Member Info for Ascoyne

This times it at 3:45. https://www.reuters.com/article/bt-group-ratings/sp-cuts-bt-groups-credit-rating-idUSL4N1TE569

Found it on Yahoo Finance - no time stamp but just now at 17:30 it said it was 2 hours old so could fit in with your timescale.

Good old Sharon; 'June 12 (Reuters) - S&P Global Ratings on Tuesday cut its credit rating on BT Group, citing strict oversight by British telecom regulator of its broadband networks. BT's Openreach network has come under the scrutiny of Ofcom, which said in March it would cap the amount the network can charge rivals to use its entry-level superfast broadband service. The downgrade to 'BBB' from 'BBB+' was also due to increased competition in the consumer broadband market and Brexit-related uncertainties, S&P said in a statement. It, however, kept a stable outlook. (https://bit.ly/2l6qJfn)' It doesn't rain but it Poors - I'll get my coat...

Pace - I know you're not the kind of person to make stuff up but I find this rather difficult to understand. I can believe that BT would do what they did with offices and sell them off to be rented back but that exchanges to close will make no sense whatsoever. As you imply where is the hardware to be moved - it's much the same as the rumour of the sale of mobile masts - talk about selling off the family jewels!!!

Times is reporting that BT has rejected the offers. 'BT is understood to have rebuffed recent offers for its Openreach business, after receiving interest from private equity and infrastructure investors interested in buying the phone and broadband cable network.'

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/05/openreach-begin-fttp-rollout-in-edinburgh-and-train-new-engineers.html BT has announced initial target cities for FTTP rollout; Birmingham Bristol Cardiff Edinburgh Leeds Liverpool London Manchester In a nice two fingered salute to Cityfibre they're starting up in Edinburgh which Cityfibre recently announced as one of their target cities and warned off BT from encroaching on 'their' territory.

To all those who think the UK lags far behind other countries in provision of fast broadband; 'The European Commission has publish their 2018 Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), which uses data from 2017 and 2018 to reveal the United Kingdom�s progress toward the EU�s Digital Agenda goals (e.g. NGA 30Mbps+ broadband for all by 2020). This year we remain ranked 7th out of 28 member states. The UK coverage of NGA style broadband networks (FTTC, FTTH, DOCSIS etc.) has increased to 94% (compared with 80% across the EU), which puts us ahead of major economies like Germany, France, Italy and Spain but behind several other countries (e.g. Malta, Belgium, Netherlands, Portugal, Denmark and Luxembourg). We also do well for rural coverage.' https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/05/uk-ranks-7th-in-2018-eu-broadband-connectivity-progress-report.html

Is this it? 1. Lost credibility of the board still in place and taking millions while investors lose millions. Haven must go end of 2. Large losses in sports consumers in line with sky press release. I my view this punches a huge hole in the credibility of the quad play strategy and the return on the billio s invested in it 3. Further frauds unearthed 4. Serious deterioration in the already announcrd GS ability to secure deals 5. Major shareholder offloading...why what do they know? Surely if there was an upside they would stay put 6. Pension deficit could be a huge ouch 7. Large scale market price relation 8. Ofcom taking on BY 9. 5g totally wiping out fibre by 2020 10. EE synergies assumed into the 12bn buy price not being realised 1 - Yes BT board seems to have lost credibility but most of the things that have surfaced on GP's watch started under the reign of others; a) BT Italy b) Openreach fine c) Pension Black Hole 2) Don't understand why but sport still a big reason for some people to take up broadband. Decreasing because of illegal stealing of streaming services from other operators. BT now looking to bring in Amazon and Netflix and has agreement with Sky to share Sport services improving their Tv option. 3) What further frauds have been unearthed. Big deal made of Italy but no one walked away with millions. They exaggerated the amount of business they won so some people got better bonuses but that was about it. 4) True - not helped by Brexit vote - what multi-national is going to take up a contract when they've no idea what trading arrangements if any will be in place in 2 years time. 5) Don't know - what major shareholders have offloaded? 6) Always was, always will be 7) No idea what this means 8) Yeah - but they're under the Murdoch/Tory thumb - ensure anyone but the brits make a profit in this country. 9) With the power of EE this puts BT in rather a good place does it not? 10) See latest announcement on convergence - not a big winner according to the market response so far but we shall see. There have also been synergies already in the merging of consumer with mobile. Some of the 13000 losses may well come from this area where roles are duplicated. Look forward to your new risk note.

For the government to takeover the pension obligation then BT would have to go bust and then the admiinistrators would have to sell off assets to pay off creditors. The only way this would work is if DT was to negotiate with the government to takeover BT but only if the pension deficit was taken over by Government. Unless BT was on its knees I don't see that happening and it sounds unlikely that the BT board would deliberately manage everything so that it would have to cease trading (though others on this board may differ). Where it does ring true is the reliance on ancient software. I don't know about VAX's in exchanges but I was in the IT department when CSS was developed in the early eighties - written largely in COBOL and running on IBM and (originally) ICL mainframes. The database is still the original but a large body of systems have been developed to modernise the interface. Trying to update this will be a major endeavour impacting many other systems many of which are in a similar state and could make TSB's computer problems look like a minor hitch compared to the chaos this would cause in BT.

