Hello everyone, and welcome to our FY 2022 interim results presentation. I'm pleased to report that our performance in the first half is demonstrating sustainable growth in both our European and African businesses. I will provide a short summary of the highlights before Margherita presents our financial and commercial performance for the half. I will then rejoin you to provide an update on our strategic progress and outline our operational and portfolio priorities, which ensure Vodafone is structured for value creation for our shareholders. There are four key areas I would like to highlight today. First, our financial performance in the half demonstrates the sustainable growth engine we are building, and we are growing in line with our expectations for the year and midterm financial ambition. Importantly, we are regaining commercial momentum following the negative impact we have faced from the pandemic over the past 18 months.
In particular, we have delivered good commercial performance in consumer mobile across Europe and continue to progress on customer loyalty. Second, we have delivered broad-based growth in revenues, profits, and return on capital, which is a direct consequence of the systematic execution of our growth strategy. Third, in addition, I want to take the opportunity to emphasize where our operational and portfolio focus is for the year ahead. Fourth, we are committed to improving returns for shareholders through sustained growth and targeted portfolio action. Following the systematic progress we have made over the last three years, I'd like to thank our global team for their dedication in navigating the COVID pandemic whilst delivering a good financial performance in the half.
We have grown service revenue by 2.8%, grown adjusted EBITDA by 6.5%, and grown pre-tax return on capital by 80 basis points to 6.3%, which is now back to pre-pandemic levels. Given this broad-based growth, you will hear from Margherita later that we are on track to meet the upper end of our adjusted EBITDA guidance for FY 2022, and we're increasing our adjusted free cash flow guidance to at least EUR 5.3 billion. Our interim dividend will be maintained at 4.5 euro cents. Our strategy is fundamentally focused on delivering sustainable growth in both Europe and Africa, growth in revenue, profit, cash flow, and return on capital employed.
Our growth plan is built around further deepening the trusted relationship with consumers and business customers through providing the overall best connectivity and digital products and services with an outstanding digital experience. Our customer-facing strategies are then underpinned by initiatives to drive both operating and capital efficiency, while working with governments on win-win policies and regulation to ensure leading next generation infrastructure in healthy markets, earning acceptable returns. Our medium-term financial ambition is to deliver revenue growth, mid-single digit growth in both adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow, reduce our leverage to the lower end of the targeted range, and critically, improve our return on capital to at least WACC. You will see from our performance in the half and guidance for FY 2022, we have started delivering against this ambition as we mean to go on.
Following the strategic and operational and portfolio actions we have taken over the last three years, we are now structured in a more optimal position to deliver growth and create value for our shareholders. Our structure has four key areas, which are increasingly managed and operated as four groupwide layers, making our scale advantage count. First, our infrastructure assets are the bedrock of the connectivity and digital services we provide. This layer includes our investment in Vantage Towers, our active mobile infrastructure, and over 1.6 million km of fixed fiber and coax cable. Second, our shared operations layer includes the highly efficient groupwide services we've developed over many years, including supplier management, voice, and network operations, and Margherita will expand on how this is driving our top quartile efficiency performance.
Third, our breadth and scale has enabled us to develop and grow three key platforms in digital services, IoT, and fintech. Alex, Shameel, and Vinod presented on these areas at a recent investor briefing. Fourth, we interact with our customers through a retail and service layer via our core brands, Vodafone Business, and Vodacom, as well as second brands and wholesale. Later on in this presentation, I will talk you through the review of opportunities we have conducted to further create and realize value in each of these four operating layers.
While we have delivered good financial performance in the half and are making good progress with our sustainable growth strategy, we do have particular areas of heightened focus this year to create and realize value for our shareholders. Our operational priorities are to strengthen the commercial momentum we are regaining in our core market in Germany, to accelerate the transformation of our business in Spain, and position Vodafone Business in the most optimal way to capture the opportunities available from the EU recovery funds over the next few years. I will talk more about each of these operational priorities in more detail later on in the presentation. The strategy review I shared with you earlier this year, in addition to the business model structure I discussed a moment ago, provide us with three immediate portfolio actions. First, we acted decisively to separate and IPO Vantage Towers.
