Vodafone Group PLC (VOD.L): e& sells its stake to Xavier Niel vehicle for 13% premium to last night‘s closing price

Research evidence excerpt

Vodafone Group PLC (VOD.L): e& sells its stake to Xavier Niel vehicle for 13% premium to last night‘s closing price

Flash |

10 Jul 2026 05:36:32 ET │ 10 pages

Vodafone Group PLC (VOD.L)

e& sells its stake to Xavier Niel vehicle for 13% premium to last night's

closing price

CITI'S TAKE Neutral

Price (09 Jul 26 16:30) £0.98 e& has announced that it has agreed to sell its 17% stake in Vodafone to

Target price £1.10 Vega, an acquisition vehicle owned by Xavier Niel's family group. Vega is

paying $5.95bn or 112.5GBp per share (110.5GBp in cash and the final Expected share price return 12.2%

FY'26 dividend of 2.02GBp to be received on 30 July). This is a 13% Expected dividend yield 4.1%

premium to last night's closing price of 97.8GBp. Given Xavier Niel's Expected total return 16.3%

previous Vodafone shareholding and public commentary about the Market Cap £22,567M

company, investors will be interested to see what level of Board US$29,864M

representation is requested by Mr Niel. We believe investors will also look

to what happened at Tele2 after a Niel investment vehicle became the

largest shareholder (such as a 15% workforce reduction plan) as a

potential framework of what to expect. We think that Mr Niel arriving as a Carl Murdock-Smith, CFAAC

shareholder may cause investors with short positions to reconsider, so we +44-20-7986-5747

may see Vodafone shares strong today. carl.murdocksmith@citi.com

Rohit Modi

Xavier Niel's history with Vodafone. Through Atlas Investissement (Atlas), Xavier rohit1.modi@citi.com

Niel was previously a shareholder in Vodafone and bought a stake in September Nitai Chandode

2022 (press release). At that time, Atlas said that it had "identified Vodafone as an nitai.chandode@citi.com

attractive investment opportunity, as per the quality of its assets