nothing more than that.

Your next question comes from Georgios Ierodiaconou from Citigroup.

It's on regulation.

And Nick, during your introductory remarks, you highlighted that regulation is going in the right direction in the number of countries you are present.

Perhaps there's one exception, which is Portugal.

And my question is in 2 parts.

Firstly, I believe the market leader there, Altice, have already stated they will make no material investments in the country until they revisit the spectrum auction process.

I'd be interested to hear your views on that and whether you thinking around something similar for Vodafone.

And then secondly, more broadly, by focusing on returns on capital employed, you will be picking winners and losers on returns as we deploy capital in the long term.

So do you think politicians and regulators are starting to understand the importance of fair regulation in order to attract more capital from the group?

Yes.

Georgios, very good question.

Maybe I'll start with the latter and then go into the first question, which is I talk all the time about social contracts.

I talk about what we bring to society, what we're willing to invest, what our investors want to deploy in terms of serious capital because we -- in a COVID world, the demand is even greater for the product.

But what I reinforce is a contract.

And the contract is we want to invest, but we need the right conditions.

And I talk about we need to create a healthier market structure.

And healthier is about saying that our shareholders need to earn adequate return.

And we will deploy capital where we see governments supporting that principle.

And so I have been actively engaged with the European Commission.

I mean I was with Commissioner Breton last week; Vestager, about 3 weeks before that, but very actively engaged.

We got another industry meeting in a couple of weeks' time talking about what makes a healthy industry structure and what things we need to have facilitated.

So I'd say very much leaning into that.

And they are listening because they understand the criticality now of connectivity if they want a digital society.

If they want a digital, sustainable, inclusive society, they need to provide a healthier structure, and I think they're acknowledging that.

I tried to put in the presentation a number of evidence points, of course, this is early days.

But then I turn to Portugal.

And so Portugal is a really good example where we're saying that, that spectrum auction structure was not providing a healthy industry structure.

That essentially with no market testing with no evidencing of market failure whatsoever, a new entrant was being given advantageous terms, both in terms of lower price of spectrum and no real obligation to roll out and can just do national roaming.

And we said, where is the incentive for people that are really investing into markets?

And we had planned to put a center of excellence with 400 FTEs into Portugal and we put it on pause.

Because we said, we are not going to support governments that work against existing operators in that way, especially when we were there for the crisis.

Now we've engaged.

The regulator and government have changed the conditions.

They have improved the conditions.

Now the new entrant will pay for price and will have to roll out network.

Fine.

But in my opinion and my team's opinion, they have not gone far enough.

We still believe this is a state aid, and we still believe that it -- it was going on in my head, contravenes European telco law.

So we are going to continue to litigate against them.

And while we do that, we will have to consider the investments that we're making.

Governments have to realize, if you want a healthy investor community, there's a balance.

Your next question comes from Polo Tang of UBS.

I just really have a question on Germany, because I think you mentioned in your presentation that about 1/4 of your broadband base was taking 1 gigabit speeds and I think that the ARPU uplift was around about EUR 5 a month as people upgraded.

But can I clarify how we should think about the trajectory in terms of fixed German service revenues going forward?

Because I think they were kind of almost stable in Q2, so should we expect a pick up over the coming quarters?

And given that you have such a speed advantage in terms of German broadband and given that you've been promoting your 1 gig speed at EUR 40, EUR 50 a month, do you think your broadband net adds in Germany should accelerate from here?

So any color around Germany and broadband.

So let me just do the high level and then maybe if you want to provide any sort of outlook-y type comments.

But look, we sit back and we say we've done a really good job of upgrading our gigabit network, 22 million homes now passed with gigabit speeds.

So we're pleased with the execution in that respect.

We've had a decent run rate that accelerated in the quarter in terms of fixed broadband net adds, so especially on our cable performance.

So I would say we've got momentum.

I think 2 things we'd call out in Germany that we'd like to see some improvement.

And that is retail performance in the Unity area.

We show a graph in Margherita's area where they have not been quite as good as we've been in the KDG.

We had to harmonize some of the sales processes.

And our TV road map, of which we've got a clear TV road map this year.

We've now harmonized the TV premium product.

We've got OTT product coming and then Vodafone TV product coming in the fourth quarter.

So I'd say, we're definitely focused on gaining more momentum and a higher acceleration in the second half.

No, just maybe adding a technical point.

The reason why you see the growth flattish in the quarter is wholesale.

Wholesale has been a negative drag in Germany because we [lapped] the point in which the ULL fees were increased by Deutsche Telekom, and this affects the total growth rate.

