BUSINESS
ents split up and his father lost his job,
money was tight. He has a brother with
Down’s syndrome, of whom he is clearly
immensely fond. He says: “I had nice,
supportive parents but I didn’t want to be
a financial burden to them, especially to
my mother, given the challenges.” That
meant he started working at 14 in his local
Tesco warehouse for 15 hours a week.
Read got his first taste for turnarounds
at 18 in a student job at Halfords’ bike
department in Staines, Surrey, when he
begged the manager for more space to let
kids go for test rides. Sales soared, he
says. A decade later, he started doing big-
ger corporate transformations as his
globetrotting career took off at FedEx
and then Lord Hollick’s United News &
Media. As he documents each, he pep-
pers his tales with details of their spectac-
ular success under his command.
Despite such self-confidence, he is not
cut from the same showman cloth as
many chief executives, such as Voda-
fone’s deal-hungry old boy Sir Chris Gent.
One wonders if he has the communica-
tions pizzazz to sell his growth strategy to
investors. Sir Julian Horn-Smith, one of
the co-founders of Vodafone, who hired
Read 20 years ago, acknowledges the dif-
ference in style but says: “Presentation is
in the ear of the listener. Nick had no sil-
ver spoon. He may not have the polish of
Chris, he may not be extrovert, but he is
extremely competent. What Vodafone
needs is competence and safety, and
that’s what Nick brings.”
While Read is yet to pull off the kind of
mega-deal at Vodafone for which Gent
and Horn-Smith were famed (and later
criticised for), he has been busy since he
took the helm. Covid brought big opera-
tional upheavals, while also leaving a
massive dent in the company’s roaming
charges, which hammered sales growth.
Away from the pandemic, Read has
simplified the wide-ranging global port-
folio with 19 deals totalling €36 billion.
This year, he floated off the group’s
phone masts business into a separate,
€15 billion stock market quoted com-
pany, Vantage Towers.
But it’s the tech he has brought in that
gets him going. He dresses like a fintech
boss — jeans, open-necked shirt, black
suede shoes — and has spent much of the
past three years “digitising” the business.
That ranges from sophisticated mobile
electronic banking platforms in Africa to
plans for driverless trucks in Europe. His
real passion is Vodafone’s upgraded,
AI-driven app. Whipping out his iPhone,
he shows how he can track both his dog
and his luggage on it, as well as monitor
his monthly bill (£70!). So far, it is han-
dling 30 million customer chats a month.
His other pet subject is co-operation,
rather than fighting, with his rivals. Jaw-
jaw, not war-war.
Read created a viable standalone busi-
ness out of Vodafone’s towers by allowing
other operators to rent space on them. It
was typical of the kind of sharing he
wants more of to get the industry back
into growth.
“I’ve said to the industry: step back.
Returns on capital in this sector in
Europe have halved over the past dec-
ade. The sector is destroying value by
duplicating infrastructure. We need to
move to a better model.”In his first interview, Vodafone boss Nick
Read says the telecoms giant must spend
How to stop
investors
hanging up
A
sk most FTSE 100 chief exec-
utives if they’re enjoying the
job and they’ll tell you first
how brilliant it is; second,
how brilliant they are.
Nick Read, boss of Voda-
fone since 2018 after step-
ping up from the finance
director’s role, delivers the
second in spades, but not the
first. “Erm ... It has its challenges,” he
says, after a pause. He’s not wrong.
His predecessor, Vittorio Colao, had
sold the group’s vast stake in American
giant Verizon for $130 billion in 2013, but
that still left Read with a sprawling busi-
ness to manage, spanning the UK, conti-
nental Europe and Africa. In the UK
alone, Vodafone has more than 18 million
customers. Colao’s parting gift — an
€18.4 billion takeover of German cable TV
and broadband networks — gave Read a
bigger base to build from, but also left
him saddled with huge debts.
Coupled with kamikaze competition in
Italy and Spain, and Covid torpedoing the
lucrative income from travellers’ mobile
phone roaming charges, he has been hav-
ing a tough innings.
Vodafone’s shares are down 24 per
cent since he took over.
“The share price does frustrate me,”
Read says in his stiflingly hot corner office
at Vodafone’s HQ in Paddington. But, he
adds, telecoms companies in Europe
have not been happy places for share-
holders in the past decade: “High compe-
tition, deflation, extractive spectrum
auctions, high investment on network
rollout — and we’re into another phase of
that with 5G and fibre. That’s why inves-
tors are hyper-sensitive.”
