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I'm not making a buying case for either ULVR at this point or RYA btw!!.
Even though RYA is highly cyclical (that is a big understatement) and extraordinarily volatile
it generates bags of excess cash which it uses to rapidly reduce the share count.
Next plc, which I hold a small amount of, has done this more or else beautifully over
the past decade plus. Neither would I make a buy case for Next at this point, just for clarity.
Luck with your BT holding.
Andyagogo and Avrohom, to add to my previous post, I've never been as sure on an investment as I am on my BT bet and as stated previously, anything we say on here is irrelevant. Lets see where BT is in 3 years time, i'm putting money on it being considerably higher that it is now. Next month i'm buying more, I can't see a better value buy anywhere and before anyone says it, I don't see BT as a value trap either, even though the market would like us to believe it is.
Time will tell if you guys are right, or if my bet is on the money, in the meantime i'll just keep collecting and reinvesting the divi's. Successful Investing isn't about luck, it's about patience, picking the right stock and paying the long game.
Av, definitely recommend a diversified portfolio of risks.
Fleccy,
Lets have a little less dramatics.
It is true Market power players can play havoc if they so choose.
This sometimes happens in a smaller company. Although not impossible it is highly unlikely to succeed in a FTSE 100 company.
BT's weakness is real and maybe somewhat overstated. I can assure you that BT's price has nothing to do with any ridiculous conspiracy theories.
If your investment strategy is based on your trust in PJ's ability. I pray that you have other investments other then BT.
I am glad your using your dividend for a holiday rather then reinvesting in BT.
Enjoy your holiday and lets hope that BT will be in better shape when you return.
The real difference between Unilever and BT is HR. BT like Royal mail, British Steel and British Gas were previously nationalised industries. All of them heavily overmanned and not customer orientated. None of them are really up to operating effectively in a competitive market. This has resulted in BT having a very substandard workforce.
Unilever, Diageo on the other hand have always had to be competitive to survive. They could never rely on public funding to support bad management decisions.
Hi Andy, I guess that's why many retirees buy annuities - timing capital drawdown on a 20% movement on a £50 share!!
High divs offset my falls and I can take capital another day ...
As you say, not the same industries and congratulations on the gain over the last 12/18 months. Unilever has its own weaknesses though, and the current hi valuation may be the frothy consequence of inventory building/ trade wars/ ultra low -ve interest rates. Retailer brand loyalty may not be so sticky going forward.?
The shelf life of 5G is probably 8-10years and telecoms a moated market...If I was PJ, I would time good news on strategic execution in H1 reporting rather than drip drip drip individual deals … although UBS have also been negative on the lack of strategic news in the short term. Its worth noting PJ bought a lot of shares at over £2 so I am sure he isn't sitting on his 'posterior' and no plan to make some money.
In any event, I have c£10k in BT divs just about to hit the bank account and going on holiday :-). If I had held Unilever I would be taking profit and going on holiday too ;-)
Some fair points Andy. But BT spending more than is coming in?
Agree, things aren't rosy for telecoms but as mentioned, seems the big players are forcing it down. Vodafone also getting the same treatment.
Unilever is not immune from sentiment swings, there have been months
where it has sold off sharply - the difference being it bounces back very sharply.
For a sustained and continued fall in a SP fundamentals will usually need
to weaken.
If a company keeps producing record results quarter after quarter, as with
Unilever, that's unlikely to happen.
BT is spending more money than is coming in, until there is at
least some sign that will change, The SP may continue to be under pressure -
unless you think there will be a bid.
When I mentioned, could BT end up near 1 GBP?, Under around 1.25- 1.30 is what I had
in mind.
Gosh that's depressing fleccy. Can't quarrel with your logic though.
"BT and ULVR are very different businesses"
Different businesses, but both rely on the consumer. Unilever's fortunes could change overnight and for many fundamentals, Unilever isn't that much different than BT and worse for some fundamentals.
Lets imagine i'm a market power player and I want to drive Unilever's price down, how would I do it? Hmmm, Ok, lets start by getting our contacts, in the financial press, to start pumping out articles about consumers new found optimism for Supermarket value ranges, eroding the popularity of Branded products and also print how the supermarkets are squeezing brand name products to lower prices.
Now lets program the algorithms to bombard the market with multiple small sell trades of Unilever stock and meanwhile, keep the negative narrative churning away in the press, with a stream of carefully timed articles.
Once we start the ball rolling, we can let herd sentiment and momentum algo's add to the downward pressure and once investors become wary enough, to fear jumping in, it should be easy to drive the price down below our target level.
In todays market, no company is immune from attack, in fact the market makers have arsenals of high tech methods, at their disposal, to do virtually anything they want.
Some will say that i'm talking pure fiction, but we live in a trading world where one trader, Navinder Singh Sarao (hound of Hounslow) was deported for wire fraud, accused of causing the 2010 Flash Crash. One guy accused of crashing the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite. Anyone who says that individual targeted stock manipulation isn't easy to do is kidding themselves, it's probably as easy as pie for the Market Movers.
BT and ULVR are very different businesses, however there is on
particularly salient difference and that's free cash flow.
Unilever generates enough free cashflow to cover CAPEX, dividends, pension contributions,
with plenty left over, year on year.
