Member Info for fleccy

"What a useless investment this was.I am still in the red after holding it for over 20 years now.They have 33 Billion debt on their books.What the hell did they do with the proceeds from the sale of their stake in Mannesman?"

I think you mean Verizon Wireless, not Mannesman.

"9.1 multiple seems good"

The reported 9.1 multiple is based on EBITDA, not Net Income. I've tried to find information on Vodafone Hungary's Net Income, but as far as I can tell it's mixed in with other Europe, and even then I can only find EBITDA, not Net Income. It's hard to judge what the correct multiple is, but I suspect Vodafone wouldn't sell unless it was in their interest to do so.

"We're in one right now, it's called Brexit Britain where the UK is disintegrating, we have major capital outflows, businesses are packing up and leaving, workers protesting over pay, highest inflation in 40 years, no new trade deals as promised by the Brexiters, billions wasted by the Tories and currently NO prime minister to take charge."

"We're in one right now, it's called Brexit Britain where the UK is disintegrating"

The current situation has little to do with Brexit, and who's to say things wouldn't be a lot worse if Brexit hadn't happened? Where's your proof that the UK is disintigrating? I'd argue the EU is more at risk, if you factor in what's going on in Italy, the resentment in Greece, the Eastern European countries unhappy with being told to shape their domestic laws around EU laws. The EU's biggest issue is the Eurozone, with a single currency and no sovereign debt sharing policies, meaning Germany can borrow at a much lower rates than countries like Greece and creating economic imbalances across the block.

"we have major capital outflows, businesses are packing up and leaving"

Companies are always looking for lower cost economies to manufacture their products. It's cheaper to build, or offer remote services, in India than the UK for example, and all other developed countries are seeing the same issues. Economics will determine where business takes place, not the Government, and arguably if Brexit reduces the value of sterling it makes the UK more competitive.

"workers protesting over pay, highest inflation in 40 years, no new trade deals as promised by the Brexiters, billions wasted by the Tories and currently NO prime minister to take charge."

The Unions have been looking for excuses to turn the country back decades for years, and are politically polar opposite to Tory values, so they've been looking for excuses to start a fight for ages. Some inflation may be attributable to a reduction in sterling on the back of Brexit, but that would be miniscule compared to inflation caused by the Russia/Ukraine war which is responsible for massive hikes in the price of gas and Oil.
On balance some things can be blamed on the Tory's, like not foreseeing a possible energy crisis and preparing for it, which is the same as falling asleep at the wheel in my opinion, but I believe Labour would have been worse. I believe that a country should be able to support itself from its own resources, and many of the UK's problems are down to overpopulation and an over generous welfare system. All the problems we're currently encountering are down to lack of national natural resource in my opinion, and none of the current political parties seem willing to acknowledge or deal with that problem, so they just sweep it under the carpet.

"Not trying; have. From The Times:"

Labour have a patchy economic record, I can never forgive Gordon Brown for hammering the nails into the coffins of private Final Salary pension schemes, with my own ending and frozen in 2013, but he did the right things in 2008. Gordon Brown did other dubious things like selling off much of the country's gold at rock bottom prices.
Labour create jobs by building a bigger state, so employing more people in heavily unionised Government departments that aren't needed, but costing the country and producing nothing. Socialism might work in a small village, where everyone chips in and adds to the overall productivity and well being of the population, but it's been proven not to work at the large country level. For anyone who disagree's with what I've said, look at the history of countries embracing communist and socialist values. China and Russia are good examples of why communism doesn't work, with both now accepting that socialism destroys competition, causing progress to stagnate; China and Russia are both autocratic states, proving that communism was more about control, since it wouldn't survive in a democratic political system, with both now embracing a capitalist structure, but maintaining an autocratic grip. In my opinion, socialism doesn't work because it increases peoples dependency on the state to the point that they give up on trying to better themselves, creating a lazy society. It seems to be the woke brigade who are most up for embracing socialist values, appearing to be made up of the lazier elements of society who either don't want to work, or embrace the arts and only put effort it "when I'm in a creative place".
Capitalism creates a war like envirnment where companies battle each other, driving efficiency and productivity, socialism creates a situation where many are paid for doing little, causing the ones who may be driven to improve themselves no incentive to do so. My opinion, for what it's worth.

