4287 days ago
Robert Sutherland Smith started his City career the year before I was born. He is, I think, 157 years old. He and I have worked together for almost eight years at t1ps.com . He is my friend and he is a very funny and intelligent chap. He is now branching out to celebrate his 158th by doing some freelance writing over at TradingResearchPoint on FTSE 350 Income stocks. Robert is a speaker at the UKInvestor Show on April 13th. He is a great one for focussing on yield. RSS today looks at Vodafone.
Vodafone (VOD) is at the cutting edge of the application of digital information technology which it supplies to a world of clamouring, fastidious consumer demand. The mobile phone is taking and increasing share of Internet communications business including data transmission, the latest commercial opportunity and phone company objective, from PC’s laptops and tablets. It is transformational; exciting stuff socially and economically.
By the logic of the scale of its worldwide operations it is a utility which has to compete not only on investment and innovation but also on price. Each year it needs to square the commercial circle of keeping a large number of people happy: its customers; regulators; governments and of course its investors. Doing all of those things simultaneously requires enterprising, athletic management. Vodafone shares have traveled in a short period of time, from being a highly rated company without much in the way of profits, to becoming a lowly rated share with a modest price to earnings ratio and a high historic (for the year to 31 March 2012) annual dividend yield of 5.9%; considerably higher than that currently offered by tobacco company equity – for many years the staple of high dividend payouts.
