Charles Jillings, CEO of Utilico, energized by strong economic momentum across Latin America. Watch the video here.
The Morgan Stanley RNS, reported on the 25th April, showed in the Off Book volumes on the 22nd April. On the day 194 Million Off Book volume went through, with a further 25.95 shares traded On Exchange.
https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/BT.A/holdings-in-company-oxsnr5qe18ti6g8.html
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vS4gJMsDAQq9sJ_zHqi_JnoVTryAdb4X64c7Clw12E2sGT3N6dTJfB60O8bc5Ns4burXvSSCVFrLvWC/pubchart?oid=457705223&format=interactive
I would suggest the OBR is anything but independent, they are likely influenced by external vested interests and paint whatever picture suits the narrative they want to push. It's irrelevant what they say anyway, because the chances of the UK rejoining the EU within a generation is probably zero.
Rant contiued:
The US is prints money and appears to funnel cash into it's home grown tech companies through private equity players, otherwise how has companies like Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, etc managed to grow into Trillion Dollar plus companies? The latest US protectionist policies are the Inflation Reduction Act and the Chips Act, both designed to encourage companies to build in the US rather than other countries, which includes their allies; In the meantime they're telling other countries who they can buy and sell to, as well as probably pulling other strings in the background.
Anyone else noticed the ramp up in Brexit rhetoric?
Articles are appearing daily trying to persuade us that we made a mistake leaving the EU, and telling us we should rejoin. If the UK is doing badly it has nothing to do with our membership of the EU and everything to do with decades of nonsensical political decisions, in my opinion.
Since Thatcher the Conservatives have been on a mission to sell anything and everything that was publicly owned, trying to replicate the privatisation of Telecoms into all other sectors, like Rail and utilities. The Conservatives have also sat back while UK industry has been poached and moved abroad, leaving us with very few home based large manufacturers. German, French and Spanish companies, as well as private equity, seem to have had a free hand at moving in and taking over many of our utility companies, underinvesting in infrastructure while taking fat dividends. The Conservatives seem to have no interest in manufacturing, and decided to focus more on the City of London financial industry and ignoring everything else. Clearly Conservative free market policies have contributed to the decline of UK PLC.
Labour are just as bad as the Conservatives, just in a different way. Gordon Brown hammered the final nails into the Final salary pensions coffin, probably aimed at generating some cash to create more civil service jobs and growing their own future voting base. I was one of the fortunate members of a Final Salary pension scheme, affected by Brown's attack on pensions; After Brown scrapped pension tax relief on dividends my Defined Benefit pension scheme was degraded by various changes, before being closed 8 years before I was due to retire. As a direct result of Brown's attack on DB pensions my annual pension income is now thousands of pounds lower than it would have been, and the annual pay rises are capped at under 4.3%; Even when inflation was running at 10%, and generous Government pension increases were over 10%. I can't forgive Labour for what they did to my pension.
I'm constantly reading about how unproductive the UK is, but what large industries do we have that's actually affiliated to this country? Globalisation has created a situation where our homegrown industry is bought up on the cheap and absorbed into the ether of large Global entities who are protected by their own Governments, unlike our politicians who sit back and do nothing, ARM is a good example of what I'm talking about.
Lloyds would be over 70p now if its share price performed in line with Barclays and Natwest, clearly it hasn't, I have to say the difference in market sentiment makes little sense to me. The market appears to be ignoring buyback's, so I can only guess that it's possibly the dividend debasement that upset sentiment and resulted in Lloyds stock underperforming since. Under AHO Lloyds did buyback's, but only enough to counteract the effect of block listings and the Lloyds dividend still hasn't recovered to the pre-covid level under Nunn.
Jansen/BT have well telegraphed their strategy going back as far as 2019/20, it isn't his fault if the market chose to ignore the updates.
From 2019 results
"“Our aim is to deliver the best converged network and be the leader in fixed ultrafast and mobile 5G networks. We are increasingly confident in the environment for investment in the UK. We have already announced the first 16 UK cities for 5G investment. Today we are announcing an increased target to pass 4m premises with ultrafast FTTP technology by 2020/21, up from 3m, and an ambition to pass 15 million premises by the mid-2020s, up from 10 million, if the conditions are right, especially the regulatory and policy enablers."
https://www.bt.com/about/investors/financial-reporting-and-news/results-events-and-financial-calendar/2018-19#tab-18-19-accordion-1
Jansen had only been in the job for a couple of months at that point, obviously they've speeded things up since than entailing spending more on Capex. I'm not happy when my dividends are reduced, but I can see where the cash is going. I didn't work for BT, so I can only go off what I've seen and heard over the last 5 years, but I've agreed with Jansen's plan to rollout Fibre and 5G as fast as possible.
