Vodafone has written off up to £28bn from its balance
sheet and warned that it faces a slowdown in sales growth as a
result of increased competition.
The company has also said future sales will be affected by
national regulators forcing the it to reduce the charges it levies
against other mobile and fixed operators, for putting their callers
through to its customers.
The European Commission is also determined to bring down
international mobile roaming charges for customers, which the
Commission and most customers feel are too high.
The world’s biggest mobile operator is to take a hit of between
£23bn and £28bn to address an assets over-evaluation, mainly
related to the assets it acquired with the £112bn takeover of
Germany’s Mannesmann in 2000.
Vodafone said increased competition would see sales growth slow
to between 5% and 6.5% in the year to March 2007. Previous
forecasts for 2006 had been between 6% and 9%.
As a result, profit margins will slip in the next financial
year, said Vodafone. The company said that this year's results
would be unaffected by its latest business outlook.