In May, he prodded those sensitive
parts further by announcing he would
step up the pace of Vodafone’s invest-
ment in its network. His logic seemed
sound. The time is right to invest more in
5G, the internet of things and other fast-
growth areas. But when shareholders
heard he would have to raise annual
spending by €400 million (£340 million),
they panicked, wiping 8 per cent off the
share price. This week, Read, who has
been with Vodafone for two decades,
goes before them again to deliver its half-
year profit figures.
He doesn’t discuss the forthcoming
numbers — that would be illegal — but
acknowledges a general point: “What I
need to prove to investors — and what I’m
determined to prove to investors — is that
we can be a growth sector. European tele-
coms has been flat to negative for the past
ten years. But I think Vodafone is differ-
ent — it is differentiated because of the
scale that we bring and we can make tar-
geted investments.”
Read, 57, speaks with an accent that is
a legacy of a humble upbringing in
unglamorous Stanwell near Heathrow
airport. School was the local comprehen-
sive (since demolished) and, after his par-INTERVIEW
JIM
ARMITAGE
He has struck collaboration deals
across all of Vodafone’s territories,
including in the UK, where, only last
week, he did deals with CityFibre and BT.
Some say more are needed. Critics
argue that Read left Vodafone alone and
vulnerable as a mobile-only player in the
UK residential market by standing by as
Liberty Global’s Virgin Media business
merged with Telefonica’s O2 — a deal that
created a broadband and mobile giant to
rival BT-EE.
The industry is far from unanimous,
but most reckon that customers will want
to move seamlessly from mobile to fixed
networks supplied by the same firm as
services become more interconnected.
Read is unfazed, insisting that it is bet-
ter to rent fixed network space from BT
and, perhaps one day, Virgin. He even
raises the idea of co-investing in Virgin’s
rollout of fibre and taking a stake in it.
He has also clearly put thought into
merging in some way with Three, the UK
mobile operator that is widely seen as
being up for sale. Is he discussing a deal?
“We talk to all the players all the time,”
he says, adding, “I’m firmly supportive of
consolidation on the right terms,” and
then launching into a lengthy explanation
of why Voda-Three should be approved
by regulators were it to happen. Three
was famously blocked from merging with
O2 on competition grounds in 2016.
Some fear that Vodafone’s large Ger-
man cable network will require heavy
investment to upgrade it to fibre, just as
BT has had to do with its network in the
UK. Again, Read raises the idea of part-
nering with rivals to share the load.He has been lobbying regulators
across Europe for sensible mergers and
collaboration deals so companies such as
his can earn enough returns to invest
properly in 5G and fibre.
“In Europe, we have more than 100
operators competing in a very frag-
mented way — as opposed to the US,
which has three scale players. China has
three; India has three. And in those other
markets, you have heavy investment but
reasonable returns for shareholders.”
City chatter has it that, with its
bombed-out share price, Vodafone will
attract a bidder. The arrival of French bil-
lionaire dealmaker Patrick Drahi as a
shareholder at BT has added fuel to the
gossip, and bankers say plenty of private
equity firms have been sniffing. It would
be a hefty deal — Vodafone’s shares are
worth £30 billion and its debt is €40 bil-
lion — but private equity funds have mon-
strously huge war chests.
Asked if he has hired advisers to work
on a defence, Read says no, but acknowl-
edges that telecoms infrastructure, such
as Vodafone’s, is prized by private equity
investors. They can load them with cheap
debt (known as leverage), break them up
and make a quick buck by selling them
on, he explains.
That’s fine when interest rates are low,
he adds, “but if they go up ... ?”
“Politicians and policymakers need to
think. In one breath, they say telecoms is
critical national infrastructure. And in
the next breath, they’re saying: ‘No, no,
no — I won’t allow further consolidation
and scale.’ So then private equity comes
along to do a potential break-up, apply
leverage and make the model a lot more
vulnerable. Is that good for society?”
Recent collaborations suggest that
Read is winning the argument with regu-
lators. Now he just has to persuade the
stock market.What I need to
prove to investors
— and what I’m
determined to
prove — is we can
be a growth sector
Nick Read wants to collaborate with rivals. ’We talk to all the players all the time. I firmly support consolidation’THE LIFE OF
NICK READ
VITAL STATISTICS
Born: September 29, 1964
Status: married with two
children
School: Stanwell secondary
school; Ashford sixth form
college
First job: trainee accountant
at Sainsbury’s
Pay: £3.6 million last year
Home: Virginia Water,
Surrey
Car: Aston Martin DBS
Favourite book: Jurassic
Park by Michael Crichton
Drink: espresso or red wine
Film: Gladiator
Music: The The
Gadget: mobile
phone.
