Vodafone Share Price Today: Buyback Progress, Dividend Growth and £3bn Lawsuit

Vodafone Group plc (LSE: VOD, NASDAQ: VOD) stayed in focus on 18 November 2025 as investors digested fresh buyback activity, a new institutional filing, strong growth in key emerging markets – and a major UK class-action lawsuit targeting the country’s biggest mobile operators.

At the London close, Vodafone’s shares were trading around 92p, giving the FTSE 100 telecom giant a market capitalisation of roughly £21.9bn, within a 52‑week range of about 62p to 96p. ^[1]

Below is a full run‑through of everything that moved the needle for Vodafone stock today.

Key points for Vodafone investors on 18 November 2025

Share price around 92p in London, leaving Vodafone close to its 52‑week high and valued at ~£21.9bn. ^[2]
€500m buyback programme continues: today’s RNS confirmed 1,000,000 shares repurchased on 17 November at an average 93.79p, taking treasury stock to over 1.82bn shares. ^[3]
Dividend story remains central: H1 FY26 results showed revenue up 7.3% and adjusted EBITDAaL up 5.9%, with management guiding to the top end of FY26 targets and committing to a 2.5% dividend increase. ^[4]
Duff & Phelps trims its stake in the US‑listed ADR by 12.8%, selling 100,000 shares and underscoring still‑cautious institutional sentiment. ^[5]
Retail commentary turns bullish: a fresh opinion piece argues Vodafone’s sub‑£1 share price remains “undervalued” and suggests upside toward £2.76 over time. ^[6]
Legal risks in the UK rise as the Competition Appeal Tribunal allows a £3bn “loyalty penalty” lawsuit to proceed against Vodafone, EE, O2 and Three. ^[7]
Growth outside Europe stays strong, with Vodafone Egypt reporting 46.1% H1 2025 growth and Vodafone Idea in India posting slightly higher Q2 sales and narrowing losses. ^[8]

Vodafone share price and valuation snapshot

Vodafone’s London‑listed shares ended 18 November trading close to 92p, with a quoted bid–offer of 92.00p–92.04p and an indicated market cap of about £21.9bn. The stock’s 12‑month range remains 62.40p to 96.32p, highlighting how far it has recovered from last year’s lows. ^[9]

Key metrics from UK brokers at today’s close include: ^[10]

Dividend yield: roughly 4.2%, based on the current declared dividend.
Forward P/E ratio: around 13–14x, on recent earnings.
Performance: about 35% share price gain over 12 months, roughly 31–32% over six months.

For income‑focused investors, the upcoming interim dividend of 2.25 eurocents per share (unchanged year‑on‑year) is important. The ex‑dividend date for the London line is 20 November 2025, with a record date of 21 November and payment due on 5 February 2026. ^[11]

Buyback momentum: €500m programme and today’s RNS

Capital returns are central to Vodafone’s equity story right now.

On 11 November 2025, alongside its half‑year results, Vodafone launched a €500 million share buyback programme. The buyback began that day and is scheduled to run until 4 February 2026, with Merrill Lynch International executing purchases on the London Stock Exchange and other platforms. ^[12]

Today, an RNS via Investegate confirmed a fresh tranche of repurchases:

Date of purchase: 17 November 2025
Number of shares bought:1,000,000 ordinary shares
Price range:93.20p – 94.18p
Volume‑weighted average price:93.79p
Resulting treasury holding:1,822,363,290 shares
Shares in issue (excluding treasury):23,838,065,188

^[13]

This incremental buyback is small in isolation but, alongside earlier tranches (including multi‑million share repurchases in August, October and early November), signals a consistent effort to shrink the share count and support earnings per share.

From a valuation angle, management is effectively stating that buying back stock in the high‑80p to mid‑90p range is an attractive use of capital, especially now that leverage is trending lower and free cash flow is improving. ^[14]

Fundamental backdrop: Germany turns the corner, dividend goes “progressive”

Vodafone’s current share price action is still being driven by its H1 FY26 results, published on 11 November 2025.

According to the company’s half‑year announcement and supporting commentary: ^[15]

Total revenue rose 7.3% year‑on‑year to €19.6bn.
Service revenue increased 8.1% to €16.3bn, or 5.7% on an organic basis.
Adjusted EBITDAaL (the group’s preferred operating profit measure) grew 5.9% to about €5.7bn.
Germany – historically a sore spot – returned to service‑revenue growth in Q2, helped by the fading impact of 2024 TV‑law changes and stronger wholesale revenue.
The UK, now merged with Three UK, showed mid‑teens organic service‑revenue growth in Q2, reflecting early integration benefits.
Africa delivered double‑digit organic service‑revenue growth of about 13.5%, supported by strong data usage and financial‑services adoption.