Can I maybe just pick up on something?

You talked about TV, but how important do you think TV is in a converged bundle?

Because if we look at Spain, you obviously moved away from football in terms of Champions League and La Liga.

We're actually seeing accelerating commercial trends.

So overall, how important is TV in a converged bundle?

No, I think it's very important, I think that -- over the long run.

But the question is what type of bundle?

What we aren't keen on is paying huge fees for football within the bundle.

What we would rather do is have commercial arrangement with someone open within the market, like Sky for Germany as an example.

And then we focus on ensuring that we bring -- I mean our Vodafone TV, particularly, is bringing, what, a 4K experience, EUR 60 box with linear plus apps, with harmonized search across all channels to surface the content you're looking for.

Voice activated.

So it's nice and easy for consumers to find what they're looking for.

Cloud storage for your recordings.

So we think that is the new execution for TV.

And we are scaling our position.

We're in 7 markets already.

Germany launches as the eighth market in Europe in quarter 4. And then we will migrate customers to that experience from the Horizon box and the GigaTV box.

Your next question is from Maurice Patrick from Barclays.

Yes, so a key thrust of the presentation seems to be around boosting [good] returns and returns overall.

So a question on balancing sort of the retail/wholesale side.

I mean you talked about this our capital employed only 5% and actually falling slightly, and you said you weren't satisfied about it.

But thinking about Germany and outside the roll areas, because you have a slide talking about lots of sharing and monetization things you've done across the portfolio and not really Germany.

If I think correctly back, your utilization network in Germany is about 30%.

It's not obvious how you'll grow the retail base that much over the coming quarters.

So I guess your thoughts on wholesale in Germany.

I know you've got cable with TEF, Deutschland coming up, but is that enough?

I mean would you think about using Drillisch, for example, more than the historic partner of yours?

It looks like they're your new partner.

So thoughts about balancing the retail and the wholesale mix and asset utilization in Germany.

Maybe I just was reacting to your points around German growth more broadly first before coming on to wholesale, which is German growth is flat at the moment, but it is suffering from the headwinds of COVID, as well as obviously the exit from the 1&1 wholesale deal.

As I was mentioning earlier with Akhil, I think as you move into next year, you will see that the roaming headwind will go away and then over time, also the wholesale one.

There are definite areas of growth into our German business, as you would expect, right, because we are driving convergence.

We are driving cable penetration.

We were mentioning earlier the upselling of cable to higher speed.

All these are reasons why the retail revenues of Germany, which are already growing in the quarter by 1.8% if you exclude roaming, are expected to continue to grow nicely, I would say, in the coming future.

I was just reacting to that.

Before moving into the -- then what do you want to do with wholesale?

Yes.

Look, we have clearly considered wholesale.

So we wholesale to TEF.

We've been very focused at bringing that into action.

And I would say that generally, we've wanted -- and what we like about that wholesale arrangement is it does provide utilization of the asset, but still protect our differentiation in the marketplace.

Still, we're focused at the higher speeds and we're completely differentiated at the higher speeds.

Clearly, we're engaged and consider various options in the future, and we'll always look at opportunities as long as differentiation is maintained and, let's say, the economics are acceptable.

Great.

And as a quick follow-up.

Someone just pinged actually on Bloomberg to ask how big the United Internet revenues are at the moment or the Drillisch revenues at a moment, any nice things there?

So we have bought whole -- fixed and mobile revenues in the mix.

And the drag that they create on our service revenue growth at the moment is around 1 percentage point.

The total amount, I think IR can be more precise, but call it around EUR 300 million between fixed and mobile.

Our next question comes from David Wright of Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

I was going to ask about the portfolio management side once again.

I think -- it seems like Egypt has wobbled a little bit, so I was just looking to get maybe an update on progress there?

And just second of all, relating to portfolio and going onto the whole ROCE debate that I think has been fairly intensive from some of the questions today.

One of the things that was notable about Spain, Margherita, is that you chose to write down the asset, I think, as you did that quite significant review of strategy.

You do run across the Vodafone Group right now a fairly high level of intangibles and goodwill against your actual [PPE] asset base.

So it does feel like are there -- or should I say, are there some opportunities to actually consider some of the values of assets acquired over the last 10 years when you're actually doing some of this return on capital analysis, to get a more fair picture as it were?

For instance you've -- you acquired the cable asset -- Cable & Wireless asset some time ago.

Is that the kind of asset that you could reconsider the valuation of?

So how are you actually thinking about the potential value of some of these significant goodwill and amortization drivers that are holding group ROCE back?

