Good morning, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to join us, Margherita and myself, at our Q1 trading results announcement. You'll find on our website hopefully a comprehensive set of materials to help you understand our results. I thought I'd just take an opportunity just to touch very briefly, 30 seconds, on just the key highlights before we then go on to questions. We are back to service revenue growth in Europe as well as Africa, with over a 3% growth in the quarter, and we're growing in both consumer and business. Around 1 percentage point of that growth was clearly a lapping effect of COVID-19 last year that obviously suppressed our results. Even excluding that, I would say that is a very healthy growth rate for us as a business, and we are firmly on track on our guidance.
Clearly, we're not back to normal yet on our trading activity, our commercial activity, and sales volumes. Footfall in the big four European countries in aggregate was around 40% below pre-COVID levels. We've yet to see that retail pickup that we are looking for, and this was particularly evident and heavy in Germany. We have seen in more recent weeks, as retail stores have started to open up, volumes increasing, and therefore, we look forward to the back-to-school season that we're going to see. Obviously, if activity was low, you can see from our churn numbers that in Europe mobile contracts, if we exclude Spain, which had a specific legislation adjustment in COVID last year, you see that we were down 1.4 percentage points year-over-year. We had good churn trends across the vast majority of our markets. In business, we saw service revenues grow 2.7%.
We saw good growth rate in our digital services. Clearly, the 2.7 was enhanced slightly because of obviously, again, the COVID-19 impact of last year. We definitely expect and have been engaging with governments in terms of the EU recovery fund, which we should start to see coming through in the second half of this year. In Europe, more broadly, we grew service revenue in all markets except Italy, and we had a particularly good rebound in the U.K. and our cluster Europe other markets. Vodafone maintained strong momentum, and particularly in financial services, which were up 34% in Q1. We are due to launch our Vodafone super app, or VodaPay super app, in the coming months in South Africa. Clearly more to do, particularly in accelerating and improving shareholder value.
We remain still very focused on optimizing our portfolio moving forward to ensure that we keep shareholder very much in our forefront of things that we are focused on. On that, Margherita and I will take your questions.
Thank you very much, Nick. Our first question today comes from Andrew Lee from Goldman Sachs. Andrew, please go ahead.
Morning, Nick. Morning, Margherita. I had a question on the revenue growth outlook. In the first quarter, there's great trends with easy comps but suppressed commercial momentum, particularly in Germany. The question is: Is the first quarter 2022 growth rate a high watermark for growth during the year? How should we think about commercial recovery through the year, especially in Germany?
Well, I'll let Margherita answer in terms of service revenue sort of outlook or view. I'd just say in terms of trading, clearly these remain challenging times. I'm not just talking our industry, challenging times for everyone. It was always very clear that this would not be a linear recovery, so we should expect bumps in the road. We are expecting bumps in the road in terms of how we're looking at things. Clearly, as I said, I'm pleased with the 3% growth, and the underlying growth rate that we had, and we're firmly on track on our guidance. I'd say in terms of commercial activity, if I look, it clearly has been suppressed. If we pick Germany as your example, what we saw in April, May was footfall down 80%.
It did start to improve to June, still down 50%, we are by far not there yet in terms of normalization. If you look at examples of Spain, Italy on mobile net ports, these are still down year-over-year. I would say overall, you're just seeing a lower level of activity, and as I say, you see that in our churn. I think this is a case of let's see as we move into the back to the school period. I think that becomes very important. We've certainly focused on the propositions, the promotions, the above-the-line campaigns that we will be hitting on back to school, and we think that that will reignite our commercial momentum.
On service revenue growth, of course, Q1 was a very special quarter. We have seen roaming moving from being a headwind to a tailwind now. On top of that, we've had these, what I call one-off effects from one year ago at this time, seeing the effective shock of the pandemic in our markets. If you remember the presentation we did one year ago, in Q1, we were calling out a number of effects, particularly things like business projects being delayed from Q1 into Q2, or prepaid top-ups being more difficult in some markets. I would say probably the market which was most affected by the beginning of the pandemic was Spain, where the emergency decree was particularly severe. Taken in aggregate, these one-offs are worth about 1 percentage point, which, as we say, is not going to recur as we move into the next few quarters.
