Highlights

• Group revenue of €11.0 billion, down by €0.8 billion due to the adoption of IFRS15, the sale of Qatar and FX headwinds
• Q3 organic service revenue growth (excluding UK handset financing, IAS 18 basis) of 0.1%** (Q2: 0.5%**); on an IFRS15 basis, growth was 0.4%* (Q2: 0.3%*)
• Similar performance to Q2 in Europe, with service revenues -1.1%**, reflecting improving customer and financial trends in Italy, robust retail growth in Germany, reduced churn in Spain and a consistent performance in the UK
• Rest of World grew 4.9%* (Q2: 7.7%*), as a decline in South Africa was offset by good growth in other markets
• Robust commercial momentum across the Group: mobile contract churn reduced by 2.0 percentage points year-on-year; 747,000 mobile contract and 341,000 broadband net additions, converged base up by 190,000 in Q3
• Intention to extend our existing UK network sharing agreement with Telefonica O2 to include 5G services
• Guidance reiterated: underlying organic adjusted EBITDA growth of c.3%; free cash flow (pre-spectrum) c.€5.4 billion

Nick Read, Group Chief Executive, commented:

“We have executed at pace this quarter and have improved the consistency of our commercial performance. Lower mobile contract churn across our markets and improved customer trends in Italy and Spain are encouraging, however these have not yet translated into our financial results, with a similar revenue trend in Europe to Q2. We enjoyed good growth across our emerging markets with the exception of South Africa, which was impacted by our pricing transformation initiatives and a challenging macroeconomic environment. Overall, this performance underpins our confidence in our full year guidance.

We are moving to implement a radically simpler operating model and to accelerate our digital transformation, as demonstrated by the organisational changes we have announced in Spain and the UK. We are also assessing opportunities across our markets to improve asset utilisation through partnering. This week we announced the intention to extend our existing network sharing agreement with Telefonica O2 in the UK to include 5G services. This will enable us to deploy 5G services to more customers over a wider geographic area, and to do so at a lower cost. After these arrangements have been finalised, we also intend to explore opportunities to monetise our UK tower assets”.