focusIR May 2024 Investor Webinar: Blue Whale, Kavango, Taseko Mines & CQS Natural Resources. Catch up with the webinar here.
There'd be less regulatory kickback over a Vodafone takeover than a BT takeover, since Vodafone isn't the number one provider in any of its markets. There may some national security considerations in the UK, due to any Government contracts Vodafone may have in relation to the old CWW network in the UK. If it's a US or European based takeover then I doubt there'd be significant obstacles, if it originates in the Middle East then it's anyone's guess. Because of the time the rumour came out, it feels more like market games, if there's anything behind it we might read more over the weekend. It's also interesting that the market stopped the climb shortly after crossing 66p, and also how quickly seekingalpha released the story following the upward move.
" Any decent regulator needs to be proactively reviewing financial arrangements in advance of products being marketed"
But they wouldn't be able to offer cashback schemes if they did that, It's part of the Government savings scheme for the feckless. Take the money of them, then give it back with 8% interest at some point in the future, it's pure genius.
Lloyds hadn't made a provision for Motor Finance today, the market would have found some excuse to drop the price. It was a very good set of figures from Lloyds, it beggars belief that the market has pushed the price down today. It doesn't matter anyway the price will eventually recover to historic highs, it's just a matter of when.
Lloyds hadn't made a provision for Motor Finance today, the market would have found some excuse to drop the price. It was a very good set of figures from Lloyds, it beggars belief that the market has pushed the price down today. It doesn't matter anyway the price will eventually recover to historic highs, it's just a matter of when.
Aus
It's true that most of the Exchange leases wont end until around 2030/31, but the sites will be stripped out and ready to go well before then. BT wont have to power and cool the Exchanges earmarked for closure, post 2025 PSTN switch off, so they'll make savings there, and there'll be some money made from scrapping all the legacy equipment and cabling. BT have four years to get the buildings ready for Telereal to redevelop/sell, and BT will get a cut of any profit from that, so it's likely the buildings will go immediately as they come out of their leases, I don't know where you get 2041 from? The lease liabilities form a good chunk of the Net Debt figure, but that lease liability figure will drop year on year as 2030/31 approaches, and the savings BT will make post 2026 will likely reduce any need to increase Net Financial Debt from then.
As far as how BT might grow revenue, I have no idea, they may develop IOT applications over 5G, or offer Enterprise customers Quantum secure communications to protect their data, or any number of things; I've always said I'm investing in BT as a cost cutting play and not a growth play, any new products or developments that might increase growth in revenue would just be a bonus in my opinion. I don't think I'm dangerous, anyone reading my posts shouldn't take what I'm saying as gospel, they should do their own research.
"BT Group has agreed to the sale of the BT Tower for £275m to MCR Hotels, who plan to preserve BT Tower as an iconic hotel, securing its place as a London landmark for the future."
https://newsroom.bt.com/bt-group-announces-sale-of-bt-tower-to-mcr-hotels/
"so it looks like you can bet the bank on his previous 11,500 posts where he has misunderstood technology, business practice and the ways of competition to preach his Fleccy logic to the unsuspecting"
Funny how you somehow tie my world view to my opinion's in relation to UK Telecoms. Obviously I'm bullish that my investments in BT will come good, and I've consistently put my money where my mouth is, so Aus tell us what's your opinion is in relation to BT?
Do you disagree that BT's cash flow and Net Profit will increase, in line with Capex drops as FTTP/5G rollout completes?
Do you agree that BT's operating cost's will dramatically fall due to less staff, less buildings, energy savings and a more efficient converged network in the coming years?
In my opinion these things are written in stone and certain, whereas the competition threat is speculative and uncertain. I have no doubt the competition will take a good percentage of BT/Openreach's customers, but I also believe BT's cost cutting and operational cost savings will far outweigh any drop in revenue due to competition. If I'm wrong then I'm wrong but it's what I believe, others can take it or leave it, DYOR.
Aus, no doubt you'll go quiet if you haven't got any good arguments disputing what I'm saying, like you have on previous occasions when I've asked you to supply detail on your point of view.
