Service revenue, or income from organic growth, mergers and acquisitions, increased 12.9 percent in the quarter ending Dec. 31, Vodafone said on its Web site Thursday. The company did not say whether the comparison was quarter-on-quarter or year-on-year.

 

“The growth was driven by incoming mobile voice revenue and an improving trend in outgoing mobile voice revenue,” the company said in its statement.

 

“In Africa and Central Europe, service revenue fell 0.5 percent, a 3.4 percentage point improvement on the previous quarter driven by a return to service revenue growth in Turkey and continued robust growth at Vodacom [5.5 percent],” the statement added.

 

However, the company said, “Continued solid growth in Vodacom and a much improved performance in Turkey were more than offset by revenue declines in Central Europe.”

 

Cash before license and spectrum payments globally in the year ending March will be between 6.5 billion pounds ($10.3 billion) and 7 billion pounds, the Newbury, England-based company said. In November, Vodafone had forecast cash to be around the upper end of a range of 6 billion to 6.5 billion pounds.

 

Vodafone Chief Executive Officer Vittorio Colao is reducing expenses to offset a slide in demand for telecommunications services in some countries. Vodafone said in November that its 1 billion-pound cost-reduction program would be delivered a year ahead of schedule and that the company planned a further 1 billion pounds of cost savings by 2012.

 

Global sales in the three months ending Dec. 31 rose 10.3 percent, to 11.5 billion pounds, Vodafone said.

 

ISTANBUL - Bloomberg