Management now expects to land at the upper end of FY26 guidance for both adjusted EBITDAaL (€11.3–11.6bn) and adjusted free cash flow (€2.4–2.6bn). ^[16]

Crucially for dividend investors, CEO Margherita Della Valle has committed to a new “progressive” dividend policy:

The full‑year FY26 dividend per share is expected to grow by 2.5%, off a base of 4.5 eurocents in FY25. ^[17]
The interim dividend each year will be set at 50% of the prior full‑year dividend.

Rating agencies have taken note. On 7 November 2025, Fitch Ratings reaffirmed Vodafone’s ‘BBB’ issuer rating and revised the outlook to Stable (from Positive), reflecting progress on restructuring and cash generation but acknowledging ongoing execution risk and investment needs. ^[18]

Institutional moves: Duff & Phelps trims its Vodafone stake

On the US side, Vodafone’s NASDAQ‑listed ADR (ticker: VOD) generated fresh headlines as Duff & Phelps Investment Management Co. disclosed a reduction in its holding.

A MarketBeat report today notes that Duff & Phelps cut its Vodafone position by 12.8% in Q2, selling 100,000 shares and leaving it with 682,200 ADRs valued at around US$7.27m at the time of filing. ^[19]

The same article highlights that:

Institutional investors collectively own under 10% of Vodafone’s US‑listed shares.
Aggregated analyst data on MarketBeat suggests a “Reduce” consensus, based on 1 Buy, 4 Hold and 6 Sell ratings. ^[20]

While a single fund paring its position isn’t decisive on its own, the filing underlines a key theme: professional investors remain cautious, even as the company talks up growth, buybacks and dividends.

Retail sentiment: “Below £1, Vodafone still looks undervalued”

If institutional opinion is mixed, some retail commentators are decidedly more optimistic.

An article published today on The Motley Fool UK argues that, despite a strong rally over the past year, Vodafone’s share price – still below £1 – is “undervalued” relative to what the author sees as its fair value, which he pitches at up to £2.76 per share. ^[21]

The piece points out that:

Vodafone’s stock jumped around 8% immediately after the 11 November results, yet remains far below historic levels. ^[22]
The combination of a 4%+ forward yield, an ongoing share buyback, and a business now exiting low‑return markets (Spain, Italy) provides a more focused, cash‑generative core. ^[23]

Retail‑friendly narratives like this can help underpin support around current price levels, but it’s worth stressing that they remain opinion pieces, not guarantees. Upside cases depend on Vodafone successfully executing its strategy and avoiding nasty surprises on regulation, competition or capital intensity.

Legal overhang: £3bn “loyalty penalty” lawsuit moves ahead

One potential source of unpleasant surprises emerged more clearly today.

The Register reports that the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) has allowed collective‑action cases to proceed against Vodafone, BT/EE, O2 and Three, alleging that they overcharged mobile customers who remained on bundled handset‑and‑airtime contracts after their minimum term expired. ^[24]

Key points from the ruling and filing:

The class action, led by Justin Gutmann (a former Citizens Advice executive), seeks more than £3bn in damages on behalf of millions of customers. ^[25]
The CAT limited how far back claims can go, striking out parts of the case before 1 October 2015, but declined operators’ request to strike out claims before 8 March 2017, keeping a significant portion alive. ^[26]
The claim centres on a so‑called “loyalty penalty”: customers were allegedly charged the same monthly price even after they had effectively paid off the cost of their handset, instead of being moved to cheaper SIM‑only plans unless they upgraded. ^[27]

At this stage:

No court has found Vodafone (or any operator) liable.
The case is at an early procedural phase, and Vodafone has not publicly commented on today’s ruling.

For investors, the implications are two‑fold:

Financial risk – In an adverse scenario, damages (plus legal costs) could dent free cash flow, though any resolution would likely be years away and may be shared across operators.
Reputational and regulatory risk – The case fits into a broader UK narrative about “loyalty penalties” in telecoms and utilities, which may lead to tighter consumer rules and margin pressure over time.

Growth stories in Africa and India: Vodafone Egypt and Vodafone Idea

While Europe and the UK grab the headlines, Vodafone’s emerging‑market exposure continues to matter for the long‑term equity story.

Vodafone Egypt: strong H1 growth

A report today from Telecom Review Africa says Vodafone Egypt delivered 46.1% growth in H1 2025, generating about EGP 55bn in revenue, helped by booming data and digital‑financial‑services usage. ^[28]

These trends dovetail with the group’s own commentary in its H1 FY26 results, where Africa (largely through Vodacom and associated operations) recorded double‑digit organic service‑revenue growth and continued expansion in mobile‑money and super‑app services. ^[29]

For Vodafone Group plc, Egypt sits inside a broader “Africa” segment, but sustained high growth here strengthens the case that emerging‑market data and fintech are key profit drivers over the medium term.

