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...is down to Michael O'leary suggesting that air fares competition will reduce prices by 5 %. Surprised? Well, that's quite a bit less than the markets feared; hence, there are SP rises. IMV Jet2 is one of the safest bets in the sector , their money management is impeccable and they only operate where there are profits to be made. Their recent estimates suggest (within a very narrow window) that they will exceed £500m PTP for this FY, at present MC that makes their P/E a ridiculous 6. I know the industry is volatile and more conflict , another epidemic or similar left--field issues can have significant impacts, But, they are possible, not probable. I hold here and think there is some 30/40% to go.

Piece in today's Sunday Times business about the striking success of Guinness zero, rapidly growing sales , particularly among the young diet and health conscious cohort. Might only be worth a few per cent of the total sales but rapidly growing in the UK, China and of course Ireland. DGE are ramping up production capacity as fast as they can.

Update , forgot to mention that Gov. proposal to link social rents to CPI +1% for the next decade may well have a significant positive impact here. While it may not seem much, compounding rents at 1% above CPI has major benefits to landlords over a decade. The object is to drive up the number of rentable homes and is highly significant here. I suspect that the budget announcement(or re-announcement) might give a fillip to the GRI SP.

I don't breach copyright so I won't post a link, but essentially LEX agrees with my post from yesterday, Altnets including CF are struggling to turn a profit due to lack of scale, and the Sky move is a supplement to BT's offering, not a threat. I expect the brief overdone SP fall here to correct , probably within days , certainly within a few weeks.

Having held here for a while and sold out at 256p a while ago, I have reconsidered and re-entered. I don't expect fireworks but having watched the latest presentation and cognisant of the fact that they're going to become a REIT and hence required to distribute 90% of income as Divis, they fit nicely into my current strategy of lowering the risk in my folio and increasing the revenue from it.

I am restructuring as I get older and moving towards bonds, prefs, low risk (relatively),and high divi payers such that while the capital value of my folio may increase at a lower rate, its earning potential increases. Others with a similar profile and objectives may consider the same , let me know what you think.

PRK ...if you think a FTSE 100 company taking 2 years to rise from around £1 to £3, is "a long, long time" you REALLY shouldn't be investing...

Been digging a little further, see below

City are owned by a combination of infrastructure hedgies and Goldman Sachs. They bought the company with borrowed money and liabilities are now over £4bill.

Latest figures suggest they have around 350-400k residential/business customers (from 41 linked suppliers) and are generating revenues of about £ 100 m per annum.

Current projections suggest they will be "EBITDA break even " this year. That of course gets them nowhere near being profitable, and even further from beginning to pay down the massive debt, which ,at a guess, is costing them around £ 200mill pa minimum to service. This latest deal seems to be an opportunistic deal by SKY to add marginal customers to their audience at low cost, while providing little uplift to a floundering fibre supplier and is very unlikely to generate sufficient profitable revenue to alleviate CF's chronic cash issue.

My expectation is that sometime in the next year or two City's backers will pull the plug and if I know hedgies, (and I do) they will walk away unscathed with the lenders taking the pain. Another supplier will pick up the remnants of City and maybe half a million customers, net effect on BT , is minimal.

Having digested today's news, and established the facts (and some reasonable assumptions)

SKY will offer access via City fibre and the likely bulk of take-up will be in rural areas where BT does not and now may not bother to provide a service.

This may well save BT significant sums where provision will exceed likely revenues.

The numbers involved will not have a significant volume impact on BT.

Despite this deal city Fibre is still on shaky financial ground and BT may (if allowed By regulators)subsequently buy out City Fibre, thus adding to their customer base at below acquisition cost, through their own fibre rollout.

Sky's move is eminently sensible, it broadens their reach and I bet they have screwed a dirt cheap deal out of a financially desperate CF.

Net medium-term impact on BT is slight and potentially positive, SP fall an overreaction.

As you may guess I have taken advantage of a typically over-sensitive market fall to add, for those tracking my average!! It's gone up to 105-110 area.

GLA

SP holding steady on significant volume, looks like the city is going to give WG (yet) another chance. I will hold , watch and add at these or lower levels for the long term...

Mary ... the guy may not be a great public speaker BUT what he is saying is absolutely the right thing to do , streamline the company , cut out extraneous cost , ONLY take business which is profitable , BIn the turnkey solutions at a fixed price which run way over budget....

