Vodafone Group has reported revenue €10.996 billion (–6.8 percent) or $12.45 billion in the third quarter of fiscal 2018-19 as it faced business challenges in Italy, Spain and South Africa.

Vodafone generated revenue of €8.145 billion (–5.6 percent) from Europe and €2.547 billion (–11.1 percent) from Rest of the World for the third quarter ended 31 December 2018.

The €0.8 billion drop in revenue was due to foreign exchange headwinds of €0.2 billion, €0.4 billion dip due to the adoption of IFRS 15 (which nets certain components of dealer commissions from service revenues) and an impact of €0.1 billion after the sale of Vodafone Qatar.

Today’s announcement does not include Vodafone Idea’s sales figures. Vodafone Idea will announce its financial results in February.

Vodafone generated 49 percent of service revenues from Europe Consumer, 30 percent from Vodafone Business and 16 percent from Emerging Consumer in Q3.

Revenue performance in Q3

Vodafone Business 0.5% drop
Germany 1.1% increase
Italy 4.6% drop
UK 0.9% increase
Spain 7.4% dip
Other Europe 2.2% increase
Vodacom Group 1.5% increase
Turkey 14.8% increase

Vodafone’s main achievement in Q3 was the reduction of 2.0 percentage points year-on-year in mobile contract churn. Vodafone achieved 747,000 mobile contracts, 341,000 broadband users and 190,000 converged customers in Q3.

Vodafone CEO Nick Read said: “We have executed at pace this quarter and have improved the consistency of our commercial performance. Lower mobile contract churn across our markets and improved customer trends in Italy and Spain are encouraging.”

M-Pesa, its African payments platform, achieved 14 percent growth in active subscribers to 37 million with 27 percent increase in transaction volumes in Q3.

Vodafone digital transformation

Vodafone aims to achieve target of €400 million reduction in operating expenses in Europe and Common Functions during FY19 and €1.2 billion reduction in operating expenses by FY21.