Member Info for fleccy

Gutter5hite, did I remotely suggest he couldn't say what he wants? I asked him why it makes his blood boil.

Why does it make your blood boil? You don't even like Vodafone.

Since you decide to correct

Even though their price targets

I thought I'd add my own little change, not a correction though

DB didn’t know what they're talking about

As things stand, DB really don't know what they're talking about.

In my humble opinion, it's a toss up between Robert Grindle and Polo Tang as to who's the most bearish and inept.

They're

Any money taken of the banks and the banks will kick back by reducing lending to households and businesses. Wont happen, simples.

"As those siren calls for a UK bank windfall tax grow louder, it is going to get harder and harder for the UK state to resist."

I think you're underestimating the importance of Banks to the whole economy. Any Government wouldn't want to see the Banks battening down the hatches, which wouldn't just hammer the economy it'd destroy the mortgage market and knock 10's of percent off house prices. The media cacophony would then obliterate the political class in this country, it wont happen.

Look at the author of that article, John McDonnell, tells you everything you need to know. There are loads of reasons why they wont push a windfall tax onto the banks; Two obvious ones is that they want banks to lend money to businesses, another is about ensuring banks have enough provision to offer solutions to struggling mortgage holders.

Take your pick:

Growth stocks in fashion and driven ever higher by market herd mentality;

Dividend stocks out out of fashion with low sentiment due to market focus on growth;

Telecom sector talked down in general;

UK stocks talked down due to perceived political instability, with a dose of unwarranted Brexit revenge thrown in;

Maybe all of the above.

Personally, I've decided I'm going to top up our stocks as and when our ISA dividends roll in, irrespective of the market narrative aimed at value dividend stocks, and await the inevitable cycle rotation no matter how long it takes.

" If we have a period of very high mortgage rates & significant numbers of mortgagors get repossessed"

The media would like us to believe the banks will be in trouble and loads of properties repossessed, but that scenario is highly unlikely. Unlike a normal recession the jobs market is strong in the UK, so people do have income coming into their bank accounts; For the ones who've overstretched themselves while interest rates have been low, they'll probably be given the options of extending the period of the loan, or moving to an interest only mortgage. I think it's very unlikely we'll see masses of repossessions.

"I'm not convinced it's BNP more that it's staff of the company."

Bobcat, if you look at the Accounts for a dormant company made up to 31 December 2021, it clearly states that the company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bnp Paribas Securities Services:

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/06567993/filing-history/MzM0MDYxNTYwMGFkaXF6a2N4/document?format=pdf&download=0

The shares were transferred from Bnp Paribas Securities Services to Bnp Paribas S.A, as confirmed in the Confirmation statement.

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/06567993/filing-history/MzM1Mzg5NTk5MWFkaXF6a2N4/document?format=pdf&download=0

Bnp Paribas Securities Services now hold 0 shares and Bnp Paribas S.A is the only remaining shareholder wit 2 shares.

As I've said on many occasions, stock prices are easily manipulated, even for big Blue Chips. Brokers and the big players can direct trades as they wish, so they can slice the trades and direct them automatically either Off Book, or On Exchange; Off Book trades aren't price setting, so the more volume directed off exchange the easier it is to move prices On Exchange using algo's. For example if they want to move a stock down, they could theoretically direct buys Off Exchange and direct sells onto the exchange, splitting the volume in such a way there's a good chance of driving the price down, and they could do the opposite if they wanted to move a price upward. In my opinion, for prices to truly reflect all trades Off Exchange trading should be banned.

Forget about who the Directors are, just look at the Persons with significant control and it tells you everything you need to know. The company is owned and probably financed by Bnp Paribas S.A.

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/06567993/persons-with-significant-control

It's actually 100% owned by

"Shareholding 1: 2 transferred on 2022-10-01

0 ORDINARY shares held as at the date of this confirmation statement

Name: BNP PARIBAS SECURITIES SERVICES

Shareholding 2: 2 ORDINARY shares held as at the date of this confirmation statement

Name: BNP PARIBAS S.A"

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/06567993/filing-history/MzM1Mzg5NTk5MWFkaXF6a2N4/document?format=pdf&download=0

AURORA NOMINEES LIMITED are over 75% owned by BNP Paribas.

Pas, who was the £1m investor? There was no RNS suggesting an individual shareholder had accumulated over 7%, so I can only conclude that it wasn't a single investor.

"I agree, certainty counts for a lot and i for one am open to a takeover at the right price."

What is there to takeover? It doesn't have many full time employees, it's whole valuation would currently be based on a single patent, still awaiting re-examination, and even if approved there's no way of knowing how much income it may generate; Add to all that, the company hasn't generated any meaningful revenue and is loss making year on year. It would be impossible to value QBT in the absence of income.

Scallywag, I couldn't care less what UK institutions do, I decide where and how much to invest. Instead of talking about where UK Institutions may or may not invest, why don't you tell me if anything I've stated that's incorrect? Since I'm only going off what the company has published in various statements, I think you'll be hard pushed to dispute the facts I've listed.

Nige I don't think BT need to reduce their shares in issue, I'd rather see them divert surplus cash into dividends and investments related to new AI/5G/Cloud opportunities. 10 Billion shares in issue is probably an ideal number for a FTSE Blue Chip in my opinion.

I'm not totally against buybacks, in my opinion Vodafone should divert money out of dividends and into buybacks; Vodafone currently have around 26.5 Billion shares in circulation, so their dividend is costing them around £2 Billion a year. Vodafone's current share price is around 73p, so a £2 Billion a year buyback could reduce the shares in circulation by 2.7 Billion a year; If they held the buybacks at £2 Billion annually and the market stubbornly held the price around current levels, Vodafone could reduce their shares in issue by half in 5 years; In the meantime, should the price goes up with the market deciding to rerate the stock upwards, Vodafone could swing back to dividends in preference to buybacks.

BT don't need to reduce dividends or divert money into buybacks, to reduce shares in issue, I view BT's and Vodafone's situation's differently.

"I think BT would be better off sinking £2Bn a year on share buyback than putting it into FTTP of which there is No value added to the company."

Clearly that is wrong, directing investment away from FTTP and 5G would probably do little for the share price and destroy any chance of future cost savings.

Investment in FTTP will result in an overall reduction in the number of Exchanges by 4600, from 5600 to 1000, resulting in huge cost saving from leases, plant and power requirements. The FTTP rollout also subsidises Fibre to the cell for 5G, which'll require more cells, higher bandwidths and lower latencies to cope with future needs.

Because FTTP is passive from the exchange to the premise there's less need for street furniture and power, so more savings.

Finally you need far less staff since Fibre is more reliable and with the PSTN switch off cloud convergence brings even more savings.

It would be ridiculous for BT to divert money away from network build and into share buybacks, especially since BT have less than 10 Billion shares in issue anyway. The current strategy will result in big savings going forward and result in big increases in EPS as capex winds down.