Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
BT have it a bit easier than Vodafone, due to the geographic density of their network; For example, there's nothing stopping BT from replacing telephone boxes with a small 5G cells in combination with other FWA, possibly using WiFi frequencies. I've read some articles where BT have tried to replace some Telephone boxes with such points and planning's been refused, so it isn't without some difficulty. The street hubs can also be used for advertising, so more revenue opportunities for BT.
https://business.bt.com/public-sector/street-hubs/
These articles highlight some of the issues BT have had with some councils:
https://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/news/20230551.central-reading-phone-boxes-replaced-smart-hubs/#:~:text=A%20total%20of%20seven%20phone,and%20a%20tablet%20for%20communication.
Edinburgh and Lincoln Councils have rejected their deployment
https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/politics/edinburgh-council-refuses-plans-to-replace-old-phone-boxes-with-new-digital-bt-street-hubs-3779372
https://thelincolnite.co.uk/2022/12/no-signal-plan-to-replace-lincoln-phone-boxes-with-5g-booster-crashes/
From what I can tell, most of the objections seem to be around using the hubs for advertising, and describing them as "harmful to the character and appearance", which makes me wonder if some council objections might be due to vested interests. These smart hubs obviously present competition to the big billboard advertisers, seen along bus routes and elsewhere, so are the objections completely innocent? You'd think these hubs would be an asset, taking into consideration they're replacing old street furniture and providing free services to shoppers and visitors to these areas. As far as rural and suburban coverage, masts have been springing up like weeds near me, so I don't see much evidence of planning and build issues.
The examiner's excluded it from patentability:
https://www.ipo.gov.uk/p-ipsum/Document/ApplicationNumber/GB2113962.1/16b26341-fe3a-444f-9221-3f1901aa4961/GB2611321-20230921-Exam%20report%20%20Standard.pdf
"Then a blockbuster rns stating that Newmont had pulled out of a 'no brainer' first refusal to JV, this sent the share down 77% at 8 am following the rns. I stayed put and watched my 11m shares hit 38p a couple of years later and stay there for approx 2 - 3 mths."
You didn't sell though did you, you thought it would get to £1? I don't doubt you had/have an investment in GGP and have profited, I just don't believe you made a capital gain of £4 Million. A capital gain is the only thing that matters, anything else is like winning the lottery in a dream and then waking up.
Also, why did you say to someone in RBD that "I invested heavily in GGP and am down massively but only on paper. I have decided to stay invested believing there will be an upturn", when the price was around 0.6p at the time of the post? If you bought around 0.5p, wouldn't you have been in profit when you posted that?
"This week Miker last week Obelix. These guys are so deep in this share and as Addi said last week, will look for any crumb of comfort."
I had a quick look back through miker444's posting history and I think he said he'd purchased 11 million shares in GGP for 0.5p with a £55,000 investment and in another previous post I think he said he'd top sliced £200k previously.
There's a contradiction with the 0.5p price he used, as demonstrated in this post:
"miker444
Posted in: RBD
Posts: 4,364
Price: 0.625
No Opinion
bhargav.....30 Apr 2018 15:04
So you lost money and are now resorting to go on another bb to vent your bitterness. No one but no one forces anyone to invest, it should be your decision and yours alone. In fact it was your decision, end of. I invested heavily in GGP and am down massively but only on paper. I have decided to stay invested believing there will be an upturn. There may not, but it is my decision and if I lose I take it on the chin. Do not troll other investors for your own decisions."
At the time of that post, GGP was around 0.595p, suggesting Mike bought much higher than 0.5p.
Miker444 can you clarify when you bought your GGP shares and for how much, when sold out, and if you still hold any?
"I firmly believe that the halving / business cycle will lift all crypto related stocks , and given on the uk market there are only around 10 ways to play crypto via listed investments all things been equal a reasonable amount of money will hunt out those opportunities."
The next halving may well kill BTC in my opinion. Many of the early enthusiasts have been burned by Crypto, either through fraud or price volatility. BTC is useless as a currency due to volatility and high transaction charges, and project lightning is like a sticking plaster on a gaping wound. Transactions involving crypto being exchanged for goods, usually involve the crypto being converted to Fiat with the conversion cost and volatility risk landing on the purchaser, rather than the seller. If the price of BTC doesn't rise significantly, transaction charges will have to rise massively and it remains to be seen what the effect will be on the miners.
