Vodafone profits dip

Vodafone investors got the jitters this morning as the giant cellco reported a fall in profits and warned that growth would contiue to slow.

By late morning shares in the company were down 11p (7.5 per cent) at 134p even though Vodafone reported an increase in turnover and customers.

Reporting numbers for the six months to September, the Newbury-based company said revenues had risen from £16.7bn to £18.2bn.

But over the same period pretax profit slipped from £4.5bn to £4.1bn while "profit for the period" was down 23 per cent from £3.7 bn top £2.8bn.

All this comes as Vodafone is bragging of its success in acquiring new punters while hanging onto existing ones. It added ten million new users over the last six months taking total numbers to 171m.

It's also chuffed to bits with the take-up of 3G services with some 5m handsets in use. Which is nice. ®