Okay.

Well, let me be very quick on Egypt.

Look, due diligence is effectively complete.

And now stc are engaged with TE, Telecom Egypt.

Why?

Because telecom Egypt is a significant shareholder.

We have a shareholder agreement.

Clearly, there needs to be a shareholder agreement between the 2 of them.

And therefore, it's an important consideration on the go-forward relationship.

So we're not really a party to that conversation, that's really between the 2 of them, and we will see how they progress.

And on the goodwill point, I would say that we see it very much as, how can I say, strict accounting process that we need to follow, and we will keep following on the framework of rules aligned with our Audit Committee and our auditors.

So it's very much driven by the mechanics of the accounting.

Don't read into it any real broader considerations.

We just want to make sure that we are, I would say, balanced and conservative from that perspective because it's an area of attention, obviously, for all regulators from a financial perspective.

So this is what we are focusing on, really.

It's a very transparent and balanced accounting exercise.

Just following on a little on that if I may, Nick, on the whole sort of Spanish outlook case you began 2 years ago.

Can you just give us a little bit more insight into that midterm sort of trajectory that you're really considering?

We have seen 1 or 2 other major telcos in Europe, maybe even Spain, where they've talked about looking at return on capital employed and the assets have continued to deteriorate and now they might even have to give them away.

So are we talking -- is it a 5-year trajectory, a 10-year trajectory?

Is it just -- anything more you can give us on that kind of time line that you're giving these assets to really deliver?

When we talk over the long-range plan, we're talking 3 to 5 years.

So that's the time horizon we look at.

For Spain, as an example, we took structural actions.

And I think sometimes people didn't fully appreciate how many structural actions we took in terms of the digital side, the transformation of the cost base, the network sharing.

Of course, the network sharing is yet to really show in the -- that 5-year time horizon, but will increasingly be a benefit going forward.

One of the other things we do which is not so obvious is we did something with Spain that we are adopting increasingly through our markets, which is we wanted to get -- we wanted to simplify the business inside from an IT perspective, cost perspective, et cetera.

To do that, you have to migrate your base on to forward book pricing and forward book tariffs.

And so Spain is a really good example where the base is on speed tiered unlimited now.

That's important because it means that we don't have this long legacy of lots of historical pricing, tariffs, et cetera, makes the tariffs people are on today's prices, so we are less vulnerable to today's pricing and promos.

The other thing that we did an investment on was to drive in-commitment, so there's a substantial step-up of in-commitment on the base versus 2 years ago.

So there's a number of things to make the actual customer base more resilient, which is why I think over the last 5 quarters, you're seeing a good customer base performance, which we can build on going forward.

Your next question comes from James Ratzer of New Street.

Would like to go back, if possible, please, to the point around EBITDA growth and the phasing of EBITDA.

In the full year guidance you've given, you pick out, I think, on Slide 17, headwinds from roaming and then what you call other COVID impacts.

I was wondering just specifically kind of what you're thinking about of those other COVID impacts because the commentary you've given so far actually sounded quite encouraging around B2B, so really trying to get an idea of what you see underlying EBITDA growth ex COVID at the moment.

And in terms of the phasing, just wondering what you can say about the synergies from Unity.

Because I noticed in the German slide, you said, I think, EUR 83 million of synergy gains.

But then in the commentary later in the presentation, you talk about I think it was EUR 257 million are now locked in.

So does that mean we are actually going to see the phasing impact from the Unity synergies start to accelerate from here on EBITDA?

Sure, James.

I'll start with Liberty and the synergies and then move on to EBITDA.

From a synergy perspective, when we talk about having locked in over EUR 250 million, which is around 50% of the target over 4 to 5 years, essentially, we mean that we have already negotiated, for example, in procurement the contractual condition that will deliver the savings or establish the plans in the business to deliver those savings.

This will come through gradually over time.

You have seen in the -- I think in the slide on Germany, the exact amount that has contributed to the German EBITDA in this half year, and we will continue, obviously, to report on that going forward.

As I mentioned earlier, we are very pleased with the speeds at which the synergies are being delivered at the moment.

We are about 6 months ahead out of the first 12 months of execution.

I need to say the teams have done a fantastic job there.

But clearly, it's a multiyear plan, 4 to 5 years to get to the final goal.

So I think we have a long road ahead of us.

And again, we will continue to report regularly on it.

As far as -- then your question was around EBITDA, what do we see going forward from COVID and is there something beyond roaming.

For roaming specifically, as I probably mentioned already earlier, less of a drag in the second half, maybe worse volume than in Q2 because of the lockdown.