This puts Vantage Towers in the prime position to now actively pursue both bolt-on M&A opportunities and a larger scale industrial merger. This is our preferred route, given our focus is on deconsolidating Vantage Towers from Vodafone to ensure it can best capture the significant growth available while remaining in co-control. Whether through this process or independently, we will look to reduce our stake in Vantage Towers over time and realize value for our shareholders. Second, as many of you know, I have and continue to be an advocate of further in-market consolidation in our sector, especially in Europe. We know there is a clear link between in-market scale, operator returns, and therefore shareholder returns, as well as the operator's ability to reinvest back into that market, an outcome policymakers are looking for.
We have a strong position in Germany, but we are actively pursuing pragmatic solutions for further value creating in-market consolidation to deliver sustainable market structures in our other major European markets. Third, many of you will have seen our announcement last week regarding the transfer of our holding in Vodafone Egypt to Vodacom. This will bring our leading market position in Egypt together with the leading market positions in our other African markets and further simplify our group. The integration will be particularly exciting for our fast-growing fintech business as we leverage the capabilities of M-Pesa and VodaPay in Egypt. Margherita will now talk you through our financial and commercial performance, and I will then rejoin you to set out these opportunities in further detail.
Good morning, everyone. As Nick has already highlighted, our financial performance in the first half of the year has been good, and we're trading in line with our expectations. Group service revenue trends have recovered well following the COVID disruption last year, and importantly, we are now back to growth in both Europe and Africa. EBITDA grew by 6.5% in H1, and we have continued our strong track record of margin expansion, having delivered a further 70 basis point improvement year-on-year. Adjusted free cash flow, which is before spectrum restructuring and Vantage growth CapEx, was broadly flat and as in prior years will be heavily weighted to H2, reflecting the phasing of working capital.
The increase in net debt in H1 reflects our ongoing share buyback program as mandatory convertible bonds mature, the timing of dividend payments, and the phasing of end-year cash flows. EBITDA growth is now starting to drive significantly improved returns across the group with our pre-tax return on capital improving by 80 basis points to 6.3%. As I highlighted in July, the step up in service revenue trends in Q1 was partially driven by COVID-related one-offs. We are now in a more stable environment in terms of prior year comparisons, and our growth has remained good at 2.4%. Within these results, roaming is now a growth driver as volumes of traffic have started to recover, and that will take a few years to complete. However, partially offsetting this, we had MTR cuts across several of our European markets.
From a regional perspective, we are now growing in Europe as well as in Africa with 9 out of 11 European markets positive. Turning to our commercial performance, we saw an improved trend in our Europe consumer business in Q2. There was a step up in customer growth set across both mobile contract and broadband over this period, with total sales moving back towards pre-pandemic levels. This was supported by our successful back-to-school campaigns in the context of a further increase in customer footfall post-lockdowns. Overall, retail footfall still remains around 40% below pre-pandemic levels across Europe. We now believe that this partly reflect a structural shift in consumer behavior. An analysis conducted in the U.K. shows that a significant part of the gap between current and pre-pandemic footfall can be attributed to simple service queries that were previously answered in store.
Most of these queries are now effectively managed through our digital care platform, which has been significantly improved during the pandemic. As a result, we are also seeing record low frequency of contact coupled with best ever first time resolution rates. This is also driving better overall Net Promoter Scores, and the customers who are coming into our stores now have a higher propensity to buy, which is reflected in our growing sales conversion rates. While the U.K. is leading on digital adoption, we believe this is a broader market trend that we will increasingly see across the rest of Europe. Now turning to each of our major market results. In Germany, we have continued to deliver consistent service revenue growth of around 1 percentage point over the last year.
In Q2 we have seen a good re-acceleration of our commercial momentum through the quarter as customer footfall improved across our retail stores. We added over 80,000 mobile contract net adds, which is higher than last year when excluding Unitymedia migrations. In broadband, we have seen a steady improvement in cable net adds, adding over 50,000 in the quarter as we return to a more normal level of marketing activity post Q1 restrictions. We also launched a new promotional pricing structure, driving higher ARPU compared to previous offers. Over the summer, we have been actively engaging with our customer base in order to ensure the best possible in-home customer experience. We have started to swap out old routers and set-top boxes, as well as upgrade speeds on legacy contracts. We have also accelerated convergence across our base by offering cross-sell benefits, importantly, without diluting ARPU.
