A Financial Times (FT) report claims that Vodafone will use tomorrow’s full-year results announcement to declare an acceleration of its £1 billion per annum cost-cutting programme. The report notes that in November, at its half-year results announcement, CEO Vittorio Colao outlined a plan to cut the company’s annual operating expenses by £1 billion by March 2011, mostly at its European businesses. About £500 million of savings were due by March 2010 and another £500 million by March 2011. The FT claims that Vodafone will tomorrow say it is seeking savings of more than £500 million by March 2010. Terence Sinclair, analyst at Citi, Vodafone’s broker, estimated the company would secure savings of £600 million to £700 million by March 2010. Sinclair added that investors would press Vodafone to exceed the £1 billion target by March 2011.

According to the FT, analysts are expecting Vodafone to report revenue of £40.9 billion for 2008-09, up 15.2 percent on 2007-08, driven by favourable exchange rate movements. That figure would also be above a previous (downgraded) Vodafone forecast of £38.8 billion to £39.7 billion. The article also notes that Vodafone will tomorrow say it will no longer give revenue guidance, after cutting sales forecasts twice in the previous year, partly because of the economic downturn.