Member Info for fleccy

i've never seen numbers with 2 decimal points before, or colons used to express currency instead of time.

correct numbering:

£1.265

£1.25

double correction for £1.33.8p is £1.338

apologies if it was a **** take and i missed the joke.

I'm not sure Lloyds would be interested, I suppose it depends on Metro Bank's average LTV ratio. Metro bank state they'll accept an 85% LTV on a capital plus interest repayment mortgage and 75% on an interest only mortgage.

There's so few trades in QBT there's no momentum, so it's unlikely any algo's will be trading the stock. Single trades can potentially move the price up to 16% so traders probably wont touch it either.

Https://www.telcotitans.com/btwatch/future-is-distributed-for-bt-as-cloud-strategy-evolves/7232.article?

"As options multiply for positioning the compute power needed to deliver cloud-based applications, commercial aspects may be as important as latency or resilience in locating services in a hybrid world.

BT aiming to encourage a holistic view of TCO for applications and digital services as network management shifts from the data centre LAN to a cloud-based WAN."

" This is definitely not a mature market and has a long way to go …..you may think otherwise but it looks like the big players in the Computer,software,consulting and hardware industries disagree with you."

The market creates narratives around the next big thing it wants to pump, cloud goes through various evolutions as new software supported by new hardware becomes available. The next big thing is apps using AI to search documents and answering questions based on the information within the documents, using ChatGPT in combination with Vector Databases; No doubt the Cloud based apps will go through a new transformation based on AI, but the concept is just an evolution of what was envisaged 25 years ago. All the likes of AWS, Microsoft and Google have done, is quietly mop up all the competition and amalgamate the profits, they didn't create the markets they just took out the competition; For years big tech has been allowed to grow into giants, with the regulators turning a blind eye to their anti competitive practices, but they've grown so big now that the regulators can no longer look the other way.

I worked for Mercury/C&W in the 1990's and 2000's, when the company embarked on a programme to reinvent itself. In the 90's I remember going down to the NEC in Birmingham, to attend company presentations at an event called Imagine; We were told how companies needed to think out of the box and how in the near future applications for businesses would be hosted and run on datacenter servers, something we now call cloud. Then just after the DotCom bubble burst, US hosting provider Exodus went bust and C&W acquired their assets with big plans for the future:

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2585150/update--troubled-exodus-sells-out-to-cable---wireless.html

It talks about hosting in the articles, but the plan was build the equivalent of today's Cloud businesses, but it drained money out of C&W due to rents and running costs with C&W eventually giving up on it; It came and it went.

Of course C&W didn't have the infinitely deep pockets of the likes of Amazon, Microsoft and Google, so probably didn't have the finances to take it to the next level, but Cloud isn't a recent concept as far as I'm concerned.

The Altnet's have a very Deja Vu feel to them, it reminds of the talk in the 90's about how the Cable companies would steal all BT's residential customers, and companies like Mercury would diminish BT's enterprise business; Today BT's still here, C&W's gone, the cable companies went bust before many of them amalgamated under C&W and then sold on to NTL; Now much of the market commentary would have us believe that the Altnets will wipe the floor with BT on residential access, and the Enterprise and consumer/mobile business is all but ignored and afforded next to no value. I feel a bit like Phil Connors in Groundhog day, except this feels like a rerun of 1995 to 2005.

The regulators are lining up to make life extremely difficult for Big Tech, I believe it'll be a good thing for Telecom providers.

That's just another example of a token created to trade a specific commodity or service, like the example I used in the case of Oil, but isn't that fair enough? If a Government issues benefits, like rental payments, it only works if the recipient doesn't spend it on booze or worse. Any authoritarian Government could introduce laws to seize assets, money, or BTC at will anyway. If a Government or hostage taker wanted your BTC, all they'd need to do is hold you until you give up your private keys, and under those circumstances it'd be a lot easier to swipe your BTC than access something like Gold or cash in a bank vault in Switzerland, or some other country. Every single hype case for BTC is easily argued against, with examples like the US $5 Billion plus seizures of BTC from various entities.

"Not a fan of the upcoming CBDCs as they be used to control who can spend and how they spend."

I've heard this before, but I view it as another example of manufactured fear generated by DeFi Crypto vested interests. The only people who'd fear CBDC's are criminals hiding their finances. The HMRC already has tentacles extending out to banks and financial institutions, so they already have visibilty of law abiding people's finances anyway.

"People way smarter than me believe in BTC so I'm sure it has a future. Not a fan of CBDCs though but I think Bitcoin sits apart from these."

I take the complete opposite view on that Jez. CBDC's will be backed by Central Banks and might come in different flavours. You could have CBDC's/Stable Coins, locked to a currency or commodity, and traded on relevant exchanges; For example you might trade Oil using tokens specifically tied to Oil, using CBDC's tied to various currencies to trade the commodity tokens. The CBDC's and Commodity tokens will still be traded on exchanges and work as a distributed ledger, but traded securely on Centralised managed exchanges rather than DeFi.

