Member Info for fleccy

"Mcap 11.1 + net debt 18.9 = Enterprise value of 31bill."

Actually as of the 31st March 2023, BT's Net Financial debt was £13.497 Billion with £5.359 Billion Lease Liabilities.

"Net financial debt is net debt excluding lease liabilities. It allows for the comparison to net debt measures reported before the introduction of IFRS 16 on 1 April 2019, and reflects a view that lease liabilities are operational debt in substance, rather than financing transactions.

Net debt and net financial debt are considered to be alternative performance measures as they are not defined in IFRS. A reconciliation from loans and other borrowings, lease liabilities, cash and cash equivalents, and current asset investments, the most directly comparable IFRS measures to net debt and net financial debt, is set out below."

Basically Lease Liabilities are the rent BT pay on the buildings they lease back from Telereal Trillium, and BT will be reducing the number of Exchanges dramatically over the next 10 years. BT own the Freehold on the Exchanges and will therefore get a cut of any profits, with Telereal Trillium, when the properties come up for redevelopment post Exchange closure.

The media talk about BT's "Net Debt", but no mention of how that debt is made up and how the lease liabilities will reduce over time. BT may or may not decide to maintain the level of debt, by borrowing more as lease liabilities reduce, but the debt narrative gets too much prominence when it isn't black and white.

$29,000 seems to be the new normal with any breakouts above $30,000 quashed in relatively short order. Clearly an entity, or entities, are selling at $30,000 and above; On the 8th August it was knocked back shortly after breaking $30,000 and the same thing happened today when it was over $30,000 for less than 5 minutes. I have no idea what the current liquidity is, or the amount of buys and sells driving the price, but $30,000 is a big resistance point.

I'm getting Off-Book trade volumes at 16,917,599 and On-Exchange at 9,766,912 for today.

These were the largest Off-Book trades, but not sure if some are duplicates:

2023-08-09T17:05:37+01:00 1.13 3,368,822 3,806,768.86 Off-book

2023-08-09T17:05:34+01:00 1.13 3,368,822 3,806,768.86 Off-book

2023-08-09T14:40:20+01:00 1.135 1,461,695 1,651,715.35 Off-book

2023-08-09T17:46:58+01:00 1.1447 1,400,000 1,602,580.00 Off-book

2023-08-09T17:26:12+01:00 1.143 993,576 1,132,676.64 Off-book

2023-08-09T14:02:45+01:00 1.148 980,000 1,127,000. Off-book

2023-08-09T14:39:46+01:00 1.148 490,000 563,500. Off-book

2023-08-09T14:35:18+01:00 1.148 490,000 563,500. Off-book

2023-08-09T14:02:45+01:00 1.148 490,000 563,500. Off-book

No doubt the £131,272,166, before tax dividends, he'll receive in September will help

I'd moan too if I had to live like Carltt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_25_YAcOBY

My Vodafone dividend payouts were spot on, based on 3.8637p per share.

Not massive trades in the scheme of things, but Off-Book trades are currently ahead of On-Exchange today.

Here's On-Exchange trades vs Off-Book up to yesterday:

Daily

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vS4gJMsDAQq9sJ_zHqi_JnoVTryAdb4X64c7Clw12E2sGT3N6dTJfB60O8bc5Ns4burXvSSCVFrLvWC/pubchart?oid=457705223&format=interactive

Monthly (Off-Book currently ahead this month, so far)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vS4gJMsDAQq9sJ_zHqi_JnoVTryAdb4X64c7Clw12E2sGT3N6dTJfB60O8bc5Ns4burXvSSCVFrLvWC/pubchart?oid=1824278197&format=interactive

I doubt we'll get a reply from Fusion, looking at his posting history he makes a few posts on different boards and then disappears for a month.

"You have just listed a few things from the top of your head that do not exist."

If you're referring to my post Fusion, tell me what I made up?

Taverham, the capex directed into FTTP and 5G isn't money down the drain, and by 2026 the Capex should drop dramatically. I thought the market were supposed to be forward looking, not pick and choose when to project future returns, they seem to focus on growth and ignore the bottom line. Why is Tesla building a factory in Germany a good thing, whereas BT investing in FTTP and 5G spun as a bad thing?

I'll bang the cost saving drum again:

PON is passive optical network, so BT's energy bill will drop dramatically once FTTP rollout and PSTN switch off is completed. FTTP also requires less staff for maintenance.

Because of Cloud convergence the Core and access network will require far less equipment, carrying data, voice, and video over the same equipment/links, so more cost savings in terms of equipment, power and staff for maintenance.

BT will be a far leaner company in years to come, with valuable assets like Openreach and EE in its portfolio of assets. There's a plan for reducing the Pension deficit and the debt isn't as bad as reports suggest, with nearly a third being lease liabilities rather than financial debt; In my opinion, lease liabilities are an operating cost, BT report it as debt due to their accounting method.