We are well on track to deliver growth this year, both in Europe and Africa. We are pleased with the momentum, as Nick was mentioning, on service revenue. One data point I would call out from that perspective is that now we have all the data from the last 12 months. What we have seen is that if you take the 12 months to March 2021 through the pandemic, we have outperformed in retail service revenue growth all the incumbents and all the scaled players in our major European markets, both in fixed and in mobile service revenue growth. We are pleased with where we are. Now you asked about the coming quarters, of course, and I would say different growth drivers are affecting the profile for the remainder of the year.
If I take in turn consumer and business, I'd say in consumer near term, we are going to get the headwinds coming from the lighter sales driven by the pandemic in the last 12 months. As Nick said, we are now focused on re-accelerating after the summer with the back-to-school period. Then it's very much people cue, so volumes, but also price. On price, we need to see how the balance between the more for more inflationary pricing actions that we are taking works against the competitive pressures. In business, we are set for acceleration throughout the year. You have seen the good results already in Q1. We are also gaining market share clearly in business, and I think there the speed of the acceleration will very much depend on the European recovery fund and how it will support our demand for, in particular, digital services.
Timing of that will be critical and in particular, how much of that will fall into the second half of this year and how much will be phased over the coming years. If I step back, I'd say definitely, as Nick mentioned already, on track to deliver our guidance this year.
Thank you. Lots put together. That was really helpful. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Andrew. Our next question today comes from Nick Delfas from Redburn. Nick, please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Thanks very much indeed. Just a question on African fintech, really. Obviously, you've got a fantastic business there, particularly in Safaricom, but also in Vodacom, and it could be worth well over GBP 0.10 per Vodafone share. How do you think about how you illustrate that value to, I guess, the London market as opposed to within Nairobi where it is relatively well reflected perhaps within Safaricom? Thanks very much.
Nick, I think that's a really important topic. You know that I have spoken about M-PESA now for 10 years. I'm very passionate about the transformational nature of it. We've committed resource investment. We have never constrained the M-PESA platform, and really tried to evolve it. I am super excited. I really think that the pandemic, it's one of those platforms you have to do an awful lot of investment over three, four years to gain scale and then become the default player within each of the markets. We've done that investment over the last 10 years. We are the number one player in all of the markets that we are in. Whether it's DRC with [Hans] there, Lesotho, Kenya, as you say. Having built that position, now it's the question of how you can truly scale through more, if you like, user cases going forward.
You saw that transaction volumes are materially up. You've seen that in Vodacom International, the service revenue for M-PESA was up 43%. These are staggering numbers for a platform that's already number one in the marketplace. This is because we're really breaking out of just peer-to-peer. This is now companies paying their payroll using M-PESA, people doing their utility bills using M-PESA. We really do think it's an ecosystem, a platform. That's our mindset. We're investing heavily behind it. One of the things we needed to start thinking about is that transition journey between feature phones and smartphones. We're now doing mini apps t hat will allow us to do things like savings, micro loans, funeral insurance, etc.
This is a new product set that is coming to M-PESA. Clearly in South Africa, the financial services component will be done through what we're calling VodaPay, which is a super app execution, so slightly different. You add all of this together, it's talking 15% of Vodacom's service revenue. When I've spoken to Shameel, and we strategize about where we want to take that, we've said, "Look, we really need to start separating this business out into separate legal entities, make sure that we show complete transparency of this business and what it means to growth and margins." That also allows us other opportunities inorganically going forward. I would say at this moment, we're driving hard, we're investing heavily, we're doing commercial partnerships with Alipay.
We may do other commercial partnerships with other people. I think there's an opportunity to take M-PESA outside of our footprint in Africa because it's really getting traction. Many opportunities, organic, maybe inorganic in the future, separate out the platform, and then think about how we drive for shareholder value.
How long will it take to separate out the platform legal entities?
We're running through that process. We have been for the last, I want to say, nine months. We moved the platform down from the group down into Africa because that was an important component as well, are hosting locally. There's a number of parts to the execution.
Okay, fantastic. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Nick. Our next question today comes from Georgios Ierodiaconou. Georgios, please go ahead. Your line should now be open.
Yes, sir. Thank you for taking my question. I have maybe a follow-up on some of the comments you made around back to school and commercial momentum. If we look at these results, perhaps the one area of weakness has been some of your KPIs, particularly in fixed. I just wanted to ask maybe a general question about what are the issues you see in different markets, and particularly in some of the more competitive markets like Italy and Spain, whether there is a point in time where the KPIs take priority and you could perhaps take a bit more action in order to stabilize your KPIs and be more promotional. Maybe as a slightly separate question for Germany, do you expect when the footfall returns back to normal levels for the KPIs to fully recover? Or are there any other headwinds you may be facing?
