Member Info for fleccy

Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wPOp5nSVDo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ef3iiY3K4s

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

And a happy customer

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

It baffles me why International stocks can be traded in ISA's, and receive tax benefits. If you're only making small trades it can be cheaper to trade internationally than purchasing UK stocks; For example the Halifax charges around £9.50 Commission per UK stock trade, with International stocks having a commission free 1.25% FX fee, so if you had £1000 to invest and wanted to buy a basket of 10 stocks, for FTSE100 stocks you'd be charged £95 plus stamp duty of £4.52, call it £100, whereas the a basket of 10 US stocks would only have an FX charge of 1.25% and cost you £12.50 in charges; In fact the UK commission plus stamp duty for purchasing 10 UK stocks, is around the same FX cost for an £8000 purchase of US stock. If you were buying just one US stock for the £1000, it would still be £1.52 cheaper the buying a single UK FTSE stock, how f'd up is that? Once you start getting higher the FX fees then start to impact, but you could still buy an £8000 basket of 10 US stocks with the same charges as a £1000 basket of 10 FTSE stocks.

I don't trade international stocks, so I'm assuming there aren't any other charges for trading them, I'll stand corrected if I've misunderstood something, or got something wrong in my calculations.

https://www.halifax.co.uk/investing/landing-pages/commission-free-trading.html

Aus, I'm not sure where you're going with this. The reason I use antivirus and Firewall software is to prevent someone harming my computer, or my finances. I have a Google account that uses two factor authentication, so Google have my mobile number and my email address, as do Microsoft. I'm not a member of the tin hat brigade who's paranoid about being tracked by Google, or Microsoft, AI on the internet or out and about. The next generation of cars will likely have some sort of IOT, talking to the internet, so in the not too distant future you'll be trackable even if you forget your phone. Our house is also full of Amazon Echo's, with a ring doorbell paired to them, no doubt an AI is crunching numbers on everything we ask and maybe even say in the house. If we use products supplied by the Tech Giants we'll never be able to hide from them, so why bother worrying about it?

As long as I have a good level of protection against trojans, spyware and ransomware, then I'm reasonably happy and If I want to be anonymous to websites and the smaller players then I have the tools to do it. MAC addresses are interface hardware identifiers used by layer 2 protocols, IP addresses are layer 3 and can be hidden from the website you're viewing by using a VPN service, simples.

Once the PSTN switch off occurs, many of the older Engineers on the legacy side will probably be glad to go, so I don't think BT will have too many problems persuading people it's their time to move on. As far as OFCOM's concerned I'm not sure what else they can do, since Openreach is run as a separate company; PIA appears to be working well and there are loads of CP's utilising Openreach's services. I think the Openreach workforce will eventually be spun off completely, and at that point OFCOM wont have anything left to regulate.

Market sentiment should reverse once the cost savings show on the balance sheet and free cash flow increases, and we've seen recently how fast the market can turn, I'm talking RR 😉.

None of us have a crystal ball and unknowns may appear, like the class action lawsuit, but FTTP coupled with building closures should massively reduce BT's operating costs and eventually show on the bottom line Net Profit, BT just need to work hard in fending off the competition in the meantime.

Pete, my opinion is based on statements from BT around future cost savings, which should show up in the EBITDA and Free Cash Flow figures as time goes on. Lease Liabilities should reduce over time and deduct from Net Debt, but I do expect that BT will take on more Bond debt to cover shortfalls. What'll happen with the court case is anyone's guess, but if Patourel's side win the full award, including what they're requesting for Split-Purchase customers, I suspect BT will put in a request to take it to the Court of Appeal.

"For clarity, whilst I would never get in a car with fleccy for fear of him driving over a cliff "

Pete it's about the destination, not the journey; There may be traffic jams and diversions on route, as well as service stops along the way, but eventually my BTNAV will get me where I want to be.

The number of shares in issue have increased by 517,208,357 in January 2024

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vS0oSavIsBjHgD7k6NMyk7Z591Cm2IrevvLI-Jq95gOmESrOI0Vi_NhA8LIO9rMz90Y5zCOCoFuEItG/pubchart?oid=1812824850&format=interactive

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vS0oSavIsBjHgD7k6NMyk7Z591Cm2IrevvLI-Jq95gOmESrOI0Vi_NhA8LIO9rMz90Y5zCOCoFuEItG/pubchart?oid=1451011517&format=interactive

Fat apologies for missing your response in this thread from the 1st Feb, I've just noticed your comment now when reading back. I think they'll increase the debt further during the current capex cycle.