EBITDA growth in half one was strong at 7.7%, supported by good top line growth, ongoing cost savings and synergy delivery. As a result, margin increased by 2.7 points to 44.9%. Turning next to Italy, where we continue to improve our financial trends despite the challenging market backdrop. Our service revenue is gradually moving towards stabilization. We have seen a further improvement in Q2, largely thanks to the successful completion of the PosteMobile MVNO migration in August. Mobile competition in the low end of the prepaid market remained intense, with the price per GB consumed now well below cost at around €0.15 on a typical €7.99 price plan. We have continued to compete effectively and our second brand, ho., now reaches 2.7 million customers, supported by its best in class Net Promoter Score.
Broadband was also affected by significant price competition. Our commercial performance improved over the summer and we added 31,000 net adds in Q2, including fixed wireless access customers. We are continuing to simplify and digitize our processes at pace, and EBITDA grew by 1.6%, excluding the benefit of a one-off legal settlement. In the U.K., we are delivering good commercial momentum with net adds accelerating further in Q2, driven by our strong performance in consumer. Our new flexible proposition, Vodafone EVO, has reached over 350,000 customers since its launch in June. This has been instrumental in driving an increase in our iPhone share, which is up over 10 percentage points year-on-year, with customers typically taking higher value plans as a result. Despite the gradual recovery in retail footfall, our digital sales mix remains strong at 33%.
In business fixed, last year we saw in Q2 a step up of project work partially delayed from Q1. This resulted in a tougher prior year comparison within service revenue. Within business, we have also seen a return to more normal levels of mobile SIM sales following a period of particularly high demand early in the pandemic. In November, we announced a new wholesale partnership with CityFibre that builds on our existing agreement and will provide us with full access to their fiber footprint. Combined with our existing Openreach partnership, this will allow us to offer to our customers an extensive fiber connectivity footprint. Moving on to Spain, we saw the unwinding of COVID one-offs from the prior quarter, particularly strong in this market. Competition remains fierce, with ongoing pressure on ARPUs as the value segment of the market continues to grow.
In the high-end segment, however, we have seen lower promotional intensity in back to school campaigns than in prior years, resulting in market portability being down over 10% year-on-year. In July, we implemented a price increase across our Vodafone branded base, which impacted our commercial performance in the quarter. Despite this, we grew our mobile contract base by 40,000, supported by strong demand from the public sector. As Nick will highlight later, Spain EU recovery fund plans are progressing rapidly, with circa EUR 3 billion already allocated to SMEs that will be distributed via a Digital Toolkit subsidy platform. An initial EUR 500 million will be made available later this year. We are already engaging with our customer base, and we'll keep you updated over the coming quarters. Finally, we maintained EBITDA broadly stable in H1, reflecting the ongoing structural transformation of our cost base.
In September, we announced a further restructuring, largely in commercial areas, as we continue to digitize our operations. In other markets across Europe, service revenue trends have recovered strongly from last year, with COVID one-offs in Q1 being more pronounced than in most of our larger markets. The ongoing improvement in roaming revenue was partially offset by MTR cuts in Romania and the Czech Republic. Overall, the competitive dynamics across our markets have remained stable, and we have continued to make strong progress in integrating the Liberty assets. In South Africa, we continue to see strong demand for data, as well as significant growth in our financial services platform. Service revenue trends slowed in Q2, reflecting the significant benefit to prior year telecom spend from social grants and alcohol sales bans. Social grants have now been reinstated in August and will continue until next March.
In Vodacom international markets, service revenue trends also slowed in Q2. This largely reflected the introduction of a significant new money transfer levy in Tanzania. Following discussions with the government, there has now been a 30% reduction in the fees charged, and we are seeing some recovery in transaction volumes. Despite this, M-PESA continues to grow across the region and is now 22% of total revenues. You may also have seen in our announcement last week that we are transferring our holding in Vodafone Egypt to Vodacom. We are bringing together our market leadership position in Africa and further simplifying the group. Our joint venture, VodafoneZiggo, is continuing to perform well in the Netherlands, with good top line growth and cost management driving a 2.4% increase in underlying EBITDA.
