Vodafone Margin for error

Arun Sarin, the Vodafone chief executive, may believe his company is pressing all the right numbers, but the message is not getting through. The mobile operator has met its revenue and earnings targets, doubled its final dividend and announced a £4.5bn share buyback. Yet the immediate market reaction was to mark its shares down by 4%. Certainly, there were some individual disappointments, notably in Japan. Yet Vodafone’s Japanese misfortunes are nothing new. More surprising was Vodafone’s warn...