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Telecom giant Vodafone reported a fall in annual underlying earnings, in line with its guidance, and held its dividend steady after weaker roaming demand due to travel restrictions weighed on sales.
At the bottom line level, the company swung to a profit for the year through March of €536 million, compared to a year-on-year loss of €455 million when it wrote down the value of Indian assets.
Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, deprecation and amortisation fell 1.2% to €14.39 billion as revenue fell 2.6% to €43.81 billion.
Services revenue edged down 0.1% to €37.14 billion.
Vodafone left its annual dividend unchanged at 9c per share.
Looking forward, Vodafone forecast underlying EBTIDA for the current financial year of between €15.0 billion and €15.4 billion, and adjusted free cash flow of at least €5.2 billion.
'I am pleased that we achieved full year results in line with our guidance and we exited the year with accelerating service revenue growth across the business, with a particularly good performance in our largest market, Germany,' chief executive Nick Read said.
'The world has changed. The pandemic has shown how critical connectivity and digital services are to society.'
'Vodafone is strongly positioned and through increased investment, we are taking action now to ensure we play a leadership role and capture the opportunities that these changes create.'
'The increased demand for our services supports our ambition to grow revenues and cash flow over the medium-term.'
'We remain fully focused on driving shareholder returns through deleveraging, improving our return on capital, and a firm commitment to our dividend.'