Vodafone has raised its full-year profit target after cutting 3,000 roles across Europe between April and September, with the redundancies driving €200m (£167m) in savings.

The FTSE 100 telecoms group lifted its guidance on both earnings and cash flow, and confirmed a further 2,300 job cuts in Germany over two years. The decision follows a 2.4 per cent fall in German earnings during the first half.

Group chief executive Margherita Della Valle was blunt about the market. Operations in Germany were "not yet where it needs to be", she said.

What did the guidance change?

Vodafone now expects earnings before tax of €13.2bn to €13.4bn for the year, up from the previous range of €13.0bn to €13.3bn. The group also upgraded its cash flow forecast to €2.8bn to €3bn.

The upgrade rests on consolidation rather than organic momentum alone. Group-wide revenue rose 11.4 per cent to €21.9bn after Vodafone folded Safaricom, Vodafone Three and Telekom Romania into its results.

For practitioners, the read is straightforward: acquired scale is lifting the top line faster than cost programmes alone could, and management is banking that visibility into higher guidance.

Where do the losses sit?

The headline upgrades sit beside a large statutory loss. Vodafone reported a €3.6bn net loss for the first half, driven by a near €5bn impairment in Germany — the result of government bond yields and lower cash flows — plus the derecognition of €2.2bn in UK deferred tax assets.

Adjusted earnings told a different story. They grew 6.4 per cent to €6.45bn for the half, the number management prefers shareholders to track.

How much is Britain contributing?

The UK delivered the fastest visible growth in the portfolio. Revenue rose 10.2 per cent to €4.9bn, powered by the Three UK merger completed in May 2025.

The German comparison is stark: one market compounds at double digits after a merger, the other shrinks earnings and takes a €5bn writedown. That contrast explains why the next wave of job cuts lands in Germany.

What comes next for the merged UK business?

In October, Vodafone raised its cost-saving target to £1bn in annual savings by 2032, aiming to extract additional profitability from the Three merger. The upgraded target arrived just over two months after the group completed a £4.3bn buyout of CK Hutchison's remaining 49 per cent stake, taking full control of Britain's largest mobile operator.

The group also set fresh financial targets for the merged company:

• Mid-to-high single-digit annual growth in adjusted earnings between 2025 and 2032
• Plans to more than triple operating free cash flow over the same period

For competitors and suppliers, the signal is that Vodafone intends to keep pressing costs across Europe while its UK cash engine scales. The 5,300 roles already announced will not be the last test of that plan.