WG Is the new RR???The CFO , (ex RR )is making a good case for changing WG from an engineering -led company to a profit-led company. Eminently sensible...

WG results this morning are a pretty clear indication of why prospective suitors have walked. Despite order books of billions of dollars of work, WG seems unable to turn a profit. Todays' RNS smacks of turd polishing and I wouldn't be surprised to see the SP slashed. I will be watching the presentation at 8 am (timed to try and stave off an SP crash?). I took a position here a few weeks ago in the expectation that the co. would eventually be sufficiently well run to make profits from their technical expertise , I may have been wrong. Will report further later this am.

IDo WADR I think you misunderstand, Blackrock run investment funds through which they invest on their client's behalf. EG the BlackRock UK equity fund see

https://www.blackrock.com/uk/individual/products/228462/blackrock-uk-equity-fund-class-i-inc-fund

You as the client, invest in that fund THEY,( BlackRock) choose where to deploy that money, so in this case, it is the Fund management team NOT the client who has decided to invest in Burberry. Their remit is to invest in UK assets to maximise returns., the implication clearly is that they think an increase in their stake in Burberry will be profitable. I agree.

According to the FT, Blackrock previously held 4.81 % of BRBY, so quite a big move, worth about £60mill.

A reminder for those with short memories.

BT's SP has oscillated between 100-200p for the last four years (profits to be had by taking advantage of those oscillations!) During that time BT has spent around £1.5 billion on installing full fibre to ~15 mill households (I have used a figure of £ 100 per household which is widely accepted). As that process nears its end both the workforce needed and the outlay will fall sharply. In the last AR "Staff costs" were £5bill , even a 10% fall (it will be greater) is worth £500m per annum. As you all know (don't you?) cost reduction falls straight through to the bottom line, so within a relatively short time BT's profits will rise sharply, maybe by as much as 20% , even as they lose some of their near- monopoly position

As a result of recent high-level moves, BT is now in a position where at least half of the stock is " Tightly Held " by DT and soon Bharti, thus any SP moves are magnified, as evidenced by the near 40% uplift since April.

My conclusion from the above is that we are likely (not certain) to see an upward trend in the SP and as someone who holds quite a few at a little over £1 average I will be holding for some time, while collecting a divi which for me is ~7%

Feel free to disagree, correct or destroy my argument , that's what this board is for , not petty factional dispute.

Hi saint , no hard feelings , I Post on this site to offer what I hope is constructive input based on many years of investing and to stress that none of us have all (or even many) of the answers , successful investing is a mixture of hard work , personal discipline and luck . I always seek to emphasise a decent knowledge of the markets , rigorous analysis and patience. That means I call out those who make it sound easy. I wish you positive returns here and in your other investments .....

WADR Saint , most of your post is rubbish.YOU's daily volume is about 1% of the shares in issue, that's actually quite high. there are two significant short positions , one of which has been reduced by over 30% in recent weeks(ie the shorter has bought back to return the borrowed shares) , the other of which is, as I have sought to explain on many boards, a standard way of hedging an investment. Hold the stock but also hold a short so that if the SP falls your

short profits compensate for the loss in the position.

The standard "market manipulation " theory when PI's lose money is bo**ocks, we all get our investments wrong occasionally, either wrong stock or wrong timing , that's on us not anyone else.

Retrospective bragging about well-timed entries and exits is worthless, except to identify posters worth ignoring as is prediction of specific future prices.

I have taken the plunge here, following a fairly lengthy appraisal. As per my previous post , I think global circs plus some stunningly inept management has reduced a company with an historically famous name and a significant customer base to a MC below its value. IMV the worst management mistake was to blow £400 million on (currently fashionable ) share buybacks at the least appropriate period in time. I fully accept that a recovery here is not imminent, and if management are sensible a divi suspension is probable, nevertheless my intention is to hold for a couple of yearsin the expectation of a SP recovery of maybe 20/30/40% from here.

Carrington, that statement from Bharti legally bars them from a takeover bid for 6 months...and security issues, particularly with heightened world tensions mean there is NO CHANCE of a BT takeover...

Update Bharti's own RNS states "No intention of making an offer" so they cannot bid for 6 months.... and now Bharti and DT hold half of BT equity.