Their 2021 guidance range has now been narrowed, with EBITDA growth expected to be around 2% and shareholder distributions of at least EUR 600 million. The strong recovery in our top line trends has driven an acceleration in EBITDA growth, which was up by 6.5% in H1. This growth was driven by the direct margin contribution from the incremental revenues that we have generated and includes the Italian legal settlement that I referred to earlier. Roaming revenues have now started to recover. Non-EU roaming, where we generate most of our margin, is still significantly below pre-pandemic levels. On operating costs, last year we responded quickly to the pandemic and accelerated our cost saving ambition, delivering EUR 0.3 billion of net savings in Europe in H1. In the current year, we lapped this tougher prior year comparison.
Despite the resumption of many activities post-lockdown, including above-the-line advertising, we have maintained OpEx flat year-over-year, and we remain on track to deliver over EUR 200 million of net OpEx savings in Europe this year. Stepping back, we have now restarted our multi-year margin expansion trajectory with a further 70 basis points delivered in half one this year. As you know, we regularly benchmark our cost base against the rest of the industry. We have now completed this exercise for last year's cost, and I'm pleased to report that we've made further progress in our competitiveness. Our four large European markets are once again top quartile, with two of them, Italy and U.K., now among the top three most efficient operators in Europe.
The process-by-process benchmarking highlights that our relative efficiency has continued to improve despite our cost base growth following the acquisition of the Liberty Global assets. There are still opportunities ahead of us, particularly in our network spend. As you know, we have just changed our technology operating model in April to create pan-European network, digital and IT functions, which will allow us to drive productivity further. Moving on to free cash flow, there are a couple of points to call out. First, free cash flow, as usual, will be heavily weighted towards the H2 of the year. This is due to an H1 negative working capital movement, largely driven by the phasing of CapEx spend, as well as the annual cycle of handset receivable sale.
Second, spectrum costs largely reflect the successful 5G auction in Spain, where we acquired 20 megahertz in the 700 band at reserve prices with a 40-year holding period. Looking ahead to the H2 of the year, following a drawn-out auction in Portugal, we have acquired 110 megahertz of spectrum for EUR 130 million. In South Africa, the current allocation of temporary spectrum is due to end at the end of November, and therefore a much-needed auction is currently scheduled to take place in March 2022. Post South Africa, all major market auctions in this cycle will have been completed, as well as most of the smaller ones. Finally, this is expected to be the peak year for Liberty integration costs, with a significantly smaller outflow expected next year. Total capital additions were broadly flat year-on-year.
We continue to invest to expand our fixed and mobile capacity, as well as in the rollout of 5G. Together with our Vantage Towers growth CapEx, this is offsetting the reduced CPE spend from lower fixed broadband volumes and the phasing of our transformation spend. As I highlighted earlier, I'm happy to report that our returns have now started to improve across the group. Our pre-tax return on capital employed improved by 80 basis points to 6.3% in H1. This was largely driven by EBITDA growth, as well as a reduction in amortization as all 3G licenses in the U.K. and Germany roll off. The improvement was lower on a post-tax basis, also reflecting a small increase in our effective tax rate. Finally, let me provide you with an update on our outlook for the full year.
As a result of our good half one performance, we are on track to achieve the upper half of our adjusted EBITDA guidance and now expect to achieve between EUR 15.2 billion and EUR 15.4 billion for the full year, which is consistent with our mid-single digit medium-term growth ambition. On adjusted free cash flow, we are upgrading our expectation to at least EUR 5.3 billion from EUR 5.2 billion previously. With that, let me hand back to Nick.
Thank you, Margherita. In this part of our presentation today, I will talk you through three key areas. First, our strategy is focused on growth of revenue, profits, cash flow, and return on capital. Second, in addition to our ongoing growth strategy, I will talk you through three operational priorities for this year in Germany, Spain, and Vodafone Business. Third, we have structured the group to deliver a number of medium-term opportunities and some more immediate portfolio actions. I've presented this type of chart on a number of occasions now, but I want to reinforce the relentless operational focus we have across our business to deliver our strategy. Three years ago, we set out a plan to improve customer relationships, transform our operating model through technology, improve our asset utilization, and optimize the portfolio.
