In June 2009, physicist Stephen Hawking held a party in Cambridge for time travellers, sending out invitations after the event ended. He jokingly claimed that the empty room proved that backward time travel is impossible. Armed with a time-travelling device, I could know the future returns from, say, Vodafone Group (LSE: VOD) shares and get super-rich.
We are all bound by the laws of physics, which indicate that time travel is unlikely. That said, one theoretical particle known as a tachyon — which travels faster than the speed of light and has an imaginary mass — would likely travel backwards in time. Anyway, how has the Vodafone share price moved lately?
Volatile Vodafone
As I write, the Vodafone share price stands at 117.8p, valuing the UK’s leading mobile-network operator at £27.1bn. This ranks the telecoms group at #29 by market value in the elite FTSE 100 index.
Vodafone stock has surged over the past week. The shares leapt 20.1% in five trading days after news emerged that French billionaire Xavier Niel paid £4.4bn to acquire a 16.2% stake in this British business. This makes telecoms tycoon Niel and his Vega group Vodafone’s largest shareholder by a long way.
While the shares have risen a mere 4.7% over one month, they have leapt 18% over six months. And despite soaring 44.5% over one year, they are almost unchanged over five years, rising just 1%.
Note that these gains exclude cash dividends, which were previously very generous from Vodafone. However, the firm halved its yearly payout in 2024 from €0.09 (7.7p) to €0.045 (3.85p), sending the shares tumbling.
In short, Vodafone shares have been pretty volatile for years, crashing hard from February 2022 to April 2025 before roaring back to life.
Vodafone value?
Disclosure: my family portfolio bought Vodafone shares in December 2022, paying 90.2p a share for our stake. I bought into this business because I saw it as one of the FTSE 100’s ‘fallen angels’ — solid companies with temporarily depressed share prices. My timing was far from perfect, with the shares trading at just 80.2p by mid-July 2025. Oops.
Nevertheless, it seems that value investing — buying and holding cheap shares — is yet again paying off for my family. We now have a paper gain of 30.6% to date. Even better, we reinvested all Vodafone dividends into buying yet more shares. This has turbocharged our returns, turning Vodafone into a pretty decent ‘recovery play’ investment.
To answer the question in my title, £1,000 invested in Vodafone stock a year ago is now worth £1,445. Adding roughly £45 in dividends sums to £1,490 — a total return of 49% over one year. That’s more than 10 times the interest from top savings accounts, but always remember that shares are far riskier than cash deposits.
Do we keep our Vodafone shares? As a value/income investor, I like their dividend yield of 3.4%, which beats the FTSE 100’s yearly cash yield of 3%.
Of course, economic downturns in Vodafone’s key markets — Germany, the UK, and Europe — could harm its revenues, profits, and cash flow. Likewise, net debt of €25.4bn (£21.7bn) might constrain future growth. Even so, we are on board for the long run!
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Cliff D’Arcy has an economic interest in Vodafone Group shares.
