Telecom Plus Share Price (TEP)

Service growth lags customer growth and the churn rate has increased. Unless new customers take up services there isn't much cause for rejoicing.

Profits at lower end of forecast would still meet expectations, so either the fall is simply over the dividend cut expected supposedly in favour of share buybacks , or the market fears future earnings growth is going to be difficult. This could be a buy opportunity and I do miss them quite often through fear.

Puzzling.

TheLoaf - re your comment back in early Feb :

"I used to wait for TEP to drop to around 1000p & sell out at around 1400p (those days are gone)."

Seems not..! (What goes around comes around.....)

Notable too that although the (first) big drop from December was atttributed to possible talks re bidding for Ovo Energy's retail customers, that's now off the table, but not even the slightest rebound here yet. No logic to any of it.

Some clearer comms from the Board would help - but major shareholders are clearly their priority, as others have flagged....

In any case - with next div due in July, we'll see if it's nearer the top, rather than bottom, of your old trading range by then...!

GLA

It's really just a trade off between cash now and future earnings growth. Very crudely, dividend yield reduces from 8% to 4% and EPS growth increases from x% to 4+x%. Most shareholders won't be clamouring for cash today and if they are they can trade down the 4% of shares that represents SP growth.

But they did disclose that the switch from dividends to buyback/special dividends was at the request of larger shareholders and I'm guessing it's because the 80% of earnings distributed as dividend created messy optics around dividend sustainability.

Not sure many shareholders will be happy with forfeiting dividends to fund share buybacks. Might be good tax saving measure for directors with large numbers of shares.