You can see from the data presented here we have systematically delivered on these strategic objectives. However, I am, of course, not satisfied that our financial and strategic progress has yet to drive shareholder returns. Our strategic progress has also translated into a significant improvement in the consistency of our revenue and profit growth. You can see from the third-party charts presented here that the cumulative impact of our operational and strategic action has led to a material improvement in our relative performance over the last three years. While our strategic and operational progress has been good, we can and must do more to improve returns against the challenging backdrop of our sector. We all know our sector in Europe faces a unique set of challenges that impact financial performance and returns.
Our strategy is designed to meet these head-on, focused on things in our control to deliver sustainable growth while influencing a healthier sector. I set out our medium-term financial ambition a few months ago, and as you've heard from Margherita earlier, we are very much in line with these ambitions this year, including the inflection point of return on capital, which we grew by 80 basis points to 6.3%, which is now back to pre-pandemic levels and on the path to at least meeting our cost of capital. Our teams have begun the year well and have continued to execute at pace across the board. We've made especially good progress with our core connectivity products, having launched new flexible contract price plans which are resulting in customers opting for longer contracts.
We have also taken the successful investment link pricing model launched in the U.K. and begun embedding this option within our other markets. I'd also call out the continued progress we made in shaping the digital society through our social contract. We participated in rational spectrum auction processes in Spain, the U.K., and Greece this year, and I'm pleased with the broader set of government measures for the sector currently being considered in Spain. We've set out a lot of detail over a series of investment briefings this year, covering Vodafone Business, technology, Vantage Towers, and our digital growth platforms. These include presentations from our teams and practical case studies showcasing our work at an operational level. Please do explore these areas in more detail through links on this slide.
As I mentioned at the start of today's presentation, we are structuring ourselves in a more cohesive manner to deliver on our growth ambitions and both create and realize value for our shareholders. We currently hold an 82% position in Vantage Towers, which has a market capitalization of around EUR 15 billion. Vantage Towers has significant growth and structural opportunities ahead, which I will talk through shortly. We continue to own and operate our active mobile and fixed network infrastructure within Vodafone. We then have three significant growth platforms that are each around EUR 1 billion revenue businesses in their own right and growing fast. We explored the growth opportunities for each of these at a detailed investor briefing in September this year. You will also have heard from Shamil at Vodacom about the successful launch of VodaPay in South Africa.
Our connectivity services and digital growth platforms come together in our retail and service businesses in Europe, Africa, and Vodafone Business. Following the announcement last week to transfer our holding in Vodafone Egypt to Vodacom, we will hold a 65% position in Vodacom that has a market capitalization of around EUR 15 billion. I will talk you through the value creation opportunities in each of these operational layers shortly. Before then, I wanted to address our immediate areas of operational focus this year. First, in Germany, we have a strong structural network advantage as the leading challenger in Europe's largest connectivity market. However, we do see an opportunity to leverage this advantage further to deliver consistent growth in revenues, profits and returns. Second, in Spain, we have faced challenging market conditions over the last three years.
We acted quickly to both realign our commercial position and resize our cost base to stabilize the financial performance. However, we must continue with this transformation to generate an acceptable return. Third, the opportunities available to Vodafone Business from the EU recovery funds are significant. We're increasing the level of investment into Vodafone Business to ensure we can capture the opportunities available. I'd like to pause and remind you of our position in this highly attractive market. Germany is the single largest connectivity market in Europe and has consistently grown its share of overall European retail revenue over the last few years. Germany is also the only major market in Europe over the last few years that has experienced an increase in both fixed and mobile market ARPUs, demonstrating the sustainable nature of its pricing environment.
