Business dynamics always throw winners and losers. Companies enjoying their moment of glory and others forced to transform seek solutions to cap their losses. Vodafone is in this last situation, which seeks to redirect its image, marked by commercial calls, and to escape the burden of some of its past decisions such as the purchase of ONO and the failure to close an operation with MásMóvil.

The operator has lost 400,000 customers in the first half of the year, more than in all of 2022. To correct it, it has renewed its management team with the aim of correcting the commercial course that has been in decline for several years. In fact, the firm has lost customers in fixed broadband for three years, while in the mobile business it has shown itself to be more resistant, influenced by the rise of Internet of Things lines. However, until MásMóvil and Orange complete their operation, the rest of the pieces on the Spanish board are not expected to move.

FROM ONO TO TODAY

Precisely, several market sources point to another operation to find the origin of the firm's ills: the purchase of Ono in 2014, a cable company, a key technology in times of ADSL, but which has lost its validity in favor of fiber optics to connect homes.

This decision has left Vodafone with just three million homes covered by fiber and seven million by cable, compared to 17 million for Orange and 28 million for Telefónica. In addition, the acquisition of Ono meant a notable increase in the group's workforce, which resulted in several EREs to reduce costs and adapt the structure to the business that have limited Vodafone's investment capacity in other areas.

Precisely, the decision to bet on the cable, attributed to London, connects with another of the problems that the company has experienced: an excessive dependence on its parent company in management that has caused a high turnover in the management positions of the Spanish subsidiary.

The other decision questioned in the market was his resignation from football in 2018 due to its high price. The decision seemed to pay off in the early years, where the operator managed to differentiate itself on television by being the first to close agreements to distribute the streaming platforms, however it has finally left the operator in no man's land between operators with soccer and low-cost.

COURSE CHANGE

Among the first movements since the arrival of Mário Vaz, the new CEO, is the return to subsidizing mobile terminals, a measure aimed at winning back the highest value customer in a market where low cost reduces the customer base of the big brands.

At a discursive level, the new management has highlighted the need to improve the brand image -a recent study by the OCU placed Vodafone's fixed broadband customers as the second most dissatisfied- with a simplified digital experience.

To do this, they have come to cut relations with some subcontractors that were not respecting the protocols established by the company, which, for example, is attached to the commercial code of ethics between operators that prohibits, among other things, calls at siesta time.. Company sources point out that the new management is “radically” halting the loss of customers with these measures and they trust that they will move to positive figures in the coming months.

In the positive news section for the group, the company continues to maintain a strong position in the business market, where it ranks second in the market and continues to grow in multiple fields, from services for SMEs to IoT.

In parallel, Vodafone has doubled its commitment to Spain as a key technology hub for the group with major investments such as 225 million euros for an innovation center in Malaga, which add to the 700 million euros invested in the infrastructure of its traditional business each year.. In this way, Spain has become a key point for the entire Vodafone group to develop new services and host high-tech projects, a niche with increasing weight in the company's business.. Thus, the company has been selected to receive European funds with which it will design new Open RAN chips in the Andalusian city.