Vodafone has notched up its first growth in full-year revenue and earnings since 2008, driven by international growth and an investment splurge.
Revenues grew 2.3% to £40.9 billion and earnings were up 2.7% to £11.6 billion, boosted by operations in South Africa, Egypt and Turkey.
The firm added that it has concluded its "Project Spring" investment programme, which has seen the world's second-largest mobile phone operator invest £19 billion on network upgrades.
Chief executive Vittorio Colao said: ''This has been a year of strong execution for the group, returning to organic growth in both revenue and EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) for the first time since 2008.
"We have now successfully concluded our Project Spring organic investment programme. This has transformed the quality of our technology, enhancing our customers' experience and enabling us to expand our Enterprise services."
Four quarter group service revenues increased 2.5% in the fourth quarter as Germany and Italy returned to growth.
On a pre-tax basis, Vodafone made a loss of £449 million.
Steve Clayton, head of equity research at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: "A return to growth in Germany and Italy has helped to offset the relatively flat picture in Europe overall. The UK remains a laggard, where Vodafone has seen its position marginalised by the likes of BT.
"Vodafone's efforts are still not really translating into revenue growth. Project Spring came and went, with billions invested, but precious little evidence has so far emerged of revenues growing as a result. But it is not all bad news, Vodafone continues to pay a strong dividend and had investors reinvested those dividends over the last ten years, they would have enjoyed a double digit annual return on their investment."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here