Member Info for fleccy

Aus you never make sense, so it makes sense you'd encourage Mandy. Was you returning back from one of your VMO2 fanboy get-together's? I only ask because you said you were on a train.

"The proceeds are being used to refinance BT's existing EUR500 million hybrid instrument, callable in May 2025. The terms do not materially differ from BT's recent issue of subordinated notes in June 2023. The notes have a non-call provision of 5.25 (NC5.25) years and a par call option during the three months prior to the first reset date (year 5.5) and then on each interest payment date thereafter. The notes are issued under BT's EUR20 billion euro medium-term notes programme."

https://www.fitchratings.com/research/corporate-finance/fitch-rates-bt-group-hybrid-bb-25-03-2024

https://ratings.moodys.com/ratings-news/417522

If Carlsberg did Pet Rocks, they'd probably call it Bitcoin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iu414lPkGY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLRxtXci5mI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1coWaTRv9Ro

"£500m is the next stop"

In your dreams 😴💤

Jesteh what makes you think they'll reach a decision so soon, when they've got over a month's worth of evidence to review?

Mole LEO's will never be good enough to provide direct, at volume, service to large numbers of mobile users even in semi rural areas; What LEO's would be capable of doing, is providing backhaul services to terrestrial cells serving a larger numbers of customers over a given area. They can put high gain phased array antenna's on LEO's, but they'd have to use most of the gain to serve individual calls and there isn't much they can do to increase the gain on the mobile phone antenna. I can see where LEO's are useful for ships and aircraft where micro cells could talk to the satellite, while providing services to the Crew and traveler's, but again that's more about the LEO's providing backhaul services while terrestrial cells provide the access services.

The more satellites they put into orbit, the greater the probability of the Kessler Syndrome:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP-OwOc1AFQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48szkCZYseM

Remote areas within the African Continent is where LEO service's are a good possible solution, but only if the authorities allow it.

Another possibility is HAP's, which wouldn't need the upfront Transceiver/Dish equipment costs and could easily facilitate services direct to standard 4/5G receiving equipment's and mobiles; The main issue with HAP's is the flying time and maintaining services during rotation and maintenance periods.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62tIofxb6v4

Slpj, the punchline at the end of your post made laugh out loud 🤣

The undercurrent of scepticism portrayed in the article isn't misplaced. I can't comment on the early history of Brainspark and Clear leisure, but I can't see anything wrong with the authors implied scepticism around QBT's ambitions to achieve the seemingly impossible.

Is Mandy still obsessing about me? All I see is "This message has been filtered, please adjust your filters to view" in green lol.

You're correct companies pay Corporation Tax on profits before dividends are distributed, so paying a dividend doesn't affect the corporation tax bill. Interest earned as a result of banking the €4 Billion would be recorded as a profit, so taxable, whereas any savings in Dividend payout's due to the buybacks would be realised after Tax. There are other considerations, for example €4 Billion in the bank would reduce the Net Debt figure, and any interest earned deducts from the interest paid on the debt. Buybacks are probably an easier and safer bet, but I have no idea how one vs the other would play out financially, It's swings and roundabouts as far as I can tell. If there are any accountants on here, maybe they could educate us?

This might have some relevance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V90AmXnguw

ASIC

"The Company has started a process to design and build a proprietary ASIC chip for Bitcoin mining."

"Once manufactured, the chips will not be used for industrial Bitcoin mining, instead they will be utilised as an affordable real-world proving ground for QBT’s disruptive Bitcoin mining technology."

The ASIC prototype hasn't yet been manufactured and real world testing wont be possible until it is, and there's no guarantee lab results will be achieved in live mining.

Methods A & B

"The porting of Method A and Method B onto commercial rigs has proven to be very challenging. The R&D team is currently testing different solutions for the final stage in order to deliver a fully reliable product. An exact date for market roll-out cannot be provided at this stage."

"The R&D team is testing different solutions for this final stage in delivering the product, however the exact date of delivery cannot be provided at this stage."

"In addition to the above, the development of Method B, as an extension to CGminer, a standard operating system used by almost all commercial mining rigs"

"The key issues have been addressed and the Company is performing intensive live mining tests 24/7 using ASIC-based Bitcoin mining devices connected to two large mining pools"

I assume QBT are saying they're they're live testing Method B, using their own rigs, as members of a larger mining pool; Again no guarantee's until test results are released.

Jambone the interviews are open to interpretation and therefore irrelevant, the content in PRN/RNS's are what's important.

To understand the content of the RNS/PRN updates, it's probably easier to pull out the key points.

Method C

"Method C in testing environments has favorably demonstrated predictive ability in c. 30% of the cases, if an input to SHA-256 will produce a winning hash, resulting in a potential saving of energy."

"The fundamental feature of Method C is its ability to predict whether an input to SHA-256, the core algorithm for Bitcoin mining, is likely to generate a winning hash, or not."