CBDC's and Commodity linked tokens will likely use Proof of Stake Crypto, like Ethereum, rather than Proof of Work Crypto like BTC. I don't see any future for Proof of Work crypto, since the concept is flawed and doesn't work well in the real world, and isn't required for centralised crypto exchanges.

"Another view would be regulators look to penalise the early adopters who create markets"

Cloud computing isn't new and no one's creating new markets. During the Dotcom bubble all anyone would talk about was Cloud computing, it came and it went. Like all market's Cloud has gone through cycles, although it probably has more chance of success this time due to high bandwidth DWDM wavelength products, available from Telecom Providers. AWS, Google and Microsoft will likely have to partner with the Telecom providers, if they want exposure to many of the new cloud IOT applications requiring very low latency connectivity, since distance will be critical so Edge servers very close to users will be required; I'm talking about things like traffic control, driverless cars, delivery drones, etc.

"The Computer & Communications Industry Association, a US lobby group which has members including Amazon, warned that the inquiry could harm innovation.

“There is no case for a broad inquiry that could undermine the flexibility that allows cloud providers to constantly innovate with new services and new commercial offers. The CMA needs to show restraint,” it said."

That suggests the Tech Giants have been using anti competitive tactics to hold off competition. Why would the CMA need to show restraint if everything's above board? Clearly the US lobby groups are 5h1t scared of the CMA, since they can't rely on friendly judges in the UK to overrule the regulators and uphold anti competitive behavior's.

BTC's defying gravity because it's being pumped. There's a lot of big money, backed by big finance, invested in BTC and underwater. Most retail have either been burned by Crypto, or become disillusioned, so its only matter of time before BTC goes into terminal decline; The unknown is when BTC will finally die, I imagine some of the super rich will sell tokens between each other to raise prices in the hope they can stoke enthusiasm. Anyone with half a brain can see BTC for what it is, a waste of energy and resource.

Apologies Larry, I misinterpreted what you were saying and somehow related your view to buybacks.

I understand the gist of what you're saying, but dividend reinvestment doesn't mean buying more stock as soon as you receive dividends. For example I haven't, as yet, reinvested our most recent dividends back into stock. I do intend to reinvest our dividends, but I've temporarily moved them into account with a 4.5% interest rate and currently watching and waiting. When I do decide to reinvest I can move the cash in minutes and make the trade, but the trick is choosing the right moment, and I have been tempted around current levels.

Not really, BT has less than 10 Billion shares in issue, there's no real reason to reduce below that level; Also if BT did do share buybacks, it would increase the ownership percentage of entities like Drahi and DT.

Jambone sitting on paper losses isn't losing money, you only realise capital losses or gains when you sell. I did say my figures are highly speculative. As far as purchasing computers, they advised they'd spent €111,000 in additional capex during the entire 2022 year, and made no reference to computer capex additions in the interim statement for the current year.

"At that rate, without a further raise or income generation, they had 5 months of cash left at the end of July."

If you were to go off the last Full Year and interim statements, which is a highly speculative and probably wrong way of looking at it, they appear to be burning through approximately €148,000'ish a month so have just enough cash to see them through to the end of the December. As a disclaimer though, this is pure speculation on my part and probably wrong, so take it with a pinch of salt.

Not really Jambone, their cash burn will probably be high in this Financial Year too; According to their Interim results they had €463,000 at the start of the period, and received €1,164,000 from the capital issue with €752,000 remaining at the end of the period, so in total they've burned through approximately €875,000 since the start of the period.

"Fitch Ratings - London - 04 Oct 2023: Fitch Ratings has affirmed BT Group plc's Long-Term Issuer Default Rating (IDR) and senior unsecured rating at 'BBB'. The Outlook is Stable. A full list of rating actions is below.

BT's rating reflects a solid business profile, stable to modestly improving operating metrics, leverage headroom and a competitive but rational market environment. The group is maintaining its market share, while fibre deployment and inflation-linked price increases in fixed and mobile markets are supporting growth in its consumer and wholesale operations.

BT's rating is mainly constrained by negative free cash flow (FCF). Even though EBITDA net leverage was 1.8x in FY23 (i.e. below the upgrade threshold of 2.0x), we expect leverage to rise modestly over the next three years as BT enters a period of peak capex with an accelerated fibre roll-out."

https://www.fitchratings.com/research/corporate-finance/fitch-affirms-bt-group-idr-at-bbb-outlook-stable-04-10-2023

"You do realise that accounts don’t equate to cash burn don’t you"

You're correct Jambone, but you can approximate the cash burn from a few entries in their statements; For example in the Final results 2022 they said:

Proceeds from exercise of warrants €1,256,000

Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of year €1,039,000

Cash and cash equivalents at end of year €463,000

From those entries you can determine the approximate cash burn by adding the proceeds from warrants to the cash at the start of the year, and subtracting the remaining cash and cash equivalents at end of year:

€1,256,000 + €1,039,000 - €463,000 = €1,832,000

So they burned through at least €1.832 Million in cash during 2022.

I thought it must have been CityFibre when they turned up, as they were contractors, but they confirmed they were working on behalf of Openreach.