Broker tips: Vodafone, EnQuest, Vedanta Resources

The decline in organic revenues at Vodafone continued to ease in its third quarter, according to UBS, which hailed the telecom giant’s “good progress in key markets”.

The bank reiterated its ‘buy’ stance and 265p target price for the stock, saying that third-quarter results due 5 February should show the company on the way to a return to growth.

Westhouse Securities analysts welcomed Friday’s news that EnQuest had renegotiated the terms of its debt and cut its capital expenditure budget for this year, saying that the oil firm “is a play on oil-price recovery”.

Westhouse said: “This is a positive update. The risk of EnQuest breaching its covenants is now mitigated with covenants relaxed and capex cut without a delay to major development projects.”

Canaccord Genuity has reiterated its ‘speculative buy’ recommendation on Vedanta Resources, hailing the resilience of Cairn India’s third-quarter financial performance.

“In the last few days we note that the shares have rallied 27% from the share price trough. Our recommendation is high risk. However, the company has, in our view, weathered the market's concerns over its debt, and with the potential for some recovery in both oil and copper prices and positive news flow in India, we anticipate more upside.”