"a neighbouring government / authority / people hell bent on Israel’s destruction."
Aus that statement needs special attention, Israel forced a million plus Palestinians into a small strip of land and managed their access to water and other resources; Gaza isn't a neighboring state, it's a fenced off city prison run by the inmates, with people living off nothing but charity and having no hope for the future. If it was just Gaza there might be some doubt as to Israel's overall intentions, but the treatment of Palestinians in the West bank is irrefutable proof that Israel wants all the land there too. To say the Palestinians are a threat to Israel is a joke, the Israeli military is the most powerful in the middle east and the Palestinians have little in the way of weaponry to defend themselves, as exampled by the actions of the illegal settlers in the West Bank who regularly kill Palestinians trying to access Olive Groves, they've owned and worked for generations.
So why isn't the Israeli Government being sanctioned Aus, wouldn't you agree they've been begging to be sanctioned for years? And would have been but for the fact the West just turns two blind eyes to their many serious human rights violations and transgressions?
And look at the hypocrisy on display in relation to Catalonia when they were campaigning to separate from Spain: The real truth is that politicians everywhere bend the rules to suit themselves, the EU is a master at bending rules to suit it's various agenda's. Whatever you may say about the UK, we're saints compared to others. Look at Ireland operating beggar thy neighbour tax policies, to attract big tech, can you imagine how the UK would be treated if we did the same? The truth is it's one rule for one and another rule for another, it's just the way of the World; Much of the elite didn't like the Brexit vote result, so instead of working to make it a success they worked against it. As far as the stock market valuations go, i'll just keep topping up as long as stocks remain cheap; Never look a gift horse in the mouth.
Poker I was born in England and lived in England all my life, I'm no more a nationalist than an Irish person is who believes in Ireland, or a Scot who believes in Scotland; But all I see is hypocrisy from politicians everywhere, for example look at the plight of the Palestinians in Israel. What Hamas did was clearly wrong, but does that justify killing and maiming tens of thousands of Gazan Women and Children? Then look at the West Bank where Israel operate an apartheid system, with road systems interconnecting illegal Israeli settlements on land where Palestinians have been displaced; The western Governments who do react, place sanctions on the illegal settlers and act as though the Israeli Government have nothing to do with it. It's a real eye opener to see Israel allowed to basically steadily eject an entire indigenous people out of their ancestral country, to realise their dream of a Jewish only state, while the US looks on and veto's any meaningful actions, at the UN/Security Council, supporting Palestinian rights. I would suggest the expression little Englander is misplaced, if you look at the way the World operates these days, it's every country for itself.
Aus I really don't care whether a bad deal was baked in, or if a no deal would have been catastrophic for the UK; Whatever may have happened under different circumstances is speculative and now irrelevant, what I do care about is the fact that many MP's made no secret of the fact they were trying to derail Brexit and force another referendum, there's no doubt they helped the EU facilitate themselves a better deal at the UK's expense.
If you look at everything that's happened since the Brexit vote, various individuals and entities have worked very hard to destabilise UK politics, many politicians among them. John Bercow was clearly anti brexit and I believe it affected some of his decisions during his tenure as speaker of the house. Various remain politicians and Lords conspired to make the Brexit transition as difficult as possible for the UK government, and to what end? All it did was aid the EU and ensure the UK government were desperate to get any deal through no matter how bad it was. Shouldn't all the UK politicians have come together after the vote to help the government get a good deal from the EU, since the country would have to live with whatever deal was agreed?
"The Lib Dems' deputy leader says the party can stop Boris Johnson from winning the general election "and through that we can stop Brexit"."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50497282
Leading up to the general election in 2019, politicians conspired to block a general election and maintain a zombie government that would struggle to get any votes passed and therefore enact legislation. They also forced the government into accepting any deal by taking the option of a no deal off the table.
"In a series of setbacks, MPs approved a backbench Bill earlier in the evening to delay Brexit in order to prevent a no-deal withdrawal from the EU on October 31.
