José M. Rodríguez Silva

Updated Monday, February 5, 2024-08:57

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  • Interview Eammon O'Hare, president of Zegona: "We will invest 3,000 million in Vodafone Spain in four years"

Vodafone Spain recorded

its first quarter of revenue growth since 2021

in the last quarter of the year , which will be the last results presented by the group after the sale of the Spanish subsidiary to Zegona.

However, the company continued to lose ground in the traditional business of telephone and Internet service sales to end the year billing

3,453 million euros in service revenue, 2.67% less

than in fiscal year 2022.

The company today presented the results of its third accounting quarter (it closes its fiscal year in March) which closes with a slight rebound of 0.2% in total revenues for the period between October and December for a total of

973 million euros

.

The sale of electronic devices

during Black Friday and the Christmas campaign, together with the boost in mobile acquisition, where 29,000 customers have joined, have served as an incentive for the return of positive signs, although it has been achieved by reducing more from 10% over the course of a year to an average monthly payment (ARPU) of 11.1 euros per customer.

Heads and tails

One piece of positive news that the current management team will leave to the new owners is

the return to growth in profitability

in its business division, one of the flagships for Zegona, as revealed by its president,

Eamonn O'Hare

in an interview with

Actualidad .

Economical

.

The sale of digital services and the

acquisition of new contracts in the public sector

have increased both the profitability and income of this division, which continues to have the Internet of Things as a growth engine, with 429,000 new lines.

On the negative side,

the company lost another 24,000 fiber optic customers

, falling below the 2.8 million users in this segment and

18,000 television

users , a field where the company is in the midst of reformulating its offer, carrying, for example football to the bars again.

More worrying for the group's commercial dynamics is the

slowdown of Lowi

, which has remained stagnant at 1.7 million customers due to the "greater pressure of ultra-lowcost", a recurring problem for large operators and, specifically, Vodafone in the last years. This led the company to redesign the offer with more mobile data, which has generated new

commercial momentum

in January, according to Vodafone.

FAREWELL TO SPAIN

Spain and Italy have been the only two markets in which the Vodafone Group has not managed to improve its service income during this quarter, an example of why the entity has already sold its Spanish division and is negotiating the same with the Italian one.

The group has been unable to redirect the commercial situation in recent years. Proof of this is that the group accumulated 2,900 million euros of revenue in its first three quarters, which

predicts a new year closing below 4,000 million euros

of turnover when, in 2021, the last year of growth, this figure exceeded the 4,200 million euros.

However, Vodafone's departure from Spain will not be complete.

Zegona has a contract to maintain the brand for 10 years

and will also continue to pay more than 110 million euros annually in service contracts to the British group, which will also maintain its R&D center in Malaga and other businesses.

The fund hopes to close the operation in the first quarter of the year, for which it needs the approval of the Government and the Secretary of State for Telecommunications.