Member Info for fleccy

"Others can post as much about board reports etc but its not being believed and institutions are not buying in"

According to simplywall.st, Institutions own 87.0% of the shares. One thing I do agree with, is that Vodafone should drop the Dividend in order to pay down some of the debt. Nick Read is from an accountanting background, so knows how to juggle the finances, clearly Free Cash Flow is driving the current strategy in respect of the dividend. Over the the long term Vodafone has concentrated on Growth through acquisition, but my guess is they'll look at bringing debt down as the World progresses into a monetary tightening phase.

"Sorry I must be missing something and whilst I love the enthusiasm nothing is or has been reflective in the share price ."

Reading through your post, I'd say you're missing a lot. Vodafone and Telecoms are being artificially depressed in my opinion. many will disagree. The big players can now send any stock "Up, down, flying around, looping the loop and defying the ground", and can do it through transacting large trades Off Book, and using Algo's to set the price On Exchange, imo. Funny thing, the current low share price is good for Vodafone, as it's allowing them to facilitate their buybacks cheaply, to satisfy the MCB's.
As I've pointed out before, there's a contradictory narrative around Telcoms as a sector; On the one hand, the media paints a picture of a sector that'll never see adequate return from infrastructure investment, but Drahi purchases 18% of BT, KKR make an offer for TIM, and the likes of Goldman Sachs throw money at Altnets like CityFibre. Clearly Telecoms can't be a bad investment, since cheap Telecom stocks are being eyed up by various large entities.
Once the big players have mopped up as much of the sector as they can, no doubt the narrative will change, or maybe the narrative is already changing. Vodafone now appears to be bouncing along the bottom, I wont hesitate to increase my VOD holding, at the current price, as funds become available.

"5g investment needed now, 6g or whatever comes along before the 5 g is paying off, and so on."

6G is just an extension of 5G, with many future 6G applications utilising current 5G Frequencies; The 6G services, currently hyped, are around the higher Bandwidth, higher Frequency, mmWave. Currently the technology around utilising the higher mmWave Frequencies isn't good at dealing with moving phones/Equipment, and ridiculously low distances are being achieved. Once the higher Frequency 6G Technology is up to scratch, in all likelyhood it will be used in arena's, shopping centres, etc. The higher you move up the mmWave band, the lower the range due to various factors, and there's also issues with obstructions blocking line of site. I don't believe 6G will involve a big infrastructure spend, it will most likely be an evolution, over time, from 5G.

"People feeling happy averaging in over years when you could have just bought Alphabet or anything...at £1 its worth a look but my god its boring...and i normally love boring"

Hindsight's a wonderful thing, and forgive me for being cynical when someone appears, and posts how smart they were three years ago by investing in FAANG stocks. Personally I'm currently investing in value stocks where I see the most value. As far as the US tech stocks are concerned, they are being eyed as monopolistic by regulators, so expect them a take a bashing going forward, in similar fashion to BT's treatment by OFCOM.
Personally I've been topping up my BT and VOD holdings, since I see massive value in Telecom stocks, and the odds are that there'll be a rotation from growth to value soon. Why Telecoms? Because they just print money once the infrastucture investments are complete; And once FTTP and 5G are completed, I don't see any big infrastructure spend for multiple decades.
As far as Vodafone being boring, if someone want excitment they should day trade, or spread bet. My last top up was Vodafone, as I see VOD as being the among the safest value stocks on the FTSE.

"FTSE 100 contracts provided by spread betters are indicating the FTSE 100 will trade at the highest level since the beginning of the pandemic.
The rise in the FTSE 100 contracts comes a day after the S&P 500 futures hit record highs.
The gains in global equity futures have been made just as major economies reveal record numbers of coronavirus cases.
Although markets are trading in thin volume, the grind higher in equities suggests the market is now looking past Omicron to the continuation of the recovery in 2022.
The FTSE 100 will open for cash trading again on Wednesday."

https://ukinvestormagazine.co.uk/ftse-100-contracts-trade-at-pre-pandemic-highs/

"There was talk of moving the pensions cap to CPI from RPI. Any further news on that?"

"If you’re in Section C
Your pension increases either by the cost of living (as
measured by the Retail Prices Index (RPI) over the 12
months to the previous December) or by 5% a year
– whichever is lower.
It should be noted that the Government has announced
that RPI will be aligned with CPIH in 2030. Further
information on this is available on the website."

https://www.btps.co.uk/MediaArchive/PensionGuides/BTPS%20Pension%20guide%20(with%20AVC)%20-%20V0.1.pdf

"If you’re in Section B
In line with legislation and the Rules of the Scheme,
your pension increases in the same way as public
sector pensions. Currently this is in line with the rise
in the Consumer Prices Index (CPI)."

