Vodafone reports slowdown in quarterly growth

LONDON (Reuters) - Vodafone reported a slowdown in first-quarter organic service revenue on Wednesday, with tough trading in Italy and Spain taking the shine off the final set of results delivered by outgoing boss Vittorio Colao.

The world's second biggest mobile operator had warned that growth would slow at the start of the new financial year, but it reiterated its full-year cash and earnings targets.

For the quarter, organic service revenue grew by 0.3 percent under its new IAS 18 accounting basis, slightly ahead of consensus forecasts at 0.2 percent. Using the old IFRS 15 system, it grew by 1.1 percent, down on the 1.6 percent growth it recorded last year.

The results reflected some of the challenges that Colao, an Italian, has encountered in his ten years in charge - competition in Italy and Spain and an intense price war in India. Vodafone has merged its Indian unit with Idea Cellular Ltd in order to enable it to better compete.

"The group's organic service revenue growth slowed during the first quarter, in line with expectations," Colao said. "The group's overall performance (including good progress in reducing absolute operating costs for the third year running) provides us with the confidence to reiterate our outlook for the year".

(Reporting by Kate Holton, Editing by Paul Sandle and James Davey)