Vodafone 2012 Annual Report Download - page 35
Download and view the complete annual report
Please find page 35 of the 2012 Vodafone annual report below. You can navigate through the pages in the report by either clicking on the pages listed below, or by using the keyword search tool below to find specific information within the annual report.Performance Governance Financials Additional informationBusiness review
33
Vodafone Group Plc
Annual Report 2012
Discipline of regular business reviews
We regularly review the cash needs of
eachofour existing businesses across
theglobe, taking into account their
performance andcompetitive position.
Wemake capital investments, such as
fornewequipment or spectrum, in our
businessesto improve their performance
anddrive organic growth.
Returns to shareholders
We thoroughly review the best ways to
providereturns to our shareholders. We have
atarget of increasing dividends per share
byatleast 7% a year until the nancial year
ending 31 March 2013. When we have
surplusfunds we consider additional returns
toshareholders through special dividends
orshare buyback programmes.
Selective acquisitions
When managing capital we also consider
whether to strengthen the Group by
acquiringother companies to increase
ouroperations in a particular market.
Allpotential acquisitions are judged on strict
nancial and commercial criteria, especially
whether they would provide meaningful
scalein a particular segment, the cost of
theacquisition and the ability to enhance
theGroup’s free cash ow.
£0.9bn
In the last two years we have taken
outsome £0.9billion from the cost base
which hasbeen used in part to offset
inationary pressures orcope with the
volume of extra trafc on ournetworks.
The net saving has been around
£0.3billion, which has been partly
usedto invest in commercial activities.
Deliver value and
efciencyfromscale
Vodafone is one of the world’s largest
mobilecompanies. Our networks support
404 million customers and carry nearly one
trillion minutes of callsand 324 billion texts
each year. Our scale enables usto secure
considerable unit costsavings invarious
ways including purchasing, standardisation
ofprocesses, off-shoring activities to
lowercost locations, outsourcingnon-core
activities to third parties and sharing
common resources withother operators.
Generate liquidity or
free cash owfrom
non-controlled interests
In 2010 we identied six non-controlled
assets in which Vodafone was the
minoritypartner, that would either be
soldorfrom which we extract additional
cash ow in order to fund protable
investment or enhance shareholder returns.
Since 2010 we have made considerable
progress in this strategy by raising a total
of£17.7 billion from the sale of assets
andadditional dividends.
Apply rigorous
capital discipline to
investment decisions
We are focused on enhancing returns to
our shareholders and are therefore careful
how we invest shareholders’ money.
We apply rigorous commercial analysis
and set demanding investment criteria
to ensure that any investment, whether
in existing businesses or acquisitions,
will enhance value for shareholders.
Weremain committed to our target
creditrating of low single A for long-term
debt as this provides us with a low cost of
debt and good access to liquidity.
Purchasing
We use the Vodafone Procurement Company,
the central Group procurement function based
in Luxembourg to leverage our scale and to
achieve better prices and more value.
Standardisation
We have developed one integrated data centre
cloud across Europe and Africa and are well
underway to extending it to Asia this year which
enables us to operate highly resilient services
and to be faster to market with our new services.
Off-shoring
We use shared service centres in Hungary,
Indiaand Egypt to provide nancial,
administrative, IT,customer operations and
human resource services for our operations in
over 30 countries which helps us to standardise
and optimise the way we run our businesses.
Outsourcing
We have outsourced day-to-day network
maintenance in ten countries enabling
signicant scale economies for the chosen
supplier which are passed on to us in the form
oflower costs.
Sharing
Over 70% of the new radio base station sites
deployed this year were built as shared sites
with other operators to reduce costs.
Businesses we have recently sold
In September 2010 we sold our 3.2% stake
inChina Mobile Limited for £4.3 billion.
In November 2010 we agreed to sell our
remaining interest in SoftBank of Japan
for£2.9billion and the transaction was
completedin April 2012.
In June 2011 we sold our 44% holding in
SFRofFrance for £6.8 billion.
In November 2011 we sold our 24.4% share
ofPolkomtel in Poland for £0.8 billion.
Dividends received from our
non-controlled assets
In January 2012 we received a £2.9 billion
income dividend from our 45% interest in
Verizon Wireless in the US. £2.0 billion of this
was paid to Vodafone shareholders in the form
of a special dividend. This was the rst income
dividend received since 2005.
Remaining non-controlled interests
We retain an indirect 4.4% interest in Bharti
inIndia.
The proceeds raised from non-controlled
interests are being used to fund the current
£6.8 billion share buyback programme,
ofwhich £5.7 billion wascompleted at
31March 2012.
2010
2011
2012
5.7
7.6
0.5
0.5
3.0
Dividends and sale proceeds
fromnon-controlled interests
£bn
Income dividend from non-controlled interests
Cash received from the sale of non-controlled interests
4.6Ordinary dividends paid
Share buyback
Special dividend paid
3.6
2.0
Returns to shareholders 2012 £bn