Thank you.
Georgios, maybe I say a few comments, and then Margherita can do some builds. Look, I think we as a company have always been focused on value rather than chasing volume. We are a good rational player in the marketplace. We compete in a structural way, now increasingly on a dual brand strategy. For every market from a pricing perspective, we go through an exercise where we identify the various brands that we're competing against and decide how we're going to position pricing versus those brands, and then we hold that position. As they move up, move down, we adjust accordingly to ensure that we have made it very clear what points of differentiation we have and where we need to match. I'd say that we stay disciplined on that.
Clearly, if shops are shut and footfall's down, the worst thing you can do is throw lots above-the-line marketing money into a market that's pretty quiet. This is an example in Germany. When we saw that the retail activity was low, footfall was low, what we said is for quarter one, we're not going to go above the line. This would be wasted marketing resource. What we'll do is we'll store that up for later in the year when we felt that all the stores would open. I look as an example in Germany, and generally this has been our approach across all of the markets. U.K. retail's been open. We've been above the line. We've been commercially front-footed because it was appropriate to do that. Clearly, we manage our base for lower churn, and you're seeing that in statistics.
If I look at Germany specifically, I would turn around and just say, look, we have clearly shaped a series of propositions and promotions for the back to school. We're good to go as we are through the whole of Europe. We have worked our TV portfolio. I think it's a strong portfolio. We've been disappointed we've not been able to get the retail stores because that's a really important part of the TV portfolio is the stores. We're good to go on the TV portfolio. We've harmonized our propositions and pricing. We've integrated our sales channels. These are all things we've talked about over the last couple of quarters. It's just we haven't had the retail estate to really drive this.
Our view is as soon as that retail estate is fully open, we are on the front foot again, and we are confident that we have compelling propositions to drive.
Just maybe to add that fixed is not exactly the same in all the markets. I think there are different dynamics across different markets. There were just a couple of points I wanted to point out. One is related to consumer. It's the fact that if you take a market like Italy, growth has now moved very much into FWA as a source of expansion. For us, FWA is reported within mobile, so just to keep that in mind when you look at the numbers because the market growth has really shifted there in consumer. The other aspect is business. A third of service revenue in fixed are from business, which is driven by very different factors. It's as much as 40% in certain markets now in Southern Europe.
As you have seen from our reporting in business, we are growing well, and we expect further acceleration because all the areas of growth in Fixed that distinguish us, we have very little legacy product. We are focusing on SD-WAN and other new products will be even more propelled by the European recovery fund. I think it is just something to keep in mind when you project the Fixed growth in the coming quarters.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Georgios. Our next question today comes from Jerry Dellis from Jefferies. Jerry, please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I have a question really related to what you're seeing as the retail store footfall recovers in the months of June and July. How are you seeing that better footfall translating into net adds recovery? I mean, obviously, what happens the rest of the year is highly uncertain, but perhaps if you could comment on what you're seeing in June and July, please, that would be helpful. If you could make particular reference to the German situation, please, where I think we saw about 30,000 cable net adds in the last quarter, and those were essentially only migrations from DSL. It'd be very interesting for us to understand what recovery you may be seeing in June, July there. Thank you.
Well, look, Jerry, I don't think it's appropriate to get down into weekly projections, results, et cetera. What I think on a slightly higher level, I would say that as stores have opened, footfall is not bouncing back across retail, not our retail, but just the retail full stop. I think it's because a lot of that has been the fact that the stores have opened back up just as we're moving into the vacation period. I'd say people are prioritizing other things at the moment. I don't know. I would say this is very much the test will be back to school period. I'm seeing it more towards the end of August and September as being a more normalized activity going forward. You've seen everyone talking about the double jab, the certificates, yeah. You've seen what's happened in France, et cetera.
I just think at the moment, we are nowhere near normalization if we look at the month of June, July yet.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Jerry. Our next question today comes from Jakob Bluestone from Credit Suisse. Jakob, please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I've got another question on Germany as well. Just trying to understand the weakness in net adds in a little bit more detail for Fixed. Your net adds are down 70% year on year. Footfall in the shops is down 70%. Retail stores aren't your only distribution channels. You've got online, you've got phone and so on. Just seems like that the net adds drop is bigger than the footfall. Presumably there's something else going on. I presume your online sales aren't down 70% as well. Can you just help us understand, is it literally just low footfall in the shops and low conversion, or is there something more broad happening here in Germany that explains quite why the net adds are quite so weak?