"BT Openreach starting there build of FTTP, there is now a BT fibre node on the pole awaiting go live. So VM/02 where are you then ???"

Openreach seem to be building fast, but keeping quiet on progress. New areas will be added to the Openreach tollout plan, but with large time windows of 2 to 4 years. From media reports it appears Openreach are now passing around 60, 000 properties a week, which I assume now includes your village NDNIC.
I live on the outskirts of Bolton and do a lot of walking, a while back I was driving down Crompton way (A58) and noticed CityFibre roadworks near Hall i' th' Wood and Astley Bridge Police station, so I decide to add the area to one of my walks. It appears that CityFibre have recently covered the area with Fibre, in direct competition with Virgin Media (now VMO2) who've been there for years; BT/Openreach only offer Superfast broadband in the area and don't currently list the area in their future rollout plans, even though there's an Openreach Training centre within a couple of miles.

"This is to mainly support the roll-out of their full-fibre service and forms part of a wider 5,300-strong recruitment programme by the outfit.
And the new £1.7m Openreach training centre at Breightmet is expected to welcome the bulk of the north-west new starters."

https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/18952797.engineers-influx-fibre-network-will-trained-bolton/

https://www.openreach.com/news/openreach-opens-doors-to-bolton-training-centre/

I can only guess on the various Altnet and VMO2 rollouts taking place, but from various comments I've read in articles, it seems to me that CityFibre are targetting VMO2 franchise areas where Openreach haven't currently listed their FTTP rollouts plans, Hall i' th' Wood and Astley Bridge would appear to fit that category. Virgin Media have had coverage in their franchise areas for years, yet they don't appear to have attracted all of the superfast customers using various CP's on Openreach, which puts a question mark over the short term success Altnets will have in attracting those same superfast customers.

"They were Ordinary Trades "O" on ADVFN trade page.
Trade's numbered 1405-1408
I have a screen grab of trades but don't think this facility is here on this BB"

I'm not disputing what you've said, I just don't understand why the trades didn't show as a daily high on Google, and wasn't reported on the London Stock Exchange.

"Got my Trade info from ADVFN trade pages Fleccy."

I'm not signed up to ADFN, but the trades you listed aren't showing on Google, or the London stock exchange, so it's a mystery to me why'd they'd show on ADVFN.

"I recon the entire telecom sector will take a decade to recover. They are all generally down. Telefonica, orange etc"

It could be a decade, or it could be a year from now, the market will uprate the Telecom sector at a time of its own choosing. The market has projected a negative narrative onto the Telecom sector for a good few years now, yet if you look at all the new cloud/tech businesses, they all rely on Telecoms for their business models. If the hype about the Metaverse, augmented reality, and IOT, has any substance then low latency fast communications will be required, so server's will need to be close to the end customer/user; There'll be big revenue opportunities for Telecom companies in Edge to Cloud and high bandwidth secure connectivity and IOT services. I think Telecoms is a no brainer to do well at some point, I just can't say when. I doubt it'll take a decade for Telecoms to become fashionable, probably 5 years would be more reasonable in my opinion.

I didn't realise I'd captured yesterdays London Stock Exchange data, and after just checking that also shows a high of 163p. The 163p trades were recorded at yesterdays Open and were On Exchange Algo trades:

|tradeTime.............|price|volume|type|micCode|tradeType
2022-08-17 7:01:01|163 .|157 ..... | AT . |XLON .... |P ALGO|
2022-08-17 7:01:01|163 .| 2255 ...|AT . |XLON .... |P ALGO|

"Our maps and checkers are reflecting 8,003,400 premises passed by the Openreach full fibre network.

The 8 million milestone is not new news since Openreach self declared this figure on 19th July 2022, but we have found the 300,000 premises we were lagging behind and thus are now able to verify that Openreach really has hit that figure.