However, where Germany lags other European markets is in convergence, with the lowest overall rates of convergence we see, which presents a significant structural growth opportunity for Vodafone. This opportunity, alongside significant operational synergies, was a primary driver in our decision to combine and create Germany's largest Gb network. Over the last two years, we've worked hard and fast to upgrade our network so that we can now reach over 23 million homes with Gb connectivity. That is over three times the number of homes in Germany that have FTTH. With the convergence opportunity and our structural network advantage, we must now work even harder to further accelerate our commercial momentum. Given the scale of the opportunity in Germany and its importance to our overall performance, we're focused on ensuring we strengthen both our position in the market and our commercial momentum.
We have a series of operational and commercial initiatives which began over the summer with our existing customers, including in-home Wi-Fi upgrades. Across Europe, the number one driver of a sub-optimal fixed connectivity experience is the in-home Wi-Fi performance with limited NPS difference between cable and fiber-based connectivity. We are seeing immediate NPS uplifts from these Wi-Fi upgrades and the ongoing migration of customers from legacy products onto Gb products. We have also launched personalized convergence packages so our customers can tailor the mix of fixed, mobile and TV products that are right for them, which drove over 300,000 conversions in the quarter. I look forward to updating you on the other product enhancements we have planned following their launch. I'd also like to address the position of our fixed network in Germany.
Our network today is a hybrid of extensive national fiber combined with upgradable coax cable on the very last stretch of our customers' homes. Following our investment to upgrade this last stretch to DOCSIS 3.1 technology, most of our customers can now enjoy speeds of one Gb per second. Beyond this, we have clear upgrade plans for our hybrid network that include a mix of demand-driven node splitting to bring fiber closer to our customers, and options for upgrading the last stretch of cable into customers' homes. I'd encourage you all to click the link and explore the presentation content and video from our technical specialist, Gavin Young, that explains our technology roadmap in more detail. In addition to this roadmap, there are a few adjacent opportunities available to us.
First, we are also engaging with MDUs to understand how the July 2024 regulatory change will influence the demand for fiber. Clearly, we have a strong cable upgrade path that we believe meets their needs. If MDU customers want fiber to their building, the business case can be attractive. Second, we also remain open to other fiber build opportunities, for example, in targeted off-footprint areas and incremental wholesale opportunities. Importantly, whether for MDUs wanting fiber to the building earlier than needed or off-footprint fiber builds, there is a high degree of capital available for off-balance sheet investment by infrastructure investors, and Vodafone is a very attractive partner. I'd like to take a moment now and reflect on the challenging conditions we've experienced in Spain over the last three years.
The market is unusual in Europe, having a high number of networks, both fixed and mobile, which has led to an aggressive wholesale market, creating a huge number of brands, almost 80. This in turn has led to significant price deflation, driving market ARPUs down materially. Given the operating leverage in connectivity, price competition had an immediate impact on both our revenues and profits. You can see from the chart, we reacted decisively to both rebalance our commercial position to stabilize revenues and resize our cost base to stabilize profits. However, while this stabilization in financial performance is encouraging, it has not yet been enough to improve our return on the capital deployed in Spain. Therefore, we are pursuing both further operational improvements and structural solutions to drive returns.
Our operational improvements include investment-linked pricing structures as we have successfully landed in the U.K., and further transformative actions on our cost base, including the recent restructuring plan announced in September. Our structural actions included stronger collaboration with Spanish authorities to improve the overall attractiveness of the market. Measures announced so far include spectrum at below European benchmark levels, the life of that spectrum doubling to 40 years, and the consideration of significant changes in spectrum license fees and TV taxation. Further to this, we are pursuing market structure opportunities over time, ranging from enhancing the nature of network sharing arrangements through to further in-market consolidation in a pragmatic and value-accretive manner. Early this year, I spoke to you about the opportunity to invest in digital services within Vodafone Business in order to capture the opportunities available through the EU recovery funds.
As a reminder, these total EUR 750 billion of loans and grants available to EU member states. Given the scale of the opportunity, we have mobilized a dedicated and highly experienced team to optimize the local opportunities at a granular level to ensure we have the best products and services available to capture the opportunities and ensure we focus our business development teams. You can see from the information presented here that member states' plans have been approved, and funding is now starting to be released. We are now beginning to see the tangible signs of activity at a local level. We expect 70% of the total funds to be committed by the end of 2022, so the next 12 months will be a highly concentrated period of activity.
