What You Were Buying Last Week: Vodafone Group Plc (ADR) (VOD)

LONDON — One of Warren Buffett‘s famous investing sayings is “be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful” — or, in other words, sell when others are buying and buy when they’re selling.

But we might expect Foolish investors to know that, and looking at what Fools have been buying recently might well provide us with some ideas for good investments.

So, in this series of articles, we’re going to look at what customers of The Motley Fool ShareDealing Service have been buying in the past week or so, and what might have made them decide to do so.

A lot to like
At No.1 in the latest “Top Ten Buys”* is telecom giant Vodafone Group Plc (ADR) (NASDAQ:VOD). On a price-to-earnings ratio of just over 10, and yielding almost 6%, there’s obviously a lot to like about the company.

True, its recent share price performance hasn’t been inspiring — Vodafone is down nearly 6% on this time last year, compared with an almost 7% rise in the FTSE 100. But much of the decline stems from tough conditions in Europe and competition in the U.K. from EE (otherwise awkwardly known as Everything Everywhere, which resulted from the merger of Orange and T-Mobile), and Vodafone is looking to emerging markets for future mobile growth.

Vodafone is also looking to expand into profitable areas other than mobile, a move signaled by its potential 10 billion euro takeover of Germany’s biggest cable operator, Kabel Deutschland.

Also, fears that Vodafone would splash too much cash in the 4G auction failed to materialize. True, it paid the most of all bidders — 791 million pounds, versus 589 million pounds paid by main U.K. rival EE — but, then, Vodafone was seen as a winner by securing five chunks of spectrum, compared to EE’s four, and bidders paid substantially less overall than the government had hoped.

Finally, Vodafone received a boost with news last week that it been selected by ThyssenKrupp to provide mobile communications services in thirty countries across Europe, Latin America, and the Asia-Pacific region, including in the fast-growing machine-to-machine sector, in which mobile connectivity supports remote control and maintenance of equipment.

So buyers clearly haven’t been deterred by Neil Woodford recently selling his entire holding in Vodafone — maybe he’s just being too fearful?

A high-quality income share
If you already own Vodafone and are looking for another high yield share, then this particularly high-quality income opportunity might be for you.

Indeed, the company in question boasts a 5.7% dividend yield and impressed Fool analysts so much they’ve named this share “The Motley Fool’s Top Income Stock For 2013”!

*Based on aggregate data from The Motley Fool ShareDealing Service.

The article What You Were Buying Last Week: Vodafone Group originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Jon Wallis.

Jon Wallis owns shares of Vodafone. The Motley Fool recommends Vodafone.

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