Vodafone said it was on track to meet forecasts for annual profit after trading in line with expectations in the third quarter.
The mobile phone and broadband operator reported a 3.6% fall in group revenue to 11.8bn (£10.3bn) for the three months to the end of December. It blamed the decline on the sale of its Dutch business in 2016 and currency movements.

Organic service revenue rose 1.1% to 10.2bn, slightly slower than the 1.3% rate in the previous quarter. Data use increased 61% as the number of 4G customers rose by 11.5m in the quarter to 105m. The company also added 379,000 net broadband contracts.

The FTSE 100 company reiterated its guidance for an increase of about 10% in annual earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. The third-quarter performance appeared to continue the trend in the first half when revenue fell 4.1% and operating profit rose by almost a third.

Vittorio Colao, Vodafone's chief executive, said: ''We have maintained good commercial momentum in the third quarter. Data usage continues to grow strongly, and we have now passed the 100 million 4G customer milestone. We made strong progress with our fixed and convergence strategy, achieving our best ever quarter for customer growth in high speed broadband in Europe.

"As a result our service revenue growth was similar to last quarter. Overall, this consistent performance underpins our confidence that we will meet our guidance for the full year''.

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