"That is drawing to a close but the demands on its cash remain the pension where a romping rpi will hurt"

The Pension top ups are already negotiated and agreed during the Triennial review, they wont change until the next review. RPI is bad for the deficit, but it isn't the only factor in determing the deficit, since Equity valuations are also relevant. I believe the BTPS RPI pension increases are capped to 5%, so there is a limit to increases in the deficit due to inflation; Can any of the BT chaps, who post on here, confirm that's the case?
The BOE will rapidly increase interest rates, if the current high RPI persists, so it's unlikely that RPI will remain high long term.

"Happy Christmas all Vodafone Shareholders . At least it cant go down for a few days after today ."

Or up either, in common with the rest of the FTSE, what's your point?
The way you've worded your comment, suggests you're primary motive is to wind up unsure holders.
Vodafone is currently rock bottom, and unlikely to drop below £1, so I'd suggest now's a good time to buy for anyone interested in purchasing the stock. Once Covid's reclassified as Endemic, and markets return to sanity, Vodafone could easily rise to £2+, which is why I don't mind topping up at the current price. Telecom stocks have been beaten down over a sustained period of years, that'll change in the near future imo. One scenario could see VOD take off, on a similar trajectory to BT's before the Drahi RNS last year, with large one day leaps, a bit of fallback, and then more upward momentum.

"Market does strange things. Who'd have thought BT, also in telcoms, would have tested such lows and only recovered slightly since?"

Indeed. I have a theory that the big market players have been engineering a shakout of Telecom stocks, for a good number of years; My reasoning, for taking that view, is that Telecoms are required for everything in a connected world, and the IOT market is forecast to exceed $1 Trillion annual Revenue from 2030. When you look at the amount of investment going into Altnets, the interest from Drahi in BT, and KKR's interest in Telecom Italia, the market price is saying one thing, but investment from big players is saying another.
I believe the Telecom narrative will see a massive change to the upside, at some point, in the meantime I'm adding to my VOD and BT holdings.

"Fleccy, When I said scary,I didn't think it would be that scary! Just for fun? could you work out how many shares one would need to buy, to average down from £2 to £1.13 with a holding of 180,000 vod shares?"

I could plug in a more realistic target price using your figures if you wish. For those figures, using the current share price, with a target price of 120p, you get:

Top up Calculator

Current number of shares 180000
Price per share of current holding £2.00
Current share price of stock £1.12
Target price per share after top up £1.20
Newly acquired shares to achieve target 1875000
Cost of newly acquired shares £2,106,000.00
Cost including stamp duty (0.5%) £2,116,582.91 £10,582.91
Total shares after top up 2055000

"Fleccy. I have just realised that to average down to the current share price would cost an a infinite amount of money, so no need for you work that one out, but thank's anyway."

Yep, but it was fun doing the spreadsheet, and I can work out top up costs in seconds now. I've added a stamp duty calculation to the sheet as well. I admit it's sort of a pointless exercise, but I had fun making the spreadsheet.

For example, using the current share price of 112.32p and Gejgaboy's figures.

Top up Calculator

Current number of shares 39500
Price per share of current holding £1.40
Current share price of stock £1.12
Target price per share after top up £1.20
Newly acquired shares to achieve target 102865
Cost of newly acquired shares £115,537.50
Cost including stamp duty (0.5%) £116,118.09 £580.59
Total shares after top up 142365

While VOD is at these levels, all my ISA stocks dividend reinvestment is going into Vodafone. I also recently topped up another £10,000 VOD recently. at around 109.3p if I remember correctly, and I'm looking at topping up another £10,000 in the New Year, if the price remains around 110p.

"Rya doing far far better than you keep carping on about, 8 euros ha ha, what a fool."

I do find the very recent enthusiasm around Airline stocks confusing, at some point the debt accumulated during Covid will need repaying. Covid debt is effectively dead money, and will be in addition to investment in new planes, etc. I don't see a long term risk for the large Airlines, but Ryanair's share price is detached from other's and I don't see why.
On the 1 year chart below, Ryanair's share price performance exceeds Vodafone's, which is really surprising, considering Telecom stocks are among the least affected by Covid.

https://www.google.com/finance/quote/RY4C:ETR?comparison=LON%3AEZJ%2CLON%3AIAG%2CLON%3AVOD&window=1Y

Can your average PI do that with leverage?

