What’s up with… Vodafone, BT, MTN

• Vodafone’s stock dips despite healthy growth 
• BT on course to hit medium-term targets
• MTN lines up $2bn towers acquisition

In today’s industry news roundup: Vodafone reports healthy fiscal Q3 growth but sees its share price tumble; BT sticks to its forecasts as its UK-focused revamp continues; MTN is in talks to acquire outright ownership of IHS Holdings; and more!

In an industry where many revenue gains are in the low single digits, Vodafone Group can feel pleased with its year-on-year increase in fiscal third-quarter organic (like-for-like) service revenues of 5.4% to €8.5bn, courtesy of “strong contributions” from its operations in Turkey and Africa, where the telco’s operations recorded organic service revenue growth of 13.5%. Group organic adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) increased by 2.3% to €2.8bn. The operator is still struggling for meaningful growth in its largest market, Germany, where service revenues for the three months to the end of December 2025 increased by just 0.7% to €2.73bn. And although Vodafone noted its momentum means it expects “to deliver the upper end of our FY26 guidance ranges of adjusted EBITDAaL of €11.3 to €11.6bn and adjusted free cash flow of €2.4 to €2.6bn,” the telco’s share price dipped by 7.25% to 106 pence on the London Stock Exchange.  

UK national operator BT Group continues to build for its future, noting in its fiscal third-quarter trading report that it rolled out its fibre access network to more than 1 million premises for the eighth successive quarter, taking the total number of premises reached by its fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) network to 21.4 million (of which 5.9 million are in rural areas). The telco expects that total to reach 25 million by the end of 2026. But competition in the wholesale broadband market is eating into its Openreach business, which expects to lose a net total of 850,000 broadband connections for the full financial year that ends in March, though such losses had been predicted (and had in fact been expected to be even greater). Total group revenues dipped by 4% to £4.98bn and adjusted EBITDA slipped slightly to £2.08bn, but those numbers had also been anticipated and BT says it remains on track to meet its financial outlook and guidance metrics for this year as well as its cash flow target of £2bn for next year and £3bn by the end of the decade. That was enough reassurance to help BT’s share price edge up slightly on the London Stock Exchange to 206 pence. 

MTN Group, which has operations in 19 markets across Africa and the Middle East, has informed investors that it is in “advanced discussions” to acquire the 75% stake in tower operating company IHS Holdings that it doesn’t already own. Such a transaction would cost about $2bn. IHS Holdings operates more than 37,000 towers across seven markets in Africa and Latin America, including Nigeria, Cameroon and South Africa.  

BICS, part of the Proximus Global portfolio, has struck a partnership with Swiss secure connectivity solutions provider Anapaya to develop and deploy next-generation networking solutions that will be built into the BICS global backbone, which includes key points of presence in Belgium, France, Singapore and the US. Anapaya’s solution is based on SCION (scalability, control, and isolation on next-generation networks), a new internet architecture with a core focus on security and trust, which aims to give enterprises and organisations direct control over traffic routing to tackle potential regulatory or security concerns brought about when traffic unintentionally crosses national borders. Through the partnership, BICS will offer Anapaya’s SCION-based routing to its enterprise customers in highly regulated environments, such as financial services, utilities and healthcare.

– The staff, TelecomTV