Mobile networks operator Vodafone has looked at spinning off its entire emerging markets unit, which includes its interests in India, Africa, New Zealand, Qatar and Turkey, but decided the synergies it gives justified keeping the group together, Chief Executive Vittorio Colao said on Wednesday.
The size and scope of Vodafone’s worldwide operations were in the spotlight this summer when it was in talks with European cable operator Liberty Global about an unspecified exchange of assets.
After the talks collapsed, analysts and bankers said the separation of the emerging market division would make it easier to do a deal with Liberty over its core European operations.
Speaking on Wednesday at an investor conference held by Morgan Stanley in Barcelona, Colao said Vodafone’s board regularly reviewed the company’s set-up but decided in its most recent deliberations that a split would not create value.
“We’re open-minded. If one day there is a better option we will look at it,” he added.
The news comes as Vodafone Qatar reported a widening second-quarter loss on Thursday as its revenue fell.
The operator made a net loss of 113.6 million riyals ($31.20 million) in the three months to September 30, Reuters calculated based on its half-year financial statement.
That compares with a loss of 53.5 million riyals in the prior-year period, according to Reuters calculations. Vodafone Qatar’s financial year starts on April 1.
Two analysts had forecast Vodafone Qatar would make a quarterly loss of between 90.0 million riyals and 102.2 million riyals.
Vodafone Qatar has yet to make a quarterly net profit since ending state-controlled Ooredoo’s domestic monopoly in 2009.
Vodafone Qatar’s losses had been consistently diminishing, but that trajectory has faltered of late. Its losses have now widened for four straight quarters, year-on-year; a trend chief executive Kyle Whitehill told Reuters in September was due to a “significant slowdown in the market in terms of growth”.
Vodafone Qatar generated revenue of 528.1 million riyals in its second quarter, versus 559.2 million riyals in the prior-year period, according to Reuters calculations.
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