If he can borrow £5 Million off his Dad, maybe!!!

I just built the spreadsheet for fun, clearly no one would buy that many shares for the sole reason of achieving a Top up target price.

"Gejaboy is only losing about 10 grand, but to average down to 1.20 would cost him over 10 times that amount, & to ave down to 1.13 even more scary?"

You can't average down more than the current price, but I've now built a spreadsheet to do the job, since it eliminates calculator errors lol.
For your interest, I put a target top up price of 113.5p into the spreadsheet, using Gejgaboy's current holding and the result is:

Current number of shares 39500
Price per share of current holding £1.40
Current share price of stock £1.13
Target price per share after top up £1.14
Newly acquired shares to achieve target 4361458
Cost of newly acquired shares £4,939,787.71
Total shares after top up 4400958.333

Because I've set the format as Currency for the relevant fields, the spreadsheet has rounded the figures.
So to average down to the current share price, as a top up to Gejgaboy's current holding, he would need to purchase 4361458, at a cost of £4,939,787.71.

Correction to calculator error:
I'm not sure how, but I made an error on one of my calculations, somehow I came up with 46,800 multiplying 1.2 * 39,500, might have been a typo on the calculator. 1.2 * 39,500 is actually 47,400, which gives an answer corresponding with Compounds calculation.

here's the correction:

At the current price of 113.26p, I approximately get:

(without calculating 0.5% stamp duty and trading cost)
117,210 Shares at a cost of £132,752.04

39,500 shares cost £55,300 at an average of 140p per share

((£1.1326 * x) + £55,300)/(39,500 +x) =1.2

((£1.1326 * x) + £55,300) = 1.2(39,500 + x)

1.1326x +55,300 = 47,400 + 1.2x

1.2x - 1.1326x = 55,300 - 47,400

0.0674x = 7,900

X = 117,210 Shares (at a cost of £132,752.04)

I have an average of 140p and 39,500 shares. How much shares do i need to buy to lower the average to around 120p? Any advice please.

At the current price of 113.26p, I approximately get:

(without calculating 0.5% stamp duty and trading cost)
126,112 Shares at a cost of £142,834.45

39,500 shares cost £55,300 at an average of 140p per share

((£1.1326 * x) + £55,300)/(39,500 +x) =1.2

((£1.1326 * x) + £55,300) = 1.2(39,500 + x)

1.1326x +55,300 = 46,800 + 1.2x

1.2x - 1.1326x = 55,300 - 46,800

0.0674x = 8,500

X = 126,112 Shares (at a cost of £142,834.45)

"3. Interest rates going up. Equates to reduced pension liabilities for BT."

You'd think so, but it's more complicated than that. An increase in RPI actually increases Liabilities, as it's reflected in the annual pension payments in the new tax year. It also increases the assets, so it's somewhat balanced out, but not as much as one may think.
In the 2020 Pension Teach In, the pension sensitivities for Assets and Liabilities were:

Assets
£4.2bn increase for 0.7% increase

Liabilities
£5.4bn increase for 0.7% increase

In Nov 2020 RPI was 0.9%, currently it's around 7.1%, an increase of 6.2%, should it remain persistent and plugging the increase into the sensitivity formula's, you get:

Assets
6.2% x £4.2bn / 0.7% = £37.2 Billion

Liabilities
6.2% x £5.4bn / 0.7% = £47.83 Billion

Going off the 2020 sensitivity calculations, based on RPI alone, and should inflation become persistent year on year, the deficit would increase by around £10.6 Billion. There will be other factors that may offset that, and the BTPS may have increased hedging since then, also increases in interest rates will factor in too.

https://www.bt.com/bt-plc/assets/documents/investors/financial-reporting-and-news/quarterly-results/2020-21/pensions-teach-in-presentation-slides-july-2020.pdf

“ Netflix has attacked reforms that could let broadband companies charge tech giants for access to their networks, warning that changes could harm investment and amount to telecoms companies extracting rent.”

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0030/229575/netflix.pdf

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0025/229552/google.pdf

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0033/229578/sky.pdf

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultations-and-statements/category-2/call-for-evidence-net-neutrality-review?showall=1

As I've said on previous occasions, I'm on SKY fed via Openreach FTTC, and I'm more than happy with the speed and service. I watch Iplayer, Prime, Netflix and Sky Go without issue, so I will only upgrade to Fibre when the transfer is offered free of charge; Which is why Equinox was implemented, to encourage wholesale customers to move their individual customers onto FTTP.