Vodafone shares open for trading

Vodafone Qatar, which has outlined a capital expenditure of QR2bn in the next 10 years, aims to become profitable by 2011 and shareholders could expect dividends only by 2013.
“In our prospectus (on the Initial Public Offering), we have stated that our capital expenditure will be QR2bn over 10 years time,” said John Tombleson, CFO of Vodafone, whose 340mn free-float shares are available for trading from today.
Vodafone Qatar shares with face value of QR10 will start trading from today and on the first day it can be traded in any price range, whereas from the second day onwards, a 10% band is applicable, as is for other listed companies.
The second telecom operator, which already has 20,000 customers - almost double its target - had raised QR3.28bn through its IPO, which was the largest in the world.
Of the total capital of QR8.40bn, 60% came from founding shareholders and their stocks have a lock-in period of two years and the remaining 40% (of which 23% with retail and 17% with institutional investors) is the free-float shares that are available for trading.
On the capital expenditure, Vodafone Qatar CEO Grahame Maher said it was enough al though the company has operational costs.
The company expected to make profit by 2011, the time by which it expects 33% market share, according to Tombleson who also highlighted that Mobily had achieved 42% market share in its three years of operations in Saudi Arabia.
On achieving 20,000 account customers, Maher said “this is approximately 8% of Qatar Telecom’s account base, which is a great start for our shareholders.”
On Monday Vodafone announced that its customers could call any country, anytime at just Dh50 a minute until September 30.
The mobile phone service provider has also hinted at a ‘special rate’ for international calls (permanently) after the ‘Dh50 a minute’ promotion.
The promotional rate would apply to calls originating from the Vodafone network in Qatar to any country, at any time.
Vodafone Qatar chief marketing officer Michael Portz said the service provider’s current and new customers could benefit from the promotion.
“Existing customers will automatically get access to this great offer,” he said.
He said Vodafone Qatar customers’ get the promotional international calling rate (Dh50 a minute) to any network in the world. However, Vodafone Qatar customers on roaming cannot avail of the special price. They will have to pay for international calls at ‘notified roaming rates’.
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