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In June 2009, physicist Stephen Hawking held a celebration in Cambridge for time travellers, sending out invites after the occasion ended. He jokingly claimed that the empty room proved that backward time journey is not possible. Armed with a time-travelling machine, I might know the long run returns from, say, Vodafone Group (LSE: VOD) shares and get super-rich.
We’re all sure by the legal guidelines of physics, which point out that point journey is unlikely. That mentioned, one theoretical particle often known as a tachyon — which travels sooner than the pace of sunshine and has an imaginary mass — would doubtless journey backwards in time. Anyway, how has the Vodafone share worth moved currently?
Risky Vodafone
As I write, the Vodafone share worth stands at 117.8p, valuing the UK’s main mobile-network operator at £27.1bn. This ranks the telecoms group at #29 by market worth within the elite FTSE 100 index.
Vodafone inventory has surged over the previous week. The shares leapt 20.1% in 5 buying and selling days after information emerged that French billionaire Xavier Niel paid £4.4bn to accumulate a 16.2% stake on this British enterprise. This makes telecoms tycoon Niel and his Vega group Vodafone’s largest shareholder by a great distance.
Whereas the shares have risen a mere 4.7% over one month, they’ve leapt 18% over six months. And regardless of hovering 44.5% over one yr, they’re nearly unchanged over 5 years, rising simply 1%.
Observe that these features exclude money dividends, which have been beforehand very beneficiant from Vodafone. Nevertheless, the agency halved its yearly payout in 2024 from €0.09 (7.7p) to €0.045 (3.85p), sending the shares tumbling.
Briefly, Vodafone shares have been fairly risky for years, crashing laborious from February 2022 to April 2025 earlier than roaring again to life.
Vodafone worth?
Disclosure: my household portfolio purchased Vodafone shares in December 2022, paying 90.2p a share for our stake. I purchased into this enterprise as a result of I noticed it as one of many FTSE 100’s ‘fallen angels’ — stable corporations with quickly depressed share costs. My timing was removed from excellent, with the shares buying and selling at simply 80.2p by mid-July 2025. Oops.
Nonetheless, plainly worth investing — shopping for and holding low-cost shares — is but once more paying off for my household. We now have a paper achieve of 30.6% to this point. Even higher, we reinvested all Vodafone dividends into shopping for but extra shares. This has turbocharged our returns, turning Vodafone into a fairly first rate ‘restoration play’ funding.
To reply the query in my title, £1,000 invested in Vodafone inventory a yr in the past is now price £1,445. Including roughly £45 in dividends sums to £1,490 — a complete return of 49% over one yr. That’s greater than 10 instances the curiosity from high financial savings accounts, however all the time keep in mind that shares are far riskier than money deposits.
Can we maintain our Vodafone shares? As a worth/earnings investor, I like their dividend yield of three.4%, which beats the FTSE 100’s yearly money yield of three%.
After all, financial downturns in Vodafone’s key markets — Germany, the UK, and Europe — might hurt its revenues, income, and money movement. Likewise, web debt of €25.4bn (£21.7bn) would possibly constrain future development. Even so, we’re on board for the long term!
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Cliff D’Arcy has an financial curiosity in Vodafone Group shares.
