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LONDON (Alliance News) - Vodafone Group PLC said Wednesday its revenue in the first quarter fell but reiterated its preferred measure of full-year profit will rise.
The FTSE 100-listed telecommunications company's revenue in the quarter ended June decreased 4.9% to EUR10.91 billion from EUR11.47 the year before.
Vodafone said the year-on-year drop was due to the adoption of the IFRS 15 accounting standard and foreign exchange headwinds.
Statutory revenue in Europe declined 4.0% to GBP7.97 billion from GBP8.30 billion. In Africa, Middle East & Asia-Pacific, revenue decreased 7.9% to GBP2.65 billion from GBP2.88 billion.
Vodafone's organic service revenue grew 1.1% based on IFRS 15. On an IAS 18 accounting basis, organic revenue increased 0.3%.
The telecommunications company's data traffic grew 57% in the three months ended June - with a 56% growth in Europe and 58% growth in Africa, Middle East & Asia-Pacific.
According to the company, data traffic in India quadrupled after a steep decline in data prices.
The overall increase in data traffic is mainly due to increased smartphone usage - Vodafone customers globally now use an average of 3.3 gigabytes data per month.
Trading in the first was quarter was in line with expectations, said the telephone firm. As a result, Vodafone reiterated its expectation that organic adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation will grow by 1% to 5%.
This expectation is made on an IAS 18 basis but Vodafone does not expect IFRS 15 to have a material impact on EBITDA growth.
Chief Executive Vittorio Colao said: "The group's organic service revenue growth slowed during the first quarter, in line with expectations. The majority of our operations performed well, with ongoing momentum in Germany, further underlying recovery in the UK and continued good growth in Africa, Middle East & Asia-Pacific, all of which helped to offset increased competition in Italy and Spain.
"Our commercial performance was solid, with further broadband market share gains in Europe, a record number of customers adopting our converged propositions, and the continued success of our world-leading IoT platform. In India, where competition remains intense, we have now received conditional approval from the Department of Telecoms for the merger of Vodafone India and Idea Cellular, which we aim to close before the end of August, allowing us to unlock substantial synergies.
"The group's overall performance - including good progress in reducing absolute operating costs for the third year running - provides us with the confidence to reiterate our outlook for the year."
Shares in Vodafone were down 0.5% Wednesday at 176.78 pence each.
