A £4.4bn cushion to keep the Vodafone divis flowing

THE minute Nick Read took the hotseat at Vodafone, there was one question on everyone’s lips: when would he cut the dividend?

Read resisted the calls when he unveiled his first set of results as chief executive in November, despite concerns the huge payout was unsustainable.

For Vodafone had just forked out £16 billion to buy Liberty Global’s German and eastern European cable networks and piled on the debt.

Even though Vodafone could sell its masts business – a joint venture with O2 – analysts have maintained that a dividend cut is inevitable. But there might be another option. Scribblers at Bank of America Merrill Lynch say the company could sell its 50 per cent stake in VodafoneZiggo, its Dutch joint venture, to its partner Liberty.

Under the terms of the deal, neither Vodafone nor Liberty can trigger a float of the business until the end of 2019 or initiate a sale until a year later.

But the Merrill analysts reckon Liberty could offer to buy back Vodafone’s stake once it gets the cash from last year’s megadeal. That could mean an extra £4.4 billion for Vodafone – a handy cushion for its dividend.

THE City isn’t expecting any fireworks when Pascal Soriot presents AstraZeneca’s annual results on Thursday.

New products such as lung cancer drug Tagrisso should send revenues and profits soaring for the fourth quarter, but won’t quite be enough to prevent them falling for the whole of 2018. Overall, revenues are expected to dip 2 per cent to $22 billion and core operating profits are set to fall 14 per cent to $5.9 billion, says Deutsche Bank.

The question now is how long Soriot, 59, who has run Britain’s second largest pharma company for six years, plans to stay on. He could even announce his departure this week.

ROSES are red, violets are blue – Micro Focus may have a gift for you.

The Footsie firm reports its 2018 results on Valentine’s Day, and analysts from Swiss bank UBS are expecting the tech giant to focus on IT issues that emerged as a result of its mega-merger with HPE Software.

While that’s bad news for investors, the gift may be in Micro Focus revealing the capital return shareholders will get from the $2.5 billion (£2 billion) sale of German software business Suse last year.

Estimates have put the figure as high as $1.7 billion – which could buy a fair few red roses.