From end-2013 until early 2025, the Vodafone Group (LSE: VOD) share price fell almost relentlessly. Year after year, Vodafone’s owners saw their shareholdings decline steeply in value. At long last, it looks like stock in this British telecoms giant is staging a serious comeback…
Volatile Vodafone
Way back in December 2013, Vodafone shares were trading close to £3. But that marked a distant high for this popular and widely held stock, which then set off on multi-year declines.
On 9 April 2025, the Vodafone share price hit a low of 62.4p, down around 80% from its 2013 high. Repeatedly during last year, I argued that this FTSE 100 firm was undervalued, unloved, and due a valuation re-rating.
For the record, my family portfolio owns shares in Vodafone. We paid 90.2p a share for our stake in December 2022, only to watch as the price kept finding lower lows.
However, over the past year, someone lit a match under this Footsie stock, sending it soaring like a rocket. As I write on Tuesday afternoon (5 May), the share price stands at 115.85p. This values the group at £26.7bn — close to twice its April 2025 lows.
What revived this stock?
Over one year, the Vodafone share price has surged by 58.8%. That said, the shares are down 18.3% over five years — a hint of the pain suffered by long-standing shareholders. (Both figures exclude cash dividends, which have been very generous from this stock.)
For me, much of the recovery in the group’s recent fortunes can be attributed to Margherita Della Valle, who took over as permanent CEO in April 2023. Her turnaround strategy focused on selling non-core assets to raise cash. Vodafone has used these proceeds to invest in core markets, as well as buying back its own cheap shares.
Della Valle also grasped the nettle by tackling the group’s sky-high dividend yield (which reached double digits at times). In May 2024, Vodafone halved its yearly cash payout from 9 euro cents to 4.5 euro cents from 2025 onwards.
Following this extensive restructuring, in November 2025, Vodafone announced its first dividend increase in eight years — a modest 2.5% from the previously rebased level.
Big deal!
Vodafone unveiled its latest corporate move on Tuesday. The group is to pay £4.3bn to buy partner CK Hutchison’s 49% stake in their VodafoneThree joint venture. The Hong Kong-based conglomerate is raising huge sums from asset disposals in 2025/26.
This would leave Vodafone in full control of VodafoneThree, making it top dog of the UK’s three mobile-network operators. The transaction values this business at nearly £13.9bn — more than half of Vodafone’s current market capitalisation. The deal is set to be completed in the second half of this year.
It’s good to see Vodafone’s ship finally settling after years of sailing rough seas. I’m hopeful that this latest deal will prove positive for shareholders. If I’m right, then the share price could shoot past the 120.95p high hit on 18 February, before the US-Iran war sent stock markets tumbling.
For now, I’m happy to sit back and keep hold of our Vodafone stock, banking the near-3.4% yearly dividend yield while we wait. Plus there’s under a week before the half-year results on 12 May!