Maybe if you can also just contrast it a bit with the numbers we saw from DT last quarter. DT is showing a much stronger fixed line performance. If you can maybe just help us understand the differences in your trends versus what they've disclosed so far. Thank you.
Jakob, I would say just in simple terms, when you are in lockdowns and restrictions, it is always going to favor the incumbent because they have a base. They are constantly marketing to the base. Of course, we can market to our base, what we are looking to do is take share in the marketplace. That is why retail is a very important part to take share within the market. What I would say is that effectively churn levels are down, activity levels are down. If you were a customer at this point in time in semi-lockdowns, are you really going to change your fixed broadband provider? It is not going to be top of mind. This is what I mean. We made a conscious decision.
We're not going to run above the line campaigns because in the end, try and stimulate demand when people are saying, "Do you know what? I might think about it, but I'm going to do it when we're out of lockdown restrictions." It's a very natural thing, in my opinion, that people would say on that particular product, yeah, I'm going to wait until I know we're back to normalization, and then I may consider a provider, in which case we will be very much on the front foot.
I'd say that for Fixed in particular, you can subscribe online, but in most cases, you still need an engineer to come into your home to do the modification. Again, not something I think people would have wanted to do, particularly in April and May in Germany, and probably not something you're very inclined to do at this particular point in time.
You get the hard facts of COVID. Then you get the sentiment around concerns. I think the Delta variant coming into Europe has, if you like, suppressed a little bit because people are concerned. I think it's only when they see, yeah, okay, it's come through, maybe the cases go up, the hospitalization doesn't really move, confidence returns. It's a confidence thing. I just think at the moment, people are saying, "I'm going to stick with my current provider." As evidenced-
Thank you.
-by our historically low churn in Germany. It's not like we're underperforming on churn.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Jakob. Our next question today comes from Ottavio Adorisio from Societe Generale. Ottavio, please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hi. Good morning. Could you hear me?
Yes, absolutely.
Yes, loud and clear.
Perfect. Moving away from Germany and going to another country, in Italy. Reduction churn has damaged Vodafone because in a market where you win in market share, but has helped you in a market where you lose in market share, particularly mobile. I was just wondering if you can give us a bit of color what you would expect over the next few quarters, considering that the economy reopen. Iliad is very likely to remain aggressive. In fixed, they're going to launch and match very likely the offering you have, particularly going to use the same wholesaler. On the other side, you've got also competition from the incumbent, has recently signed their partnership opening content with Amazon. You've got basically two different drivers coming against you.
How your retention policy is going to evolve in that market and what you reckon will be your trends you're going to experience over the next two or three quarters, given what the circumstances are today. There is a quick one, unfortunately, I've not been able to ask in the past, but I want to ask this one on India. India this week has filed with the Supreme Court saying that no public sector bank is willing to offer a guarantee, Vodafone Idea. All the assets already secured with banks. Since September, they tried to raise funds. Now it's almost a year, no one has come with fresh funds because they want the controlling shareholders, i.e. Vodafone, to basically help out as well. If you can tell us what's the strategy as it is now.
You've been very firm in the past, at least for the last 12- 24 months, not to bring fresh funds, and you're trying to look in the market, but so far nothing. Of course, the story has been deteriorating, to say the least. What are you going to break the impasse from here? Considering there could be some repercussions on the other investment in Indus, considering that you guarantee the sales coming from Vodafone Idea. Thanks.
Very comprehensive. I tell you what, why don't you take your home market, and I'll take India.
I will.
Do you want to go first?
Sure. Italy, very competitive, as you mentioned. We have some ups and downs regularly, particularly in the prepaid market. I would say the last few weeks, the last couple of months in Italy have certainly seen an increase in competitive intensity. More allowances in mobile. We even had one of the three top mobile network operator going on TV with the headline of 599 for 100 GB, which clearly we wouldn't see as sustainable. The competitive pressure on pricing has also hit fixed. By the way, fixed is another dimension of what we were discussing earlier in Italy. We have seen after a spike at the beginning of the pandemic in the fixed market, we've seen demand drying up, moving towards FWA. In that context, price competition has heightened.