Most business news speculation is that the main problem is the forecasts for next year rather than these results. 'Investors are unhappy that BT expects revenues to fall by 2% this year, while earnings will also fall year-on year'. - Guardian Also some think that lack of clarity on strategic direction over next few years can't help; 'New initiatives announced today appear to represent self-help measures that reinforce existing strategy rather than taking BT in a bolder new direction. Altnet overbuilds threaten to chronically erode Openreach's wholesale BB market share, and weaken the prospect of Ofcom feeling the need to reach a 'fair bet' regulatory settlement with BT on full fibre. Against this backdrop, we have advocated BT accelerating its FTTP deployment ambitions without delay. Today's update is therefore a missed opportunity, in our view, setting prospects for more radical action back 12 months.' - Jeffries Unfortunately the Bank of England has passed on raising interest rates which would at least have reduced the impact of the pension deficit. Did anyone see the BT Webcast - did du Plessis - turn up/say anything useful?

Usually a single broker rating doesn't have that much impact on the SP but I reckon the new rating from Barclays taking them from a price target of 350 to 280 hits on the reason for this downturn. This chimes with my suspicion that the rot started with Three's move to use SSE as a supplier of infrastructure on top of the recent announcement of Cityfibre going private with major financial backing from Goldman Sachs etc. Its time Ofcom released BT fromt the stranglehold they have over them for wholesale pricing. Currently BT are at a disadvantage compared with other suppliers in that their wholesale prices are regulated and they must open up their network new and old to other competitors. At this rate BT will be left with the rural network and other suppliers will monopolise the urban and suburban users. URL for Barclay's announcement; 'BT could face increased competition for providing broadband infrastructure from wholesale-only providers, Barclays said as it reduced its rating on BT shares to �equal weight�. As well as cutting BT�s rating from �overweight� the Barclays analysts reduced their price target by 20% to 280p and revised down their forecasts for profit in 2019 and 2020.' https://uk.webfg.com/news/broker-recommendations/bt-facing-more-broadband-infrastructure-competition-barclays-says--3275116.html

Found a link to that here; https://www.ftadviser.com/pensions/2018/05/03/bt-workers-accept-pension-deal/ I thought the tir-ennial review wasn't due to report for a few months yet. Odd that this is the first mention I've seen of this in the news - I'd have thought the result of the triennial review would be plastered all over the business news sites.

Hermes is owned by BTPS. Does BTPS appear on BT Group's finances. I thought they had to be an independent company in case BT Group goes bust? This was announced a few months ago by the way so even if it does help the BT finances it isn't a last minute decision.

I know it was a throwaway comment but you need a TV license to watch any live programme whether BBC or not and also to watch ANY BBC programme on iplayer. https://www.gov.uk/tv-licence http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one?WT.ac=home_plt_check

This was announced a few weeks back but only just approved by European Commission and therefore confirmed. According to Reuters; Ofcom said it would cap the amount BT�s Openreach network can charge rivals to use its entry-level superfast broadband service, which generally offers speeds up to 40 megabits a second, to help rivals attract customers while they build their own networks. The cap on the monthly charge will be gradually reduced to 12.06 pounds ($17.11) a month by 2020/21. That is higher than the 11.23 pounds which Ofcom had proposed last year and its February proposal of 11.92 pounds. Britain�s biggest mobile provider said last month that it expected Ofcom�s price cap to reduce Openreach�s revenue and profit by 80-120 million pounds in its 2018/19 financial year. https://in.reuters.com/article/bt-group-broadband/update-1-uk-regulator-caps-price-bt-can-charge-rivals-to-use-fast-broadband-idINL8N1RA1CT

If you were in BT in 2009 the sharesave scheme then allowed you to buy shares at 68p (for 3 year scheme) or 61p for 5 year scheme. They offer a percentage decrease on the the price in 2009 so you could have shares below the lowest point available on the general market.

Speaking of lost souls whats happened to Velo. Last I heard he was going to update us on the mini boom in BT before the ongoing downward spiral? I guess the mini-boom stopped at 240?

Sorry Pace where does it say that. I can't see anything in the RNS or in the newspaper statements that say that in so many words. Obviously the BT contribution in the short term will increase as it says but this presumably is balanced out by fewer payments out in the long term.

Does anyone know why IEH SP has been dropping recently. After the government announcement on H2 energy trialling shares like ITM have zoomed up but IEH seems to be losing ground.

I had this as a speculative share with a few other alt energy companies. ARL has declined far worse than any other in my portfolio. None are back in profit yet but ITM seems to be hopeful at the moment. I'm currently 40% down on my original purchase - fortunately I only had a few k in there but got fed up with the price dropping 1p seemingly every day. I will keep an eye on this because I think tidal has to have a place in the future of sustainable energy but looks many months away from making good on its promise. Any, more experienced, investor on here to tell me I'm wrong or point me in the direction of other alt energy shares to be aware off?