LONDON, March 24, 2026, 18:14 GMT
London-listed Vodafone Group shares closed up 2.18% at 110.10 pence on Tuesday, outpacing the FTSE 100’s 0.72% rise. Even after the move, the stock sat roughly 9% below the 52-week high it reached on Feb. 18. 1
The gain matters because Vodafone is heading into full-year results on May 12, with the current 500 million euro buyback due to end the day before. A buyback, or share repurchase, cuts the share count, and Vodafone has said this programme is meant to reduce share capital. 2
Company filings over the past day underlined that effort. Vodafone said on Monday it had cancelled 549,582,168 treasury shares, cutting the stock it held in treasury to 1,223,859,452, and a filing on Tuesday showed Goldman Sachs bought another 2 million shares on March 23 at a volume-weighted average price of 107.92 pence. 3
Vodafone told investors on Feb. 5 it was still on track for the upper end of its full-year earnings and cash-flow ranges after third-quarter group service revenue rose 5.4%. Service revenue — the core income from customer telecom services — grew just 0.7% in Germany, while the UK slipped 0.5%. 4
Chief Executive Margherita Della Valle said then that Germany was improving, though competition remained tough, and that the integration of Three in Britain was making “very good progress”. She also said Vodafone expected “good growth this year” from the UK venture. 5
Vodafone has been reshaping its footprint at the same time. In February it agreed to sell its 50% stake in VodafoneZiggo to Liberty Global for 1 billion euros in cash and a 10% holding in the new Ziggo Group, a deal Della Valle called an “attractive valuation”; Liberty Global’s parallel move in UK fibre added another challenge for BT’s Openreach. 6
The broader tape helped on Tuesday. European telecom stocks led sector gains, up 2.5%, even as traders wrestled with the fallout from Middle East tensions and weak euro zone business surveys. 7
But buybacks and asset sales do not settle the bigger issue for Vodafone: whether its operating recovery, especially in Germany, can keep going. Bloomberg said analysts had expected 1.02% German growth in the third quarter, above Vodafone’s reported 0.7%, leaving little room for another soft patch. 8
The next clean test comes on May 12, when Vodafone reports FY26 results. By then, investors will be looking past treasury mechanics and into whether the operating numbers are catching up. 9