To your point, I don't see this as reversing imminently given that there is an upcoming launch of Iliad. Very competitive. Amongst the various factors you mentioned, the agreement with DAZN. I need to say I wouldn't put in this intense competition football on TV as a key factor in the Italian market. Much less pay-TV subscribers, even less paying for football. It's nowhere near a market like Spain. Of course, also football is available fully over the top as well. I don't think this is going to be a critical factor. Back to what we see in terms of growth in the coming quarter. Competition will continue to be intense, but at our end, you have seen the results improving. We are benefiting now, of course, from lapping the roaming drag, which was particularly strong in Italy.
In the coming quarters, we will also see the benefit of our new wholesale deals coming into line in service revenue. A little bit more in terms of medium term. The European recovery fund, we are mentioning it many times today, Italy is the market that will get the largest allocation, EUR 190 billion of which EUR 70 billion is grants. It's fair to say that we are very well positioned ourselves in Italy to benefit from the increased demand on business services from the European recovery fund. I was mentioning earlier, a third of our service revenue is business. We are consistently taking share of the market, and therefore, we have a really great asset to get advantage from this. We need to see how it will phase in terms of timing, a general improving trend on the back of these factors.
Just turning to India, really India is a question for Vodafone Idea. Within the going concern statement, they highlighted very clearly they are dependent as a going concern on refinancing of debts that are coming due in terms of monetization of assets, in terms of government support, AGR or floor pricing, et cetera, and raising funds. It is, as you say, a highly stressed situation, a difficult situation that they are trying to navigate. We, as a group, try to provide them as much practical support as we can, but I want to make it very clear, we are not putting any additional equity into India.
Thanks.
Thank you very much, Ottavio. Our next question today comes from Emmet Kelly from Morgan Stanley. Emmet, please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Yes. Good morning, Nick. Good morning, Margherita. Thank you for taking my question. I have a question just on your introductory comments, Nick. You mentioned that you, the management, and the board are still looking at the portfolio and options relating to the portfolio to deliver shareholder value. Can you maybe just expand a little bit on your remarks and what options are open to you and the board, please? Thank you.
Look, I think we have demonstrated over the last two and a half years since I've been CEO and Margherita, CFO, that we are constantly optimizing the portfolio to drive shareholder value, and we will continue to do that very actively. What do I mean by very actively? I mean, if I give you some sort of examples of areas. Vantage Towers, we are really pleased with the fact that Vantage Towers is now up and running. The share price has moved on just over 20% since the IPO. I think that was a vindication of the fact we kept the initial sale quite moderate, retaining approximately 82% of the interest in that company.
I think we did the timing was a good timing because now we're poised to help drive 5G, but also consolidate in, if you like, the early rounds of the sector in Europe. I think that is a really good growth opportunity for us going forward, and we would want to take that. We are clearly open to, as I've said before, co-control scenarios. We're like-minded industrial players wanting to do combinations in the future, we would certainly explore and entertain those type of discussions. We definitely want to do more things with Vantage Towers going forward. I'd say second space would be in Africa. Clearly we have Egypt, and you saw that we did a new shareholder agreement with Telecom Egypt. That gave us the optionality, not obligation, but optionality to move it within the group. We could potentially move it to Vodacom.
That could always be a scenario. You know we did that with Safaricom, and I think that was very successful. Clearly no obligation, but it's an option for us to explore. Finally, I would just say just in general consolidation through Europe. I still think that there's opportunity to consolidate. I think that in terms of how governments are now viewing consolidation, I think they've seen how critical we are as critical national infrastructure. They understand the returns issue of the sector now. I really think they understand that. I'm having a series of very good conversations. I was talking to the Secretary of State for the U.K., as an example, earlier in the week on this particular topic.
I think they want to make sure we are a healthy sector because they understand that we enable We're a sector of sectors, so we enable all other sectors and therefore they need to have competitive infrastructure for the country to be competitive globally. What I'd say is the conversation around what is the right amount of infrastructure in the country, whether infrastructure could consolidate versus retail and other permutations. We're exploring a lot of different aspects, I would say, to see what can be realized. I'd say very active in this area and we'll see. Of course, it comes with complications because you've got EU Competition Commission. Even Vestager, Commissioner Vestager, was commenting saying that she was holding a meeting in October to really stand back and start the conversation around the competitive framework that exists today.
It might not change at all, or it might be slightly moderated, or they might do something more substantive, but I think conversations around things like the definition of the market in which you participate become a more relevant conversation. We argue they more too tightly define it at the moment, and it's broader than it looks. Things like ensuring that they are reinforcing and enforcing competition law when needed more rigorously than they do in certain situations to stop abuse. These type of things, I think, could be all positives in terms of direction.