The media narrative is that Telecoms will be continually locked in perpetual upgrades, demanding ever more capex in perpetuity, but the current transformation will likely be the last major upgrade for decades, or longer. Where do you go once FTTP is completed? a single fibre can carry terabits of information in both directions simultaneously, so fibre will serve our needs for as long as I can imagine. 6G is more of an add on to 5G, with the much publicised higher bandwidth frequencies only really suitable for short range high population areas like stadiums, etc; For the lower frequencies, that can actually penetrate walls and have longer range, 6G applications will likely reuse the current 4/5G frequencies and masts/antenna's. Over time more cells will appear, but that'll just be evolutionary and about getting more bandwidth out of the frequencies available.

So tell me, why can't the market see all that? I suspect they can but don't acknowledge it.

Simply Wall St reckon BT's worth £3.48 per share.

https://simplywall.st/stocks/gb/telecom/lse-bt.a/bt-group-shares/valuation

Blue, it doesn't bother me, I have no intention of selling my holdings, I'll just keep topping up while the price is low; I was just explaining why the price is low. As far as the tech giants and the streamers/broadcasters are concerned, I suspect their free lunch days are numbered. The tech giants have been buying and leasing capacity on subsea cables to serve their international bandwidth needs, but they can't install their own national connectivity so they need to rent that off the Telecom companies; With latency and edge computing requirements, for the new 5G and other services, big tech will need to move closer to their customers and that will cost in terms of localised cloud connectivity. BT has the biggest national network, so they'll do ok once these games end.

"These days you certainly need to be someone who needs to prepared/ accept big capital losses short / medium term and even long term Sadly"

Sufcessex, a paper loss isn't a capital loss unless you sell. A paper loss is meaningless and can be considered as noise unless that loss becomes real.

Just to add, the institutions control the price of stocks, not retail. If the financial based institutions wanted BT to go higher, they'd make it happen. As I've stated previously, I believe big players use a combination of Off-Book and On-Exchange trading to control the price of stocks. In my opinion, Telecom stocks have been targeted by the City bullies who are trying to steal the retail lunch, as I can see no reason why Telecom stocks have been so badly punished over the last 5 years. Without Telecoms, where would the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, etc be? Telecom is a critical infrastructure provider, that's worth next to nothing if you believe the market narrative.

The two largest are Drahi and DT, some of the others have reduced their holdings and some have increased theirs. All I know is that BT is historically and fundamentally undervalued, so the price falling makes little sense in a rational market.

Clearly most of the money is going into seven or eight US tech giants, with the rest of the market largely ignored and played around with. If I had my way I'd drop Net Neutrality and make the companies currently getting a free lunch, at the expense of the Telecom companies, pay for excessive bandwidth utilisation. The media make a meal out of criticising Telecom companies, for making above inflation price increases, but no mention of the companies driving higher bandwidth requirements and forcing Telecom companies to spend Billions upgrading network; In the meantime the Government pushes Telecom companies to invest to meet the increased bandwidth requirements, in effect subsidising the US Tech Giants. Makes me wonder if politicians have interests in US tech, since they seem to protect them at the expense of our own companies.

Apparently the top 25 shareholders own 73% of BT, but the chance of a bid getting past the Government would be miniscule to none. My personal view is that institutions are pushing Telecom sector prices down, while mopping up stock on the quiet. At some point, the utility type incomes Telecom provides will miraculously come back into fashion.

Here's a chart from September 2022 showing the daily closing prices. From the 1st Sept, the price increased going through the interim payment date on the 12th September and followed an upward trajectory to the 20th September. I assume the downward trajectory, after the 20th September, was due the the Truss/Kwarteng budget.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSVzuExpz8wA6wSe4UYNF77ABNpeZl6fyFbNG9CvFN9Dfan-bb1ShTTcPXaj77fXju6TMPEIPkjDys5/pubchart?oid=1529978184&format=interactive

It goes to show how quickly Lloyds share price can move. It climbed 13.5% in 9 trading days and then dropped 16% in 4 trading days.

In the past there's no way a safe major FTSE 100 company would swing 30% in a month, clearly there's something amiss with the way stocks trade today, algo's maybe?

Sabine Hossenfelder view about Flat Earthers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8DQSM-b2cc

I've watched the 2nd video and it's clear the guy has spent an inordinate amount of time trying to prove a falsity. He seems obsessed with the notion that an aircraft has to drop its nose to account for the curvature of the Earth, but that is wrong; Once an Aircraft reaches its cruising altitude, the engines are only given enough thrust to maintain forward flight at a set altitude and they follow geodesic lines and not straight lines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PRzUS6lEBM&t

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfKMgEZ9bKo

I think Openreach are ignoring some easy wins and concentrating on harder rollout areas. My local area isn't listed in the Openreach's rollout list, at all, yet the main roads and side roads are well covered with large square BT manhole covers. I assume my local area has a network of ducts serving the area, so why isn't it listed on Openreach's rollout map? The area has been served by Virgin Media for years, and CityFibre have recently laid fibre down my road. I believe Openreach would be able to rollout fibre extremely quickly near me, yet no mention of them even considering it. I think there are probably many easy win areas like mine, and that's where Openreach could realise an eventual acceleration in rollout speed.