Vodafone

1.0 Introduction

The boom years in mobile phone market are over but nobody can tell with certainty if days of glory will ever come back in this volatile market which is desperately looking for its identity. A new beginning is what everyone expects to see in this highly competitive market that is surrounded by uncertainty, risky investments and a not so optimistic future. This report will concentrate on one of the big players in the mobile phone market, “Vodafone Group Plc”, and its financial position. It will also provide a closer look and evaluate the financial performance of �Vodafone Group Plc’, through the detailed analysis of the firms’ annual reports and financial statements.

Financial analysis gives users an overall understanding of why the company is performing the way it does, and helps the management to identify deficiencies and then take actions to improve performance. Financial reports often carry a huge amount of information and it is difficult for even experienced and trained users of annual reports to make much sense of them. It is probably almost impossible, for the average shareholder to do so, as well. In this report Vodafone’s financial performance will be critically evaluated, through the use of ratios, a method which enables you to screen the information rapidly and simplifies the assimilation of the crucial aspects of a firm’s performance (Bill Rees, 1990). Ratio analysis has been conducted for the last two years (2002-2003) and it is based on five different aspects of