The previous 7 million milestone was confirmed by us on 7th May 2022, so that means around 14 weeks to add an extra million and at that sort pace the 25 million premises passed which is what Openreach is ultimately aiming for is predicted to for mid to late 2026."

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/9275-8-million-premises-passed-by-openreach-fttp-confirmed-with-our-tracking

"2.775p profit as a worst case scenario then, if bought at 1.63 then sold at an option price of 1.65."

The 165.755p trades on the 16th August showed as the high on GoogleFinance. What I'm saying is that no trades were registered at 165.755p on the 17th August, the highest recorded trade was 163p according to GoogleFinance. Butmac can you clarify where you obtained your 165.755p trade information from, as Google doesnt appear to have recorded those trades, otherwise they would have showed as the 17th August daily high, rather than 163p. Even 163p is above the On Exchange level, so still high.

According to Google, yesterdays high was 163p.

"Can anyone explain the reason for the price's above when BT.A"

No, it's the same price that went through on some out of hours off book trades on the 16th August. This chart shows the Daily High, low and close for BT, it will update with the 17th August figures later today. The chart updates half way through the day with the previous days figures.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vS4gJMsDAQq9sJ_zHqi_JnoVTryAdb4X64c7Clw12E2sGT3N6dTJfB60O8bc5Ns4burXvSSCVFrLvWC/pubchart?oid=1937898192&format=interactive

The Blue bars are the daily highs, so if this continues the it will stand out on the chart.

"Retail and hospitality etc are back down again....companies working on pre-won contracts are less affected...yet...provided they get paid for them and cash flows hold up

Fears a price war/ buying fewer services and increase in bad debts for utilities and telecoms is possible until the Government DO SOMETHING"

I'd argue BT are one of the safest bets in the current inflationary period. BT are allowed to increase their wholesle pricing in line with CPI, and increase their retail customer prices by CPI +3%. The current inflationary period doesn't affect BT's current debt, as it's fixed at issuance. As far as broadband and mobile, people wont give those up lightly, they'd more likely shop cheaper and avoid the pub. Whichever way you cut it, BT's fall was well overdone, like it was during the pandemic. During the pandemic, Telecoms were hit nearly as hard as the airlines, with Ryanair actually outperforming both BT and Vodafone.

https://www.google.com/finance/quote/BT.A:LON?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiqgb_Ezc75AhXJX8AKHWAdA-UQ_AUoA3oECAIQDQ&window=5Y&comparison=ETR%3ARY4C%2CLON%3AVOD

During the pandemic, after the initial drop BT continued a downtrend even as the FTSE started to see an improvement. I took advantage of BT's pandemic fall and bought £35,000 worth of BT stock in two tranches at around 106p and 112p, so what did I know then that the market didn't? The same thing I know now, that BT is severely undervalued and I can't lose by topping up at the current price, I just need to hold the stock and await the inevitable recovery in the price.

Poker, I don't disagree with anything you've said, but some of BT's moves lower on the back of highly speculative articles are extremely suspicious; The drop on the results was suspicious too. BT are down 20% since the 12th July, so a bear market decline, whereas the FTSE is up 4% since the 12th July. The big drops were the TalkTalk/VMO2 story, around 7%, and the market somehow interpreted BT's results as an excuse to knock off another 7%, the rest of the fall was drift lower. It's only an opinion, but I think the TalkTalk story is BS, I also thought the results were pretty good.
I agree the market is made up of different entities, some trade on volatility, provoking volatility with speculative news stories, again my opinion; Then there's the predatory players who are happy to buy and hold stocks long term, when the price drops to their advantage. The predatory and volatility players can have their interests aligned, with one possibly assisting the other. Since we are in the 2nd half of August volumes are naturally lower, so easier to move stocks either way, but BT underperforming the FTSE by nearly 25% since July, really???