And the other most significant impacts for us potentially are from the support that governments can give to businesses or consumers, in the case of Africa, for example, on the crisis.

And this support has been constant so far.

And therefore, we just want to draw out the fact that, that's what has been driving the trends that we have seen.

So for example, if you are thinking about the debt, we have called out that we didn't see a material impact on businesses so far.

Clearly, I think our customers are also prioritizing our services in the current crisis, and we would expect this to continue, but there may be also support that is coming from these packages.

And therefore, we need to be conscious of the fact that if some of these packages were going to stop or change significantly, that may affect our performance.

That's what we wanted to call out.

So would you be able to give an estimate in H1 of what you think your organic EBITDA growth was ex all COVID impacts?

I think it's probably simpler to stay on the ex roaming and visitors.

We've had internal debates as well on how to portray this.

And I need to say, I think it's always easier to point to a single line in the P&L that you can see without adding judgment elements to it.

So you have seen that EBITDA was minus 1.9% in the first half, and the drag from roaming was EUR 270 million, so it would have been positive around just under 2% ex the roaming drag.

Just narrowing it down to this, as you say, it wasn't the only impact because clearly the lockdowns affected us in Q1.

But I think it's the easiest metric to look at also because it will then pull off.

Your next question comes from Sam McHugh from Exane.

Just a quick one on enterprise, if I can.

So you flagged your returned to growth this quarter.

So when you look at European markets, where do you think you see the best scope for growth?

And on enterprise mobile, maybe you could just give us a bit of color about KPIs.

And the reason I ask is, increasingly, we do see corporates installing apps on phones and substituting the enterprise for maybe the consumer phone.

Now how should we think about deflation of the overall enterprise mobile market in the medium to long term?

Is this something you worry about?

Or you're pretty confident that you've got some great relationships, et cetera?

Sam, that's probably a question that could take an hour to answer.

Let me try and sort of pull a couple of points.

But first of all, I would say that we're seeing big demand from businesses, small and large.

Large customers predominantly wanting to upgrade capacity, wanting to upgrade next-generation connectivity.

That plays to our strength because we don't have the legacy products.

We're more front-book selling, so that's a positive for us.

Of course, we've got a very differentiated European footprint.

That's another addition.

We're the player you go to start that conversation.

So I would say we are definitely gaining share.

You can see that in the U.K. numbers where you see large corporate movement more substantially, I would say.

I'd say the second area is about SMEs, have all woken up to -- some [have] in SMEs, all woken up to digitization of their business model being critical.

And you're going to see part of the EU recovery fund targeted purely at SMEs and digital.

So we see like vouchers, for instance, in Italy is the first example, there will be many more of those.

And we want to stand for the champion for SME digitization.

So if you look at what we're doing on our website, et cetera, it's leaning into that long-term trend.

So we think that that's an advantage for us going forward.

And then I take third is just our own digital experience and the cloud and digital services.

So what some of the incumbents do is they try and create their own products.

What we said is, no, we need to get the very best of breed of those cloud and digital services, partner with the best in the market, bring it quickly in a suite, and we put a Vodafone wrap around that, and then sell it in as total solutions.

And I think it's more agile, it's more front of foot and it's lower capital need on us going forward.

Don't know if you have anything on this?

No.

Nothing.

It's perfect.

Your next question comes from Nick Delfas of Redburn.

Just one question from me on Net Promoter Scores.

You mentioned the Net promoter Scores for business, what's going on in consumer and, in particular, maybe country by country?

Yes.

Nick, I'm pleased you asked actually because what we've -- I think we had a very strong COVID response.

I think it was really acknowledged that we were -- showed leadership for our sector and just generally sectors.

We did all the right things, I think, for vulnerable, for SMEs, et cetera.

And so for the first time ever, we've seen such a big step-up on NPS.

So for both business and consumer, on average, across the European big 4, we've seen a 6 percentage point gain.

So it's been systematic.

Africa is systematic.

So yes, I think we're really delighted that not often you always get that immediate recognition of everything you do, but I think we landed it.

Yes.

I think also the fact that we were at a certain stage already in our digital transformation helps.

Because if I look at some actions that we were running across our markets, particularly in Southern Europe, our apps have become really the anchor point, for example, for customers.

And we have already developed full customer journeys to the app and for online than they could refer to.

And we could also somehow train the customers who weren't, for example, used to top-up online to just go to the app and do it, and I think the ease of use came across really strongly.