Super. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Emmet. Our next question today comes from James Ratzer from New Street. James, please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Yes. Good morning. Thank you, Nick and Margherita. I had a question really on your business outlook that you are seeing in the commentary you've given there. Firstly, I suppose at the full year results, you announced a increase in your CapEx spend focused on business initiatives, and you said some of that was going to be success-based. Would love to hear an update on what success ratios you are seeing at the moment on some of those IoT and campus network projects. Secondly, you talk a bit about the European Recovery Fund, which I think we all agree has the potential to be very significant. Would love to hear what you're seeing now bottom-up on the ground, on your ability to actually then bid for some of these contracts.
What are you hearing from the SMEs who some of these funds are going towards to digitalize and your ability to then win some of the contracts from them indirectly? Thank you.
Yeah. James, first of all, we announced saying we're going to invest in digital services. It does take us a while to build these digital services. If you remember, we were talking about a lot more integration of other people's services onto our platform so that we can bring those services to life. Can I give you a tangible example? Because it somewhat answers both. Spain is a really good example of the EU recovery funds. The Spanish governments, I've been impressed at the speed the government has moved at. Since I met them in April, and I went through, "Here's what you could do to make a difference for our sector," they have hit every single point that I discussed with them.
Whether it was the good spectrum outcome that we had with lower pricing, et cetera, whether it's lower taxes, that we're going to get tens of millions benefit moving forward. The third was around where could you really make a difference on accelerating digitalization and SMEs. They have badged EUR 3 billion for the digitalization of SMEs, but already have said that they will release half a billion in November. They are setting up effectively a digital hub to claim your subsidy. What they're doing is they are targeting that first half a billion on companies with employees 1 to 49, so let's say SoHo and small at the S part of SMEs. They are going to give a 90% subsidy level on digital services. What this'll mean, and we formed a consortium, as had Telefónica, so really the two of us.
This would be the same you're going to see in all markets. Ourselves and the incumbents, because of our business profile, tend to be the two operators that can form consortiums to we form a series of companies that come behind us in terms of offering digital services integrated with our offering, that we can bring to our customer base, and they can use a 90% subsidy against those services. Importantly, the 90% is paid up front. We put the customer on a two-year, three-year contract for those services. We've contributed a lot to the shaping of this, but also to the ensuring that this will be a seamless experience for our customers.
I would say this is the best case we have at the moment, and what we're doing to other governments around Europe is saying, "Please replicate this. This is a really good model for us." We're hearing good traction across the board. Everyone might do it through tax vouchers, whatever, so some of the other countries might be more complicated, but this is a really good example of volume now. I don't know if you've got some builds?
No, the only build would be the type of services that will be bought will be bundles. You will have, I don't know, a security bundle, an e-commerce bundle, a business support systems bundle, so that it's easy for companies of this size to know how to satisfy their needs. Within each bundle, you will have a combination of services readily available from the consortium.
One final build, because you specifically mentioned it, was mobile private networks, of which, again, I think we've taken a real leadership position. We believe in mobile private networks. We're investing behind it. We're standardizing it. The key thing here is how do you make it a series of products as opposed to it's always a bespoke, expensive solution. We want to make sure that we can do this at scale. We're prototyping effectively through pilots. What you're going to see, I think, is traction in dedicated mobile private networks. There's the more sophisticated version, so that's like a customer's campus, factory, et cetera, manufacturing plant, logistics, a port, versus a sort of hybrid one.
You've got dedicated and you've got sort of hybrid, and the hybrid then mixes the ability to use our main macro network and the dedicated, and that's a slightly more sophisticated, and that needs some more technology roadmap development.
That's great. Really helpful color.
I'd like to spend more time on it because I think we have a really exciting proposition roadmap ahead of us. I think the hardest thing we have at the moment is prioritization. The demand's there. It's shifting that, you can hear it in what we're saying, shifting our proposition prioritization and sequencing for the EU recovery funds. Where the money moves, we want to make sure we've got the strongest proposition and partners lined up, and it's a good seamless experience for vouchers or whatever. Develop more broader strategic differentiated products over time.
That's great. Thank you. Appreciate all the color there.