Also, in my opinion, the race to start US ETF's is about pulling retail cash in through the back door, since direct retail enthusiasm has fallen off a cliff. Some big players, with some big financial backers, have made big bets on BTC and I suspect the ETF's are a way of bailing out some big players and their backers.
Because all the original use cases have failed miserably, the only manufactured use case left is to describe BTC as some sort of digital commodity, using terms like Digital Gold or Digital Oil to describe it; Oil and Gold have real world uses, BTC doesn't, it's just a bit of computer code with no more use than some space in a database. Like the Emperors new clothes it's fake and supported entirely by hype and belief.
I agree the Pension deficit will likely show a reduction. It'll be interesting to find out the full impact of the LDI debacle, and how much it set things back.
From the BTPS written evidence to Parliament:
"Impact of the rise in gilt yields on our Scheme
The period of volatility we saw following the mini-budget was truly unprecedented.
Regulators have indicated that events were beyond their past stress tests and were outside of the
scenario planning the Scheme had previously conducted.
Whilst the level of real rates wasn’t an issue, the pace of change and the dysfunction in the gilt
market presented significant operational and liquidity challenges.
In common with other DB schemes, we faced significant collateral calls during this period.
However, we have a robust liquidity process and run a substantial gilts and cash buffer and have a
liquidity ladder we were able to tap into. The liquidity ladder defines the hierarchy of assets that we
use to meet liquidity demands, starting with the most liquid on the first rung. The terms of our credit
support annexes (CSAs) allow us to use cash or gilts to meet collateral calls so in the first instance we
used our existing cash and gilt holdings. When we had exhausted our gilt holdings, we sold equities
to generate cash. Constructing and using our liquidity ladder in this way meant that we were able to
meet all of our collateral requirements.
The Bank of England (BOE) intervened several times to ameliorate the market dysfunction –
including buying long-dated conventional gilts, introducing additional repo facilities, and buying
inflation-linked gilts. These interventions were welcome and effective."
"During this period, the Scheme’s assets fell significantly prior to the BOE intervention. At the same
time, the present value of the Scheme’s liabilities also fell by a similar amount. However, our hedges
continued to perform as expected and there was no worsening of our estimated funding position."
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/113599/pdf/
Apparently there are ways to protect firmware from cloning, but I'd suggest no protection is foolproof.
http://picoinstruments.com/how-to-implement-firmware-anti-cloning-protection.php#:~:text=Preventing%20the%20firmware%20from%20being,intellectual%20properties%20of%20the%20firmware.
https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/651024/how-is-fpga-mcu-configuration-firmware-data-protected-from-readout#:~:text=Encrypt%20the%20firmware%20based%20on,the%20crypto%20key%20would%20change.
Not sure about the rig manufacturers view on bespoke firmware being used on their devices, if they get really upset they could possibly engineer new rigs to only accept the manufacturers BIOS/Firmware; I suppose much will depend on the manufacturers relationship with the third party Firmware provider.
FG looked a bit unhappy, and the exchange seemed very scripted. FG did a lot of looking to the left, which may indicate he was remembering his answers as the "interview" progressed. If the firmware isn't supported by the manufacturer, then it'll likely invalidate the warranty on the mining rigs, and as far as stopping others from copying the firmware or deriving the code from the instruction sequences, I'm not sure that's possible.
"Howard Watson (pictured, second from the left) played down the potential impact of the proposed Vodafone-3 UK merger on its market position, instead highlighting this could increase investment and promote competition.
In a panel session with Vodafone UK’s chief network officer Andrea Dona (pictured, second from right) and CEO at Nokia UK and Ireland Phil Siveter (pictured, right), Watson claimed the Vodafone-3 merger does not threaten its “market leadership”, pointing to his own observation that slimming down market players can have its own benefits.
“In some countries, moving from four players to three players has made capital investment more efficient. More scale, more economically beneficial,” he noted.
However, Watson warned the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is set to have a deeper look into the merger, with the transaction expected to reach a conclusion by end-2024.
“I do think the CMA has some big questions to look at here, and we will be asked for comments I’m sure”, he said, highlighting potential scrutiny related to spectrum.