It cleared the Commons when it passed its third reading by 327 votes to 299, majority 28, and should now progress to the Lords."
https://www.chronicle.gi/johnsons-bid-to-trigger-early-election-fails-after-hundreds-of-mps-abstain/
So a cabal of remain leaning MP's restrained the government and effectively allowed the EU to offer a bad deal, since the EU knew the UK government had to take whatever was on the table.
As far as the EU are concerned, the conspiring within the UK Parliament allowed them to dig in and take a firm stance in respect of Northern Ireland, rather than considering alternative arrangements which would have been more flexible and caused less problems.
The majority of UK voters had voted to leave the EU, so why were UK politicians conspiring to go against the majority view? Is it any wonder people don't trust the political class when they think back to the shenanigans following the Brexit vote?
"Labour will always deliver better growth rates because it distributes wealth better than Tory policy"
Savage you must be referring to Labour policies like Gordon Brown selling the country's Gold at rock bottom prices, he did well distributing wealth to the Gold traders on that one; Or maybe:
"Gordon Brown made a change to the pensions system that received little attention at the time, but has cost millions of pensioners money in the decades since.
His decision to scrap tax relief on dividends that pension funds received on their investments is blamed for exacerbating a crisis that has left huge shortfalls in pension pots and forced thousands of firms to wind up “gold-plated” defined benefit schemes."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/pensions/gordon-brown-ruined-retirement-generation/
In the meantime politicians still enjoy gold plated final salary pensions; My pension would have been a lot higher today, had it not been for politicians like Gordon Brown playing god with pension schemes, since my main pension was directly affected by Gordon Brown's tinkering. In truth I don't trust any of them to do the right thing, maybe it's about time they changed from a FPTP system to one based on proportional representation, never thought I'd hear myself say that.
I'm not saying all laws should be abandoned, just the ones used by lawyers to prevent deportation of people who enter the UK illegally from an already safe country. Why don't the channel migrants apply for asylum in France, or any other EU country they pass through before camping on the French coast, and then paying people smugglers 1000's to facilitate their illegal entry into the UK; Aus are you saying that the UK shouldn't be able to protect its own borders? It isn't just that though, it's the effect mass migration is having on services in many urban parts of the UK.
It isn't just the UK though, the EU is moving to the right and is arguably in a far worse position than the UK. The EU will break up if they can't stop the huge numbers of migrants crossing the Med and via other routes. Countries like Italy and Germany are really heating up, it wont take much for things to reach boiling point.
It's a pity we have such weak politicians who only care about an easy life and are too scared to make the hard choices. Look at the Rwanda fiasco, the government write the laws but wont change the law to support their own policies, so the lawyers and judges decide Government policy for them. I only used that as an example, there are other examples where politicians make promises at the ballot box, and then say they can't do it for various reasons when they get into power. On one side you have Labour who think they can fix everything by throwing money at public services, and the Conservatives on the other having little interest in anything outside of London's financial sector. Brexit wasn't responsible for all the industry disappearing out of the UK, that was happening pre 2000 when companies like GPT, ICL, BOC, Marconi, etc, either went bust or were taken over by foreign companies with the UK assets subsequently wound down. As UK manufacturing went the way of the Dodo, small specialist manufacturers like toolmakers went too. The reason people voted for Brexit is because they can see that globalisation has decimated UK manufacturing, and view the EU as part of that globalisation narrative. For all the people who bang the EU drum, with digs about blue passports, etc, it's irrelevant because I don't see the UK ever rejoining the EU, whatever happens with the UK economy.
Another stick used to have a go about Brexit is the rhetoric about the breakup of the UK; Personally I would love it if the Republic of Ireland took over the north, as long as free movement to the UK stops with it, basically the same regulations should apply as those enforced at other UK/EU borders, like those applied at Dover; Northern Ireland is a huge weight pulling the UK down, Sinn Fein would be doing us a big favour if they took it off our hands. I also don't care too much if Scotland votes for independence, again as long as a full border is enforced without free movement between the separate states. The reason I don't care if the UK breaks up, is because I'm fed up of hearing about it on a regular basis; If Scotland and NI want to go their own way then they should just get on with it in my opinion, although the way things are going with the SNP, Scotland appear to be swinging back to Labour.