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Like I said they should drop the dividend in May and put every spare penny into debt reduction and share buybacks, any price drop on the back of the suspended dividend would be short lived with the buybacks; It wouldn't surprise me to see the share price shoot up under those circumstances.

Well Poker if there isn't enough stock available on the market to purchase, what then happens to the stock price?

LTI, I was suggesting buying back more than €2.48 Billion worth of stock a year. They have around €6 Billion of debt maturing by the end of 2025 that needs consideration and currently have €7 Billion in cash and another €4 Billion coming from the Spain sale. Without knowing what Capex plans are in the pipeline, Vodafone could probably afford to buy back €3.5 Billion worth of stock a year if they suspended the dividend for a couple of years.

Shouldn't this be a thread for the Lloyds chat page? Since that appears to be the LSE general politics discussion page.

I'm not a fan of buybacks and I've occasionally argued against them in the case of Lloyds, but in Vodafone's case I believe it's crying out for buybacks. Two things basically plague Vodafone's share price, they are the debt and the cost of the dividends; With over 27 Billion shares in circulation, and over 1 Billion in treasury, they should look at reducing the total number of shares which would make future annual dividend payouts more affordable. BT has less than 10 Billion shares in issue and has a far more affordable dividend payout of around £751 Million a year, compared to Vodafone's yearly payout of €2.48 Billion. Over 4 years BT will only payout dividends of just over £3 Billion, whereas Vodafone will payout around £8.5 Billion over the same period; Since Vodafone shares are so cheap it makes perfect sense to suspend the dividend completely, and plough every spare penny into debt reduction and share buybacks. If they suspended the dividend, it could be reintroduced when it's more affordable and the share price has recovered. Since Vodafone could buyback 10 Billion shares, for around £7 Billion, at the current share price, and knock around €1 Billion off the annual dividend payout when it's reinstated, it's a no brainer in my opinion.

Stupmy companies used to be valued on fundamentals, which no longer appears to be the case. The market now operates on narratives and sentiment, I'm going to use the low valuations to top up and bring down my averages.

Poker I've been trying to get my head around Vodafone's finances and what they might have planned, of course anything I think may happen is pure speculation.

Here are charts detailing Bond Maturity according to Vodafone's list:

By Month

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRA1ndHTf_Bz7O_moDxmcbWnEtcusZucUu6lEJvm3O4mGooeH4ErFjRqot3RQHBaVXCgoUED1k2CUVK/pubchart?oid=17624073&format=interactive

By Year

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRA1ndHTf_Bz7O_moDxmcbWnEtcusZucUu6lEJvm3O4mGooeH4ErFjRqot3RQHBaVXCgoUED1k2CUVK/pubchart?oid=1681133451&format=interactive

According to my spreadsheet and going off the Bond list, Vodafone have €48,660,405,131 of debt, but in their H1 results they said they have outstanding Bond debt of €43.316 Billion giving a difference of around €5.3 Billion; €5.3 Billion would be in the ball park of the combined total Bond Debt for Oct 2023 and Jan 2024, so I'm speculating that those bonds were accounted for in the H1 figures.

Vodafone also said in the H1 results that they have €7.141 Cash and Equivalents, which wont include the €4.1 Billion cash they'll get from Spain. If the Oct 23 and Jan 24 Debt has gone, then they have a further €6.5 Billion to pay off during the rest of 2024 and 2025. They'll detail their plans for Italy in May and it's anyone's guess what may happen there, they may have even lined up a buyer.

If they maintain the dividend any Buybacks will reduce the overall dividend bill, so they're probably working out how much cash they can use for buybacks and dividends, balanced against any future Capex plans.

I'll happily be corrected if I've misunderstood any of the above figures.

On reading through the Transcript, this just caught my eye:

"On the dividend front, it is important to me to make sure that an ongoing dividend is covered by the underlying free cash flow of the firm. Spain is going to change that a bit. But we will use all of the visibility that we have by then -- to then come up with the right call. Nothing is decided. And yes, also share buybacks could then be part of the mix, in particular, if we have sizable one-off cash inflows like the one that we are expecting from Spain at the closing of that transaction."

The share price is pushing toward Covid lows with a dividend yield of over 7% and a market cap of less than £11 Billion, BT is cheap. I just think Telecom stocks in general are being manipulated down by the institutions, both BT and Vodafone are down over 52% in the last 5 years. As I've said in previous threads, while the listed Telecom stocks are pushed down, Infrastructure funds are either mopping up Telecom assets, or paying to build them, think Altnets, Telecom Italia Fixed line network, and Vantage Towers.

More likely a shakeout. There's the ongoing class action which'll be shaking retail investor nerves, the price drop is the market giving an extra push.

"I've this feeling like we're in a submarine listening to the beep of the sonar.. and about to launch a MISSILE "

Or this could happen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7shLyXzIXwQ&t=205s

RR's finances are a lot worse than Vodafone's, they added 6,436,651,043 more shares in 2020, took on extra debt, and dropped the dividend as a Bond condition. Funny that RR is now around the pre covid price with four times more shares on the market. I expect the big players loaded up with RR shares around 2020/21 and are now pumping the price to realise big profits; If that's what is happening then RR's price will likely stay high for as long as it takes, for the institutional players to unload their holdings without significantly impacting the price. I realise I have a cynical view, but it makes perfect sense to me.

"Followed by a list of failed CEOs to compare - most of which were her predecessors."

Jax, will you be followed by a list of other failed wind-up merchants?

I don't trade regularly so £9.50 commission charges make very little difference to me, with stamp duty far more significant when I do buy; I haven't sold any shares for a good few years now, I've just been topping up. Halifax also have an admin charge of £36 a year, which Ialso consider insignificant.

Abject I went of this page:

https://www.halifax.co.uk/search-results.html?query=DRIP

Either way £3 is insignificant in my opinion.

Are you guys talking about DRIP? If you are the Halifax charge 2% up to their standard commission charge of £9.50, then you have 0.5% stamp duty. I've never used DRIP, but I assume they itemise the charges and give you the per share cost of the transaction?

There are a lot of variables to consider when an Altnet is looking at taking over a smaller one; Geography and backhaul costs, number of connected customers, current overbuild, Network management compatibility and more. If the figures don't add up, no one will pay to takeover a business with little prospect of adding to the bottom line. Openreach will likely overbuild most of the Altnets over the next 3 years, and Infrastructure investment funds will only run something at a loss for so long before pulling the plug.

I see the Empire's Orchestra is playing their negativity narrative today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOUWrW1ZsTE&t=1s

This story is probably correct, but the way it's presented is aimed at knocking the share price of the Banks. If the Banks followed the correct procedures, which you can be sure they will have done, then they've done nothing wrong; As I said previously the front companies weren't sanctioned and the money was connected to unsanctioned Chinese companies, so I don't see how the Banks can be accused of doing anything wrong. The Banks can only act on intelligence received from the various authorities.

"Likely sanctions and fines for Lloyds if this comes to be confirmed"

I very much doubt it. Going off the article it looks as though the Banks dealt with front companies that weren't under sanction, if anything it's a failure of Intelligence Agencies to identify the companies as connected to PCC.