This will not be a pain point for BT, he claimed, as the operator has a network-sharing JV with 3 UK in place."
https://www.mobileworldlive.com/featured-content/top-three/bt-plays-it-cool-on-impact-of-vodafone-3-uk-deal/
Why have they only recently looked at Chinese manufactured Mining rigs, and why are they even bothering to release this information?
I think QBT perceive this release as positive, but the market is seeing it as a lack of foresight and understanding of the industry. QBT should have already known what the most popular mining rigs are, and where they're used; The PRN implies that QBT have only just realised they need a product to use on these Asian mining rigs, whereas previous releases implied that their firmware would work on any mining rig. This release has clearly backfired.
"Mehta’s digital unit within BT was originally tasked with creating £500 million in annual cost savings by shifting to the public cloud and deploying AI tools in various functions, plus other internal digital-change gambits; the business said in May it will slash 55,000 jobs – about 40 percent of its workforce – by 2030, with around 10,000 likely be replaced by AI, notably in customer and network management. In Copenhagen, Mehta said the £500 million target was in-hand, and will be extended to £1 billion at least in new savings and gains.
“A billion is what we’re seeing and, in the next few months, our job is to unlock it,” she said."
https://www.rcrwireless.com/20230920/telco-cloud/careful-or-care-free-bt-and-vodafone-split-the-difference-over-generative-ai
"Saudi Telecom buying 10% of Telefonica in 2023 is of much greater relevance than anything that happened 5 years ago"
The point of the chart was to demonstrate the decline of Telecom stocks in general, Orange's share price has also seen declines. The only Telecom stock that's outperformed the rest is Deutsch Telekom, because of their US T-Mobile investment, which the market appears to like.
Saudi Telecom purchasing a stake in Telefonica is what it is, like Drahi buying over 24% of BT, or E& looking at increasing its stake in Vodafone to 20%; All these purchases prove is that Telecom stocks are cheap, and possibly some strategic partnership reasoning behind Middle East interest. The Spanish Government might not be as nationalistic as the French, but they're not far off and they'll heavily scrutinise any further significant purchases of Telefonica stock.
"and sometimes inaccurate references (e.g. telefonica)"
Everything I said about Telefonica was spot on, I even used the 5 year chart to make my point. I said that they own half of the Joint Venture VMO2 and that they were among the loudest voices complaining to the EU about BT being awarded the TESTA contract, prompting the EU to then kick BT off it. Mandy, tell me, what are the inaccurate references you're referring to?
Doesn't everyone defend their opinion? I base my opinion of BT on company statements, saying what they'll do as part of their transformational strategy, like the eventual closing of 4000 Exchanges, or the PSTN switch off and move to FTTP, with Billions in cost savings thrown in; If I didn't believe what BT are saying, then I wouldn't have invested in them. BT have an amazing set of assets in Openreach, Duct & Pole infrastructure, and EE, so why would I worry about my capital investment with the value I perceive as locked up in the assets?
As far as blind spots, i'm not sure where they'll be unless they're unknowns; As an example, it isn't mentioned much but the Pre trial review for the Patourel class action is on the 8th December, and the case will got to trial next year; I'm aware of it and I have no idea how it will turn out, but I'll watch with interest. Just because I defend my opinion, and take a different view to others, doesn't make it a blind spot, I suspect you're implying that I suffer from cognitive rigidity, but I regularly think through and weigh up my investments, especially when I'm reinvesting with a view to bringing down my averages. I'd be interested to know where you think my blind spots are?
Something else that seems to upset people, is my belief in dividend reinvestment when the price drops, but why wouldn't I reinvest dividends if I believe BT is undervalued and will do well at the end of the current capex cycle?
"Fleccy
Their share price is up 11.5% in the last month...BT 3.34%....and over the last 6 months their SP is up 7.39% whilst BT is down 17.47% ..BT getting the hammering I think"
Taking a snapshot is meaningless, the situation could easily be reversed a year from now. On the 5 year chart, BT were outperforming Telefonica throughout 2022 and in April this year. Just because the market's punishing BT more now, doesn't mean that'll be the case next year.
"Posters on here are getting wise to your fun and games fleccy. Good job too."
No fun and games Mandy, just facts backed up with examples.