Vodafone makes £12.6bn pre-tax profit

Vodafone today reported Group pre-tax profits of £12.6bn, but with the wave of the accountants' wands this turned into a loss of £9bn.

Despite taking these horrendous losses the company is to buy out its partners in Japan for £2.6bn, spend another £3bn buying back its own shares and boost the dividend by 20 per cent. It has already spent £1.1bn since last November in share buy-backs.

The £9bn loss was achieved by taking a goodwill amortisation of £15.2bn.

The headline figures were an increase in turnover of 10 per cent to £33.6bn with mobile turnover making up £31.7bn; a 15 per cent increase in the year; profit on ordinary activities up 19 per cent to £10bn.

The company has added 13.7 million direct mobile customers to hit a total of 133.4 million as of 31 March. And Vodafone can claim another 340 million customers if you add in those from all its joint ventures worldwide.

Vodafone continues its gentle move into 3G with a challenge to 3 in Italy tomorrow. TIM has already made an announcement today of its 3G offering as a spoiler.

The company is pushing its data-card-based 3G services in seven European countries and will continue to roll out full 3G based on the Samsung Z105 handset. This is currently available in Germany and Portugal and will be offered in Italy and Spain as of today.

Vodafone is doing well with its data services. Data revenues were up 25 per cent to £4.5bn and represent 16 per cent of service revenues. The company yesterday announced a major content deal with Sony.