After growing by over 50% in 2025 Vodafon (LSE: VOD) share price is already up another 5.8% in 2026 – and January isn’t even over yet. But what awaits us for the rest of the year? Brokers are quite mixed on the prospects of Vodafone shares.

The most enthusiastic of these has a share price target of 149p. This represents a 43% price escalate at the time of writing on Monday (January 26). But at the other end of the range there is a low target of just 64p. And this could mean as much as a 61% decline. It seems to me that this wildly uncertain range is unrelated to actual earnings projections. So let’s take a look at what they say.

If City experts are right, between 2024 and 2028, Vodafone’s earnings per share should escalate by 140% (a one-off loss was recorded in 2025). Analysts are forecasting a more modest dividend escalate of 10% from the re-set level in 2025 to 2028. With any luck, it should beat inflation – assuming it declines by then.

Projected earnings coverage of 1.6 times in 2026 will escalate to about 2.1 times if experts are correct. However, we must remember that this is not certain. In fact, experts are often wrong. Despite this, there is an confident picture for Vodafone’s share price prospects over the next few years. For now, I side with the more confident analysts.

Upper end of the guide

This is also in line with the company’s positive guidelines: “Based on our outperformance, we now expect to perform at the high end of our guidance range on both earnings and cash flow, and with our projected multi-year growth trajectory well underway, we are introducing a new progressive dividend policy, with growth expected to be 2.5% this financial year.“

These were the words of CEO Margherita Della Valle during the transition phase. It referred to guidance of EBITDAaL of €11.3 billion to €11.6 billion (a measure of EBITDA adjusted for leasing and certain other items) and free cash flow of between €2.4 billion and €2.6 billion.

With all this joy, is it a no-brainer to buy Vodafone?

Wait a moment

Investment decisions are rarely this basic. And if that seems to be the case, I generally assume I’ve missed something. The company continues to struggle with withering service revenues in Germany – although there are signs of improvement.

Debt and valuation are a real problem for me. We’re looking at a projected price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 16. That’s fine, we might think. However, net debt of €25.9 billion (£22.5 billion) is close to the company’s total market capitalization. Adjusting for this raises the effective P/E ratio to 31!

However, if earnings grow as expected, we can expect increasingly attractive valuations in the coming years. Based on this, I think Vodafone is worth considering.