"The current average predictive performance of Method C in a testing environment is nearly 30% , meaning that SHA-256 will avoid processing an input when the oracle will assess, within the current block, or the adjacent future Bitcoin blockchain blocks, that it is highly unlikely to generate a winning hash, namely almost 30% of the times."

If I'm understanding Method C correctly, QBT are saying that the Method looks at the newly constructed Block, and 30% of the time successfully determines whether or not a winning Hash is possible. Can someone explain to me how that would work in relation to live mining? Where the miners have choices about where to insert Nonce data, and changes in Bitcoin difficulty alters the probability of finding a winning hash.

In Vodafone's case I believe share buybacks are probably the way to go, whereas I took a different view in the case of Lloyds with over twice the issued shares in circulation. I suppose the easiest way to decide whether or not buybacks are worthwhile, would be to determine how much they'll save in annual dividend payouts vs how much they could earn in interest by banking the €4 Billion.

Vodafone has 28,818,683,808 ordinary shares of which 1,739,701,451 ordinary shares are held in Treasury.

Dividend bill before buybacks would be:

(28,818,683,808 - 1,739,701,451) x 4.5 Eurocent = €1,218,554,206

Dividend bill after buybacks at 70p (€0.82) per share:

€4 Billion-0.5% =€3.98 Billion (stamp duty)

€3.98 Billion/0.82= 4,853,658,536 shares purchased

(27,078,982,357 - 4,853,658,536) = 22,225,323,821 shares in circulation after buyback

22,225,323,821 x 4.5 Eurocent = €1,000,139,571 annual dividend payout

Difference in dividend payment after buyback:

€1,218,554,206 - €1,000,139,571 = €218,414,635 (17.92% annual saving)

If they banked the €4 Billion, much would depend on the interest rate they could negotiate. I have no idea how much interest corporates can earn for loaning out their cash, but I'd guess it isn't without some risk. If they negotiated a return of 6% it would pull in around €240,000,000 a year in interest, which would probably be accounted for against how much they are paying out in interest on their debt and is more than they save in dividends from the buybacks.

Interest received and paid feeds directly into the Free Cashflow calculation, whereas dividend payments are deducted afterward and feeds directly into Net Debt. If Vodafone's share price goes up they'll get less shares from the buybacks, and I've also guessed the interest rate they might get if they banked the cash, and there may be very good reasons why they're better off with buybacks, so take everything I've typed with a pinch of salt.

I'll happily be corrected if I've misunderstood something, or got something wrong.

Between Drahi and DT, they own around 37% of the company. Drahi's average cost per share is well above 150p and DT's average is above £4, I doubt either of them would sell their stock for 150p; Because they own so much stock, any prospective bidder would need to acquire their holdings at the start of a bidding process.

The previous charts assume stock prices and dividends stay the same over the period, halving the dividend yield, like Vodafone have just done, doubles the catchup time.

The charts aren't meant to be a real world example, they are aimed at demonstrating the power of dividend reinvestment when the price drops.

"Why even be in the FTSE 100 at all with a divi yield below the risk-free rate and no growth stocks"

Actually reinvesting Dividends is an form of growth, especially when P/E's are low and dividend yields high. BT ticks both of those boxes. A while ago I built some charts to show the difference between two Fleccy's in parallel universes, in one Universe the price halved. In Fleccy 1's Universe the price held at £2 after the initial purchase, whereas the price halved in Fleccy2's Universe.

Both Fleccy's bought 50,000 shares for £100,000 at a purchase price of £2 a share, Fleccy2's shares saw a 50% drop in price soon after purchase. Both Fleccy's reinvest their 7.7p a share dividend year after year going forward.

Comparison of share valuation with 7.7p Dividend reinvestment

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRYwu6rv7Vk2093vnE9975iJIfiNBDGYW08VmYU2MK2tsi0o9bA3rDwV9NV0XA6QJrkQeqet_jppwWg/pubchart?oid=1399088825&format=interactive

Number of shares held after each reinvestment

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRYwu6rv7Vk2093vnE9975iJIfiNBDGYW08VmYU2MK2tsi0o9bA3rDwV9NV0XA6QJrkQeqet_jppwWg/pubchart?oid=933652602&format=interactive

Annual Dividend Growth with each reinvestment

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRYwu6rv7Vk2093vnE9975iJIfiNBDGYW08VmYU2MK2tsi0o9bA3rDwV9NV0XA6QJrkQeqet_jppwWg/pubchart?oid=305726335&format=interactive

Southport isn't a rural area, I wouldn't describe it as a resort either. You need a camel to reach the sea from the beach, the pier is currently closed for structural repairs and Pleasureland is closed out of season throughout the winter period.

On Friday a total of 688,428,852 trades were recorded, with more than twice the volume of trades On Exchange vs Off Book; This is slightly different than previous spikes of this sort of magnitude, where the majority of trades were Off Book. I have no idea if this has any significance, it's just an observation.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQ49B8X4hFFdtXb6WUx45CDRcgMt5FBglgZCFc5UnApKRpOX8cznaVjvfKeIWdC6xr70q5wCbdhpFe7/pubchart?oid=570999884&format=interactive