Watch:
Apple Watch
Charity:
Mencap — “awonderful organisation
that has supported one
of my brothers
through his life”
Last holiday:
Grimaud, FranceWORKING DAY
Read is up at 6am and
at his desk by 7.30am,
with a bowl of porridge
and a coffee, to go
through emails. From 8am,
he starts his meetings. This
includes spending time with
customers, partners and
governments, as well as
internal meetings reviewingcommercial operations and
strategic progress, on
business development and
on employee engagement
activities. On a normal day,
he tries to finish by 7.30pm.DOWNTIME
Read and his wife like to walk
their dogs and spend time
with their children. They
enjoy nights out in London
and, when time permits, he
is learning to play golf.Read likes the
Aston Martin
DBS, Gladiator,
an espresso and
Virginia WaterTOM STOCKILL FOR THE SUNDAY TIMESA
s his friends studied for
their A-levels, Monty
George had something
else on his mind:
shifting a container of
400 quad bikes he had
shipped over from China.
George had been bitten by
the entrepreneurial bug.
Seven years later, he and
best friend Dan Beckles, now
both 24, run Furniture Box,
an online furniture retailer
that last year recorded sales
of £9.4 million, up threefold,
and a profit of £1.5 million.
Sales for 2021 will be in excess
of £15 million, all delivered by
a team of 40 people based in
Warminster, Wiltshire.
George and Beckles met at
Bishop Wordsworth’s, their
local school in Salisbury, aged- Both football mad, they
clashed on the pitch, George
playing for Bournemouth and
Portsmouth’s youth teams,
while Beckles signed for
Bristol Rovers. But George got
a taste for earning money with
his eBay sales and “packed in”
football to focus on it full time.
He spotted a gap in the
market for affordable
furniture and convinced
Beckles to join him in starting
Furniture Box in 2015.
The business model was
simple: they bought furniture
from China, shipped it to the
UK and sold it to customers
on eBay, and later, other
platforms, before distributing
it from a warehouse. George’s
experience of buying and
selling goods made in China
gave the pair an edge. Their
first product was a dining
table and four chairs, which
sold for £120.
There were still mistakes
along the way, though. “We
had a container of wardrobes
and cabinets that we thought
were going to be fantastic. We
got a really good price on
them. Little had we thought
about their weight and size,”
said Beckles. “It took us about
six hours to unload the
container and then we had all
sorts of problems withcome directly from Furniture
Box’s own website.
Like many firms selling
home improvements,
lockdowns proved a boon for
Furniture Box as households
spent money on renovation
projects. Fortunately, it had
“overstocked” its warehouse
just before the pandemic
struck. But still, servicing the
demand was “incredibly hard
work,” said George. “I was
getting up every single day
between 4.30 and 5am.”
Troubles with global
supply chains are causing a
headache now. George said
the disruption had added
“£1 million to £2 million” of
extra costs in the past year,
some of which has had to be
passed on to customers.
The entrepreneurs are
gearing up for next summer’s
move to a new 90,000 sq ft
unit near Bristol, an hour and
a quarter from their current
site. They will be offering staff
incentives to commute or
relocate. The added capacity
will mean that the firm can
push into new products,
including lighting, and new
territories such as the US.
George’s advice for
entrepreneurs is to “enjoy
what you’re doing, because
you will work harder, faster
and longer.”In the hot seats: Dan
Beckles and Monty GeorgeWe had to work harder, faster, longer
inadequate packaging”
It taught them the value of
understanding freight and
getting the packaging right.
“If it wasn’t good, we would
see that through customers’
emails about damage and we
would have to arrange a
collection. We would then
lose money on that
transaction,” Beckles added.
Today, all products are
“drop tested from 60
centimetres” to check the
packaging is good enough to
stop damage-related returns.
Furniture Box sells on
Wayfair, the US furniture
marketplace, eBay, Amazon
and OnBuy and recently
secured a listing on Robert
Dyas. A third of sales nowHOW WE MADE IT
MONTY GEORGE AND DAN BECKLES
FOUNDERS OF FURNITURE BOX
Hannah Prevett
Deputy editor, Times
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