Vodafone’s Scale and Valuation: The Latest Numbers

As of December 19, 2016, Vodafone Group (VOD) is the fourth-largest global telecom by market capitalization (~$67.3 billion). The largest global telecommunication company in this metric was AT&T (T), which had a market capitalization of ~$258.7 billion on the same date.

Notably, the second-largest player was Verizon Communications (VZ), and the third-largest player in terms of market capitalization among global telecom companies was China Mobile (CHL) as of December 19, 2016.

EV-based (enterprise value) multiples help investors to understand the value of a company via its sources of capital from the shareholders’ point of view. It’s a forward multiple based on expected values after one year.

As of December 19, 2016, Vodafone’s forward EV-to-EBITDA (enterprise value to earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization) metric was ~6.4x, which was more than China Mobile’s ~3.6x. Integrated US telecom giants Verizon and AT&T had EV-to-EBITDA metrics of ~6.83x and ~6.86x, respectively.

In the next and final part of this series, we’ll look at the analysts’ recommendations for Vodafone’s stock.