Thank you very much, James. Our next question today comes from Adam Fox-Rumley from HSBC. Adam, please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Thank you very much. You mentioned that the above the line marketing is pretty limited at the moment, and I think the reasons you've put forward there make a lot of sense. I wondered how you think that's affecting customers' perception of and desire for 5G. I'm not so much talking about customers on the bleeding edge here, but more the larger pool of customers. Do you think it's kind of unlimited tariffs where bill worry and bill shock is being removed, that's really the thing that's driving upsell at the moment? Thank you.
Adam, can I give a view on this? For a consumer customer, 5G makes no difference. No difference on performance for any user case that they are using today and what we can see over the next five years. 5G is not for consumers. It's nice to say I've got 5G phone and I've got an icon, but this is a business application. You heard my passion around mobile private networks, et cetera. That's where the monetization is. What we're focused on is building our 5G network for businesses, and secondly, in cities to lower our unitary cost, where it goes to your point about unlimited. It has a lower unitary cost, which case unlimited we can deliver at a lower unit cost.
We want to build the lowest unit cost factory in the industry in Europe so that we can compete at any level against any player and earn superior margins. We're building it for that. We are not doing some of these deployments that some of our other peers are doing, which is using DSS, which is just trying to run a coverage claim for 5G. Actually what we've seen is a degradation in performance on the blend of 5G, 4G on that network with DSS. Going back to your marketing point, I think what we want to be marketing is the merit of a high-quality network that is a blend of 4G, 5G. You just want to know it's there.
You want to know it's reliable, that you've got the coverage, that you've got the performance you need, that you don't get dropped calls, et cetera. It's a seamless experience. We want to deliver that for our customers, and that's our priority. Our priority for consumers is high-quality network. For businesses, we are targeting 5G because we think that that is a monetization and transformational for our customers' experience. Of course, above the line, we can talk about network more broadly, high quality network. We can talk about propositions depending on which quarter we're in and whether we have exciting things to talk about.
Thanks very much.
Thank you very much, Adam. We have time for one more question today from Carl Murdock-Smith from Berenberg. Carl, please go ahead.
Carl, you're on mute. They are impressive headset there. Really, you do look like you're flying some sort of a spaceship.
Carl, maybe just make sure that your headset itself isn't muted. There might be a thing on the wire.
No, it's not. Oh, now you can hear me.
Yeah.
There we go. No idea what happened there.
Perfect.
No idea what happened there, but I'm not giving up on my trusty headset. I just wanted to ask about the decision to stay with Carphone Warehouse in the U.K. and what the new agreement gives you. I suppose it's particularly interesting, Nick, given your personal history with that, given that when you were CEO of the U.K. business, you actually left Carphone. I was just wondering if you could add some comments there. Thanks.
Look, clearly it's a confidential commercial contract, but let me give you the essence to answer your question. I think there was a feeling that a lot of operators have left Carphone and were exiting the indirect channels. The answer is no, they're not. They just left Carphone and went into a lot of other, I would argue, more aggressive and more expensive indirect channels. If you stand back in the U.K. setting, indirect channels, I've always felt, even though I did exit Carphone, I've always felt have a role to play to complement operators because they are offering something to a different target audience. The issue I always had was we made no money on the first life of the customer, and secondly, there was a high churn profile. Those two together are not good economics for us.
What I wanted was something where we work together to develop a loyal base, and this is the agreement we now have with Carphone. The big difference is we make money day one. It is SIM-only, so they carry on selling their handsets, but this is SIM-only, so you pick your handset and then come to Vodafone on a SIM-only offer. Importantly, we are working together on the base to improve the loyalty, lower the churn, give more products and services. What I'd say is it's a fundamentally different arrangement between the two of us. I think it proves to be successful for both of us because it has the right construct at the start, which is these are our customers together, and how do we take them on a journey of more products and services and embed loyalty over a period of time?
I think we could do that better together. That's why we were pleased to move forward on that basis, and we would rather work with indirect channels that have that philosophy rather than a high sell, high churn, let's say not so ethical, what would I say? Approach to commercials.
Okay. That's great. Thank you very much. Maybe I should say Roger, given the headset. Thank you.
Yeah, exactly. You were the last question, I think. Thank you all for taking the time to join us. I hope that you all take a bit of time out over the summer, because I think everyone needs a little bit of a break one way or the other. We look forward to the back to school. Please, if you are not a Vodafone customer, I can't think why you wouldn't be, you need to become one. We're going to have great propositions in the marketplace, and I look forward, we look forward to seeing you all in November. Take care.