They're developing and testing new tech at Adastral Park, they're rolling out FTTP and 5G faster than anyone else, and finding cost savings as the transformation progresses. I'd be interested to know what more BT can do?
Gary59 I'm invested in Vodafone and BT. In my opinion BT's strategy has a much smoother glide path than Vodafone's.
BT's pension deficit reduction program is on track with annual top-ups of £780 Million, from 2025 to 2031 and then reducing to £180 Million.
https://newsroom.bt.com/bt-group-announces-triennial-pension-valuation/#:~:text=The%20funding%20deficit%20at%2030,490m%20before%2030%20April%202030.
As far as lease liabilities, they'll reduce massively as the building closure program progresses after 2030. The £5 Billion a year FTTP and 5G rollout capex will also reduce after 2026 and BT are also in the midst of a cost saving plan to save £3 Billion annually by the end of 2025.
https://news.sky.com/story/bt-to-upgrade-cost-savings-target-to-3bn-as-inflationary-pressures-bite-12736609#
The weirdest OFCOM action I've seen, that makes me wonder about their attitude toward BT, is what happened with Jansen in respect of the end in tears comment.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/news-centre/2023/openreach-independence-well-established#:~:text=The%20comments%20of%20BT's%20Chief,Ofcom%20and%20industry%20significant%20concern.
The Jansen comment was reported in Feb 2023
https://www.benton.org/headlines/bt-chief-warns-openreach-fibre-push-will-%E2%80%98end-tears%E2%80%99-rivals
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0027/255528/letter-philip-jansen-to-melanie-dawes-060223.pdf
By the end of March, Jansen was on his way out of the door.
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/03/bt-group-uk-reportedly-hunting-for-new-ceo-to-replace-jansen.html
It appears that Altnets can do as much goading as they want, but any kickback from BT and OFCOM are all over them. It wouldn't surprise me if Jansen went due to the "end in tears" comment, and the subsequent OFCOM delaying action on Equinox pricing following the comment.
OFCOM don't appear to be friendly toward BT and seem to treat them as if they're a Government department rather than a publicly traded company with shareholders.
"A former governor of the Bank of England has launched a scathing attack on Liz Truss - accusing her government of turning Britain into "Argentina on the Channel"."
https://news.sky.com/story/liz-truss-turned-britain-into-argentina-on-the-channel-says-ex-bank-of-england-governor-mark-carney-12963829
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkXdFxRHDmQ
To add to my previous post in this thread; I've been a bit bored this afternoon so I decided to to build a chart to roughly measure AKO's paper profit on their shorts, not including interest, but the Total column takes the dividend into account. The chart should update every minute as BT's price changes.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRsw9LqqM3qfp1pbyg2fC4UnADyTjldJjpbBz0ejR1F7KI6w6k1OhPW65Iz80lXOgTJh19gwwG7o85U/pubchart?oid=1398899881&format=interactive
Something else to bear in mind, with reference to dividends and short positions, the entity holding the short position is liable for the dividend.
If the dividend is held and the price doesn't decline sufficiently in the meantime; Ako capital as an example, holding a 0.91% short position on ex dividend day, will be on the hook to payout nearly £5 Million pounds in dividends to whoever they borrowed stock from.
Here's a chart summarising Ako's short positions, I used the day closing price to estimate the number of shares purchased and how much they've so far paid out in divi's:
Fund . . Date Changed . Close . Change. . . . . Quantity. . . . Short Price
Ako . . . 7 Mar 2024 . . . . 107.5 . . 0.09% . . . . . . 8,956,646 . . £9,628,394
Ako . . . 23 Feb 2024 . . . 106.9 . . 0.12% . . . . . 11,942,194. . .£12,766,206
Ako . . . 6 Feb 2024 . . . . 107.05 . 0.09% . . . . . . 8,956,646 . . £9,588,089
Ako . . . 23 Jan 2024 . . . 115.6 . . 0.11% . . . . . 10,947,012 . . £12,654,745
Ako . . . 11 Dec 2023 . . . 131.35 . 0.50% . . . . . 49,759,143 . . £65,358,635
Total. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.91% . . . . . 90,561,641 . . £109,996,07
They would also have had to cover the Ex Dividend payout for their 0.5% short position on the 28th Dec 2023, coming in around £1.15 Million. Ako appear to be well in profit from their first short position taken out on the 11th Dec 2023.
I'm only guessing with the above since I've never shorted a stock, I'll happily be corrected if I've misunderstood something.