"in the meantime the market continues to concern itself mainly on the performance of the BOD in relation to the company assets at their disposal"

That only goes to show that the market is selectively forward looking, only when it suits itself. The market also creates it's own media narratives around stocks, pumping them up when it wants, and pushing them down when it chooses. The Telecom sector has been hammered for whatever reason, the big market players are slowly accumulating in my opinion, and the narrative will change at a point of their choosing.
Jansen is doing all the right things in my view, as per my reasoning in the last couple of posts. I don't see how the BT board could do any more than they are, and are making the best of the current regulatory environment.

I ran out of space on my last post, but I've had a few more thoughts about how undervalued BT is based on its future asset ownership. If you look at the access network alone:

How much is the Openreach workforce worth based on the value of their contracts and standalone Net Income, £20 Billion maybe?

If BT decided to parcel up all their FTTP assets, once completed, and sell them to private equity specialising in infrastructure buyouts, how much would that be worth. £15 Billion, £20 Billion?

If BT sold of their masts as part of a sale and leaseback deal, how much would that be worth?

In my opinion, BT is well undervalued based on a breakup valuation, at some point the market will have to recognise that.

"( fleccy know you know more about BT than i ever will so good luck)"

Thought I'd better reply to that, as I only know what I've read in BT's statements, as although I worked in Telecoms I have never worked for BT.
Any conclusions Ive drawn about BT's future plans, have been from online research which any investor interested in BT should look for anyway.

The key points cost saving points I've focused on have been:

1) £2.5 Billion cost savings bythe end of FY25
"We reached our target of £1bn gross annualised cost savings earlier this year and 18 months earlier than planned. We have now extended our gross annualised cost savings target to £2.5bn by the end of FY25, all within the original expected cost to achieve of £1.3bn."

https://www.bt.com/bt-plc/assets/documents/investors/financial-reporting-and-news/annual-reports/2022/2022-bt-annual-report.pdf

2) Nearly a third of the debt is lease liabilities, which should reduce as Exchanges close.

"Under current plans, BT, the UK’s incumbent and former-monopoly telco, will switch off the nation’s PSTN in December 2025. By that time the transition to an all-IP network will be complete. In mid-November 2021, Openreach, the wholesale unit of BT which is kept at arms-length from its parent company, began consultations with other service providers who co-locate their equipment in BT exchanges up and down the country. Why? Because BT has plans to close 4,600 off its telephone exchanges as copper gives way to fibre-optic broadband connectivity. "

https://www.telecomtv.com/content/access-evolution/with-uk-local-exchanges-are-lined-up-for-the-axe-concerns-are-raised-suspicions-voiced-43953/

"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.". Lease liabilities £5.760 Billion.

Media articles tend to mention one figure, which includes the lease liability figure, I think this is misleading taking into account BT's Exchange closure program.

https://www.bt.com/bt-plc/assets/documents/investors/financial-reporting-and-news/annual-reports/2022/2022-additional-information.pdf

3) Because of PSTN switch off, retirement of old legacy products, and moving to a fully converged network, it stands to reason that BT will have a much more efficient and operationally cheaper network to run, explaining the projected cost savings.

4) BT isn't a one trick pony, it owns the largest network covering the whole of the UK. BT has its own mobile network, Enterprise business, consumer business, and Openreach which is a business in its own right.

5) Pension will cease to be a problem, once the deficit is wiped out and the trustee's organise an insurance buyout.

https://www.ipe.com/interviews/how-we-run-our-money-bt-pension-scheme/10049824.article

Found this in relation to the SDIV flag:

"Transactions that are either executed during the ex-dividend period where
the dividend or other form of distribution accrues to the buyer instead of the
seller; or executed during the cum dividend period where the dividend or
other form of distribution accrues to the seller instead of the buyer"

https://www.oxera.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/European-equity-liquidity-landscape-Q1-2021-Final-26-05-2021.pdf

"1,576,335 shares at 165.7546p (~£2.6m), that was then reversed out, followed by two separate trades that totaled the original 1,576,335... weird !!"

The reversal, showing on the share trades page on here, doesn't show on the London Stock Exchange trades list, so I assume the reversal must have something to do with the Trade Flag "P SDIV". It isn't something I've noticed before, so I have no idea.