The Bonds maturing in the next year are:

BT Bond 2023 $0.675bn 4.50% 04/12/2023 £534,310,000

BT Bond 2024 €468.976mn 1.00% 23/06/2024 £401,170,000

BT Bond 2024 €825.428mn 1.00% 21/11/2024 £706,090,000

I've used the outstanding debt in the second column and the far right column represents the currency conversion to sterling today. The Total Debt maturing this year, including the US 2023 Bond, comes to £1.64161 Billion. Obviously they could have done without the court case, as that potentially puts more strain on the balance sheet should they lose. I believe BT also haven't, as yet, drawn a £2.1 Billion revolving credit facility maturing in 2027.

As far as the court case is concerned, I don't get the £1.3 Billion figure the lawyers are chasing, it may be due to them expanding the time window for Split-Purchase customers to Dec 2023.

BT had approximately 1.5 million Voice only lines around Oct 2015 and approximately 1 Million Voice only lines by Q1 2017, which may have decreased further by Apr 2018

BT had approximately 1.2 Million Split purchase lines around Oct 2015 and approximately 1.1 Million by Q1 2017. OFCOM also estimated that 80% of Split-Purchaser customers were Split-Supply, meaning they had the Broadband and voice with different suppliers; So in Q1 2017 that equates to around 220,000 Split-Service customers and 880,000 Split Supply customers.

The Voice only customers tailed off between Oct 2015 and Apr 2018, with a drop of around 0.5 Million; Split-purchase customers totaled around 1.1 Million throughout the whole period.

If BT loses and the judges decide to treat all customers as voice only, then going off OFCOM's charts it probably equates to around 2.5 Million customers awarded something in the region of (£7+8%)x(30 months)x2.5 Million coming to around £567 Million, round it up to £600 Million for good measure and it comes close to what the Lawyers were originally chasing.

As I said in a previous thread, the Split-Purchase is the most confusing group; Many will have kept their BT line and used VM's standalone Broadband service. It's also possible that the number of Split-Supply customers may have recently increased due to Altnet availability, some customers may have cancelled their Openreach Broadband and kept their landline, but signed up to an Altnet FTTP service. Logically, in my view, Split-Supply customers should be treated as Voice only since they're obviously well engaged and knew exactly what they were doing.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1k5fAQi6C5GXK4dxdUaiDt0UgsyBAJqZPKZzTaGsoMSU/edit?usp=sharing

Houndog, I believe the current trustees are looking at eventually taking over the scheme; They have rebranded as Brightwell and are looking to manage other schemes other than just BT. BT has recently transferred the management of the EEPS to them.

"BT Pension Scheme Management launches as Brightwell opening its pension management capabilities to other defined benefit pension schemes First third-party client announced as the EE Pension Scheme (EEPS)"

https://brightwellpensions.com/bt-pension-scheme-management-launches-as-brightwell/

They wont be closing all the buildings at the end of next year, I think the main Exchange closure program will start after 2030. BT will save money on powering down redundant equipment in the meantime though, and whatever they get back through the scrap recycling program will subsidise the cost.

I believe the contract with Telereal allows the lease to be terminated for a percentage of exchanges per year, but according to an article in ISPreview they are only looking at 103 closures between now and 2030, with the vast majority then closing by 2035.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/06/openreach-updates-on-pilot-for-national-uk-exchange-closures.html

I think the contract with Telereal Trillium was for 30 year leases, so the timetable of switching off PSTN by 2026 and giving co located customers between 4 and 7 years to relocate sort of makes sense. Once the buildings are closed, I read somewhere that BT will get a cut of the profits from any redevelopment opportunities.

Apparently BT are using n2s and TXO

https://www.n2s.co.uk/supporting-bt-group-on-their-move-to-circular-networks/

https://www.txo.com/blog/bt-group-extends-partnership-with-txo/

BT has around 4,458 Exchanges remaining, all due to be switched off at the end of next year.

https://telephone-exchanges.org.uk/

Everyone talks about the scrap copper, but what about the Gold and other precious metals in the many tens of thousands of circuit boards, that'll also become scrap with the PSTN switch off?

https://www.precious-metal-services.com/information/current-purchase-prices/electronic-scrap/

https://solderflowrecycling.co.uk/circuit-board-recycling

https://www.pcb-hero.com/blogs/lickys-column/how-much-are-scrap-circuit-boards-worth

https://www.awarefiners.co.uk/computer-recycling.php

I imagine Exchange circuit boards will be very high grade and worth a tidy sum, it might not be share price moving but every little bit helps.