BT does not not - which is why net debt is increasing.
Note the increase in interest costs that BT reported at their last update.
Investors often confuse cash flow with free cash flow, they are different.
In other words on my take BT is not even covering it's running costs atm,
when dividends and pension contributions are factored in.
So there is no mystery why the BT share price is where it is.
All imv only, as always.
Patient: Doctor, Doctor, I think I am a cricket ball
Doctor: Hows that?
Patient: Dont you bl**dy start!
The share price of a stock at any given time is based on what the market believes its true value in the medium term to be.
That is why that most quality stocks like Diageo, Unilever where the consensus believes that they will do well in the future will value them at a premium. Meaning a higher PE and a lower dividend yield. When the stock market chooses to ignore the PE and dividend yield in its valuation one should ask why. It is quite clear that in BT's case the market is ignoring it. None of us on here know why - but it would seem that the institutions have been avoiding BT for the last few years. They obviously know something we dont.
The share price of a stock at any given time is based on what the market believes its true value in the medium term to be.
That is why that most quality stocks like Diageo, Unilever where the consensus believes that they will do well in the future will value them at a premium. Meaning a higher PE and a lower dividend yield. When the stock market chooses to ignore the PE and dividend yield in its valuation one should ask why. It is quite clear that in BT's case the market is ignoring it. None of us on here no why but it would seem that the institutions have been avoiding BT for the last few years. They obviously know something we dont.
Well if England recovered to win the ashes after reaching the point of no return when they were 67 all out maybe even BT can turn around. I guess there are limits to miracles.
'Do you base any of your investments on this kind of nonsense? '
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have a research interest which influences my investment decisions. I am not currently writing but always mentally benchmmarking against the original data set (from wireless intelligence database). I ran multiple regressions on company financial measures, technology (diffusion), commercial service subscriptions, interest rates, gdp per capita etc for 5 years before and 5 years after regulatory intervention. I was specifically focussed on telco market asymmetries within the UK, EU and Global market definitions but was also drawn to the influence of interest groups representing other industries and how value can be traded between markets...I wouldn't necessarily recommend it but I enjoyed the journey and academic rigour, like trying to find my own version of the grand unified theory!
So, I dont rely on PE and yield % ratios to make investment decisions exclusively but intuitively use them as measures of value v growth.
But to be clear, I am a long term BT hold for the dividend but disappointed in the SP performance. I do think the SP will come back and may yet surprise to the upside given the current politics and trade negotiations.
Longish,
"On the assumption AV is not winding us all up or a shorter looking for panic selling among PIs etc"
Do you base any of your investments on this kind of nonsense? ........No, I didn't think so, best not to dwell on it, ignore the noise.
NDN, nice to have suitably qualified member on the forum, my qualifications served me well in my industry, I certainly wouldn't be where I am today without them, that said I wish I had followed the renewable energy path rather than motor industry.
I think AV makes an interesting point comparing lo PE and hi Div yields and I can see the historic logic of a portfolio with hi PE and lo Div yields like Fangs etc. 50% of my income in retirement comes from the market, roughly half Divs and half Capital drawdown as I am in the decumulation phase....
On the assumption AV is not winding us all up or a shorter looking for panic selling among PIs etc, ... how does a growth stock with hi PE and lo Div perform in a lo growth environment with recessionary economic signals etc compared to a hi Div yielding stock? Bloomberg tells me investors seek out Div stocks and abandon growth stocks in this phase of the cycle?
Dispute my mis-givings I think the same & I put my money where my mouth is whilst using a small portion of shares to ease the landing to the bottom. I actually have an idea for BT to leverage their network and people for the future, I might see if there’s a way to pitch it?.
The heading for this thread is misleading, BT is definitely not collapsing, nor will it collapse. Whatever positive, or negative views we post on here, it is just speculation. My bet is that BT will come out of all this in good shape and be a good income generator well into the future, but it's only my bet. In the meantime, because of my view, i'll just keep building my holding. No doubt i'll still be on this forum in 5 years, so other posters will have ample opportunity to test my bets.
So our troll has found some more buttons to press today. I have to admit some unthinking comments from me yesterday travelling around did a similar thing, I didn’t mean to & in retrospect I’d like to apologise. Sorry
Faults. Retired took a package after 33 years. Started with a year full time college course then 3 years Redifussion TV radio video repair with day release ending up with full tech G&G TV electronics and telecoms. Then BT using my qualifications to gain promotion to Technical Officer now C3 . Too many in house and external product qualifications to remember that assisted me in working in many varied locations including Goverment, nhs, mod, and other projects also on call 24/7 for nearly 25 years. 99% of those I worked with were hard working dedicated people be they doing similar work to me or the guys many of us see in the street working in all weathers and conditions. For someone to come along with zero knowledge of the business and slam the whole workforce, probely because he thinks of them as below himself enrages me. Every company has a few who swing the lead but they allways end up getting found out, maybe perhaps he is one of them himself, now that begs a question... People can always improve given the opportunity and encouragement, which BT dose to those who wish to have a go. The remaining 1% just sit on there bottom ranting negativity. Enjoy the BH not that us retired get the benifits of one, just another day ha ha...
NDNIC00, tell us where you stand at the moment in career progression, and how your qualifications have aided that.