And the final thing I'd say is I've never had so many business customers turn to me and say the speed at which you got organized yourself working from home and then reached out to us to help us through what was at, for them, a big challenge of getting into a position of working from home.

And that's really -- it's ingrained in a lot of very C suite people, Vodafone were there to help them because they were in difficulties.

Our next question comes from Robert Grindle from Deutsche Bank.

I'd like to take you back to H1 results last year, if I might, which seems like a lifetime ago, but not so long in telco terms.

Back then, you flagged near-term CapEx on cloud, tower sharing, digital transformation, but raised the prospect that post full year '22 that we might be seeing CapEx fall.

So could we, post next year, see the double whammy of rising revenues, falling -- at least falling capital intensity, maybe even a triple if margins go up as well.

And a very quick follow-up on David's question on Egypt.

Nick, are you exposed to the cash-out for spectrum that just happened for the business?

Robert, on the -- one is on CapEx, let's say that we are pleased that we are progressing well this year with the 5G rollout, no impediments from COVID and we are executing within our EUR 5 billion of free cash flow guidance well.

If I look into FY '22 and beyond, I would say -- maybe I can call out a couple of moving parts.

I would say on one hand, I think we need to take into consideration the implementation of the EU toolkits on Huawei, which and we don't have clarity on yet.

On the other hand, I think you will see tomorrow through the presentation from Vivek the impacts of Vantage.

Vantage, I won't steal the thunder of Vivek, but has some very exciting growth opportunities that we want to take in terms of, if you want, growth CapEx.

This opportunity will, in turn, generate good or predictable cash flows for Vodafone.

And in total, I would say, not a very significant amount in the scale of our CapEx, but we need to take those into consideration when we do our next plans.

And then on the other hand, I think there are 2 other elements that will be at play.

First of all, network sharing deals probably as part of the discussion we were having in the past.

You know that they have a ramp-up phase that we're going through, and so we will see the benefits of the network sharing deals coming into play on our capital intensity soon.

And then probably worth mentioning also the EU recovery fund.

You know that a substantial portion of that is earmarked for digital or for -- also for green initiatives.

So we may have opportunities also coming from the European fund.

Now all this we'll put into our next long-range plan.

We will prepare a new plan for March, and we will update you in May on how the next 3 years will look like.

Yes.

And Robert, just on Egypt, very quickly.

I would say that, look, you know that in Egypt we're the #1 player.

We have about 40% market share in that market.

The other 2 players sort of in the high 20s, so a considerable leadership.

You saw in the auction that we skewed more spectrum than the others.

So all we're doing is extending our leadership in that market.

It enhances our long-range plan, and spectrum was a specific item in our discussion with stc.

Your final question comes from Jakob Bluestone of Crédit Suisse.

I had a question on operating leverage within the business.

You obviously talked a lot about how the synergy realization is coming through faster than expected and how you're sort of running a bit ahead of plan on some of the other cost-saving projects.

If I look at your service revenues, it was down by about EUR 120 million in the first 6 months and your EBITDA was down by about EUR 80 million.

So there's not a huge difference between the decline in your service revenues and your EBITDA.

And if I look on Slide 15, it looks like there's a sort of EUR 100 million increase in other costs.

So can you maybe comment a little bit on what are some of these other cost pressures you're seeing?

Is that something you expect to continue?

And more broadly, should we be expecting to see more operating leverage going forward given the various cost measures that you've got in the pipeline?

So Jakob, I think we'll have the opportunity to have order reviews where we can go into maybe more details of all the moving part.

But let me just say that, through COVID, we had some revenue movement which had high intensity of direct cost implications that may not be the, I would say, normal revenue movement.

So for example, in the lockdowns in the first quarter, there was a sudden jump in incoming traffic, which generates revenues but no margin because, clearly, it's reciprocal.

Equally, we have talked about roaming and the roaming that, if you want, is still happening is very much intra-European roaming, which has revenues but equally costs, and therefore, ratios which are not the normal ones that you will see in the business.

So you have a number of areas which are a little bit skewed from COVID, which is why your equation revenues minus OpEx is almost missing a part.

But we can go into more detail, if you want, with the actual numbers in front of us.

So given that was our last question, can I take the opportunity of thanking you all for joining Margherita and myself.

We'll have the opportunity to spend more time with you and our investors over the coming weeks.

Look, today was about demonstrating the resilience of Vodafone, the commercial momentum that we have off the back of the actions that we've taken to strategically transform Vodafone.

We're 2 years in to a long-term strategy, but we're making progress at speed.

Clearly, more to do, but we look forward to that continued dialogue.

Take care and stay safe.