Vodafone will lay off 11,000 of its workers over the next three years, as part of a restructuring and growth plan for the operator, which will also serve to simplify the company’s corporate structure. This has been stated by the new Vodafone CEO Margherita Della Valle.
In addition, the operator, which currently has approximately 104,000 employees, will work to reverse the situation in which its division in Germany finds itself, and will carry out what it has described as a strategic review of its Spanish subsidiary. Several weeks ago it was made public that Vodafone Spain had attracted the interest of several potential buyers.
Della Valles is a professional who has been working for Vodafone for 29 years, and before finally taking over the position of CEO of the operator last month, she was responsible for finances. Her objective is to reverse the situation the company is in, which has suffered a sustained drop in the value of its shares, and is facing difficulties in consolidating its operations globally.
The directive has also ensured that, as part of its plan, the operator will redistribute resources to focus on improving the quality of service, as well as the growth of the company’s business subsidiary, Vodafone Business. Della Valle acknowledges that his performance «it hasn’t been good enough. To contribute consistently, Vodafone must change«, to point out later that their priorities «are customers, simplicity and growth«.
Vodafone has also presented its results, which show that its free cash flow fell 31% to 3.3 billion euros in the company’s fiscal year that ended in March. This comes after several divestments, but also because of “expected movements of working capital«. Much of the drop is due to a change in German law, which affects how Vodafone can charge customers.
The company’s income before interest, taxes, depreciation and rental amortization for the fiscal year ending in March was 13.3 billion euros. Vodafone has described them as flat, after taking into account the partial sale of the mobile phone tower division Vantage Towers and the divestment of its subsidiary in Hungary.
As if these difficulties weren’t enough for Della Valle, the company also has to deal with several new shareholders in the telecommunications sector. Some of them are already making it known that they want to have more influence in the direction of the operator. According to Bloomberg, the Emirates Telecommunications Groupbacked by the United Arab Emirates, is now the majority shareholder of Vodafonewhich has led to the group’s CEO, former company manager Hatem Dowidar, joining Vodafone’s board of directors as a non-executive director.