The key is to be 100% focused on the opportunities that are the most relevant and attractive to Vodafone, as you can see on the chart. We have the right capabilities, the plans, and services available to capture these opportunities, and I look forward to updating you on our progress on a regular basis. In order to deliver our organic growth strategy and shape the long-term future of our business, we have identified a series of value-creating actions to pursue across each of our four operational layers. Some of these are well underway today and realized in the near term, whilst others are in more formative stages to be executed over the medium term. The nature of infrastructure investment and ownership has undoubtedly changed in our sector over the last few years.
We've been driving the opportunities in passive mobile infrastructure and active network sharing, and now our attention is extending to exploring further opportunities for our fixed network assets to improve asset utilization further. Within shared operations, we are the largest connectivity provider in Europe and Africa, so have a clear opportunity to be the single most efficient operator. As you heard from Margherita earlier, we are now within the top quartile of the industry and have an opportunity to go further, particularly in how we operate our networks. We have three exciting growth platforms across digital services, IoT, and fintech. Each of these are already around EUR 1 billion revenue businesses in their own right and growing fast. We'll continue to scale these businesses to ensure they capture the opportunities available.
Alongside this growth trajectory, we'll regularly assess whether we have the right ownership structures to maximize the opportunity and ensure we create optionality. Within our retail and service layer, we already have a leading position with Vodafone Business and are unifying our leading positions in Africa into Vodacom. However, there are clear opportunities for in-market consolidation in Europe, which we are actively pursuing. Our first immediate portfolio action is the active pursuit of opportunities for Vantage Towers. Following the successful IPO in March, they are in a commanding position to pursue value-accretive bolt-on transactions and pursue an industrial merger with a like-minded operating partner.
Our goal is to ensure an attractive model which enables the right capital structure to support long-term investment in critical national infrastructure, retain strategic flexibility for us as an operator, while also deconsolidating from the group and realizing value for our shareholders over time. I look forward to updating you further as the European tower infrastructure landscape evolves. Our second priority is the pragmatic pursuit of value-accretive in-market consolidation in Europe. I have been an advocate for the need to change our structure's collective approach in Europe for a number of years if we are to both improve returns for our shareholders and invest in the digital connectivity that Europe's future economy requires. It is evident that there is significant difference in sector returns in markets with more than three major operators. Lower sector returns ultimately lead to lower levels of investment in next-generation connectivity infrastructure.
Ultimately, it is an investment that delivers both high quality connectivity and better value for consumers. As a real example, the 4G investment cycle has delivered a 100-fold increase in mobile data consumption per customer and enhanced speed, while decreasing the price per GB by 90%. This has lowered overall returns for the sector, which discourages investment. To maximize future investment for the infrastructure that Europe needs to remain globally competitive, we need mobile operators with in-market scale, as we do with fixed connectivity. As I talked you through earlier, we have a strong position in Germany. However, many of our other major markets would benefit significantly from further consolidation. We will continue to pursue pragmatic and value-enhancing solutions to ensure both the long-term competitiveness of our sector, alongside enabling investment and acceptable shareholder returns.
Our third priority is to move at pace with the integration of Vodafone Egypt with Vodacom following our announcement last week. Vodacom is already the market leader in each of the countries it operates in. Vodacom will now add Egypt to its organization, where Vodafone has built a market leading position over a number of years. This integration will now support Vodafone Egypt in its next growth phase as it leverages the market leading fintech capabilities Vodacom can deploy, whilst Vodacom will benefit from the outstanding depth of digital capabilities and graduate talent that Vodafone Egypt have built. I would like to end today's presentation where I began. Today, we have demonstrated that our strategy is delivering sustainable service revenue growth, industry-leading EBITDA growth, and step change in our return on capital.
This performance is very much in line with our expectations for the year and our medium term financial ambitions. As part of our strategic execution, there are near-term operational priorities that are very much in focus for the remainder of this year. Alongside these priorities, we have some immediate portfolio actions to both create and realize value for our shareholders. Our sustainable growth strategy and our portfolio actions, together with our commitment to the dividend, will improve returns for our shareholders. Thank you all for listening, and I hope you will join us for our live video Q&A session.