"And you can see it everywhere where union flexing their mussels"

I agree, I assume you're talking about the French Fishermen?

"If you want to talk about wrong-uns let’s talk about Fleccy’s followers"

LMAO I didn't realise I'd developed a cult following.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIYm2160ZK8

I've said this before, but I think UK Telecommunications services are incredibly cheap. As I'm typing now I'm also live streaming CNBC, and we all probably spend the majority of our day using online services of one kind or another. I also stream Netflix, SkyGo, Prime and others and although much of them are subscription services, the Network has to be capable of coping with the Bandwidth demands those services require.

I wonder if any of these journalists are thrown a bung to put out articles like this, you only have to look at historic price drops occurring around articles that came to nothing, usually involving Sky and Virgin Media, or Talk Talk and VM. It's all about projecting a narrative to build negative sentiment and trashing the target company's reputations or prices. I also wonder about cases like the Patourel vs BT class action and where that originates, if it was possible to dig deep enough to find out I would.

You'd be hard pushed to find any articles that are positive about BT, you hear about all the negatives with the positives played down. The Telegraph article wasn't good journalism in my opinion, it gives the impression that the journalist hates BT with a passion.

I think the Government are getting really worried about the valuations of FTSE stocks and looking at ways to boost those valuations, it'll be interesting to see how things play out. In the finance channels, like CNBC, I've noticed a good proportion of the guests are starting to talk up investing into UK value stocks.

"Originally you mocked my lack of technical expertise, after I explained your use of a vpn &or encryption didn’t give you anonymity"

What are you on about Aus, if VPN didn't give anonymity at Layer 3 then what's the point of VPN services. If people can't stay anonymous when using VPN, then they should fork out for some decent antivirus software. I don't know what sort of setup you've got, but I use Bitdefender Total Security on my machines and can choose to be anonymous should I choose to be. It has features including Antivirus, anti-tracker, Firewall, VPN, Safepay, Video and audio protection and is pretty secure. I have to admit I don't use the MAC Randomisation on my phone, but that's because I can't be bothered. The only way apps on your machine would share your Mac Address is you weren't bothered and loaded up something dodgy; Browsers can't retrieve your MAC Address, but there are cookies that can identify you in other ways. Most of us tell the Google and Microsoft our email and phone number anyway, so they don't need to use your MAC Address to track you.

Aus you're correct, neither of us want to go around in circles. All I'll say is that if there is a backdoor built into Windows, into browsers, or a link that downloads a trojan onto your Phone or computer, then that's an app designed to harvest data off your machine, not something specific to MAC addressing. Just so you know, there are ways of hiding your MAC Address, if you're so privacy conscious, but none of this changes the fact that MAC Addressing is physical address that's only used by Level 2 protocols to identify a device interface.

https://nordvpn.com/blog/mac-address/#:~:text=Both%20MAC%20and%20IP%20addresses,MAC%20address%20identifies%20the%20hardware.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7bRVwF9F1w

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_spoofing

That's using an App on the device to access the MAC address and then relaying it back embedded in higher level data, it has nothing to do with MAC addressing at Layer 2. The MAC (Interface Hardware) address is used by Address resolution protocol and stored in an ARP table on all the devices connected at layer 2; Unless there's an app, or other software on the particular phone, laptop, or whatever, to read the MAC Address directly on the device, the MAC address wont get any further than the nearest Default Gateway; For example the MAC Address for my laptop will only go as far as my WiFi router, and will be stored on its ARP table, my routers MAC Address will only get as far as the providers, local to me, Default Gateway Router. MAC Addresses aren't transmitted further than the local network unless they've been read on the device and transmitted as higher level data.

I'm not trying to give anyone advice or persuade them to buy or sell. I've built some bar charts showing BT's Bond Debt by Maturity date.

By Date:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTga-e_OMKY-RszcRtUutcyaP_KjD12HX7w2CCEuL0CvSTuRB6D_nhUO2pY8qYjSmnSXE2e9t2xe5sq/pubchart?oid=50340481&format=interactive

By Year:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTga-e_OMKY-RszcRtUutcyaP_KjD12HX7w2CCEuL0CvSTuRB6D_nhUO2pY8qYjSmnSXE2e9t2xe5sq/pubchart?oid=483405488&format=interactive

https://www.bt.com/about/investors/financial-reporting-and-news/debt-investors

I assume they'll have already paid off the 4th Dec 2023 Bond, but it's still on the list. Apologies if I've made any mistakes; If you notice anything that might be wrong, let me know and I'll sort it out.