Vodafone Idea (India): still fragile, but slightly better

On the Indian side, Vodafone Idea Ltd, in which Vodafone’s stake has been diluted to about 16.1% following earlier debt‑to‑equity conversions, ^[30] remains financially stressed but showed modest improvement:

Net sales for the quarter ended September 2025 came in at around ₹11,068 crore, up 2.09% year‑on‑year, according to Moneycontrol. ^[31]
Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Vodafone Idea’s quarterly loss was smaller than analysts expected, as more users migrated to higher‑priced plans, boosting average revenue per user. ^[32]

For Vodafone Group, the practical impact is limited in the near term – the stake is now minority, non‑consolidated – but market perception still links the company to the fate of its Indian affiliate. Any decisive turnaround or resolution there could remove a long‑standing psychological overhang on the stock.

Network and product updates: HD‑only TV and cable frequency changes

Vodafone also made some product and network changes tied to today’s date, mostly impacting German TV customers rather than the share price directly.

From 18 November 2025, Vodafone’s German cable network is carrying several ZDF channels exclusively in HD, including ZDF, ZDFinfo, ZDFneo, 3sat and KiKA. The company has been informing customers that an HD‑capable TV or cable receiver is now required to continue receiving these channels, with on‑screen tickers highlighting the switch. ^[33]

Separately, Vodafone is rolling out local frequency reorganisations in various German regions (for example, Leer and Miltenberg), retuning TV and radio channels within its cable‑fibre network. Modern receivers generally handle the transition automatically, but older equipment may require manual retuning. ^[34]

For investors, these moves are operational housekeeping rather than major catalysts, but they underscore the ongoing capex demands of running large fixed‑line and TV platforms – one of the structural reasons investors still treat telecoms as capital‑intensive, lower‑multiple businesses.

Credit and strategic backdrop: VodafoneZiggo and asset reshaping

Even though there was no brand‑new M&A announcement today, investors continue to weigh Vodafone’s broader portfolio reshaping:

The group has already exited Spain and Italy and is now focused on markets where it has scale positions. ^[35]
In the Netherlands, media and industry sources have repeatedly reported that Liberty Global is interested in acquiring Vodafone’s stake in their 50:50 joint venture VodafoneZiggo, although no deal has been agreed. ^[36]

Investors are watching for any eventual sale, IPO or restructuring of VodafoneZiggo, which could free up additional capital and simplify the group even further – but until anything is confirmed, this remains speculative upside rather than a base‑case assumption.

How does all this add up for Vodafone stock?

Putting today’s news flow together, the Vodafone investment story on 18 November 2025 looks like this:

Positives

Earnings momentum: Revenue and EBITDAaL are growing again, with Germany back to growth and Africa/UK performing strongly. ^[37]
Capital returns: A €500m buyback is underway alongside a progressive dividend with an expected 2.5% uplift this year, supporting total‑return potential. ^[38]
Balance‑sheet comfort: Fitch’s BBB / Stable stance suggests the credit profile is solid enough to support both investment and shareholder payouts, provided execution stays on track. ^[39]
Emerging‑market growth: Egypt and wider African operations are delivering robust growth, with data and fintech providing structural tailwinds. ^[40]

Risks and overhangs

Legal and regulatory risk: The £3bn “loyalty penalty” class action adds a new layer of uncertainty in the UK, on top of existing scrutiny of telecom pricing and contract practices. ^[41]
Cautious analyst and institutional stance: Duff & Phelps’ stake reduction and a “Reduce” analyst consensus underline that not all professional investors are convinced by the turnaround yet. ^[42]
Capital intensity and competition: Ongoing network upgrades (such as HD‑only TV and frequency reorganisations) and 5G/FTTH roll‑outs continue to demand heavy investment in a fiercely competitive environment. ^[43]
Macro and rate sensitivity: As a high‑dividend, highly geared infrastructure‑heavy stock, Vodafone remains sensitive to interest‑rate expectations and broader equity‑income sentiment.

Bottom line

On 18 November 2025, Vodafone Group plc sits at an interesting crossroads:

The financial narrative is improving – top‑end guidance, growing cash flow, a new progressive dividend and an active buyback.
The share price has recovered, but some investors (especially in retail commentary) still see deep value at sub‑£1 levels. ^[44]
At the same time, the group faces non‑trivial legal, regulatory and competitive headwinds, and institutional sentiment remains lukewarm.

For now, Vodafone looks like a classic “show me” turnaround: management is doing many of the right things, but the market is waiting to see consistent execution and clean quarters before it fully rerates the stock.

This article is for information only and does not constitute investment advice. Always do your own research or consult a regulated financial adviser before making investment decisions.

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