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Fleccy

"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent"

Keynes

Remind me about Autonomy (back a few years), fairly high share price, and the FT was basically slating it on a weekly basis. In short they did not believe the price reflected the company, and they were suspicious of the figures.

Quite a few short positions were on the stock.

Low and behold, HP turn up and buy it (I smell burning shorts), laterHP found out that the FT and shorters were right, but....that quote again.

The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

Also...

Shorters themselves have virtually zero effect on the shares. Why, because whilst the sell may depress the price, the buy being an equal amount may lift the price.

The ultimate effect is therefore neutral.

As regards a short squeeze, that is very unlikely given the daily turnover and the small amount of short interest.

It's not an AIM stock, not yet anyway.

As I read it, it is MS that have the right of recall, BWTFDIK.

From the RNS

Right of recall over securities lending agreements 865,000 shares.

In short they have loaned out shares to shorters.

My monies on court win leak, may improve once confirmed.

So, they have paid a premium to buy calls, which basically means they fancy it rising.

The but is, that they have a max loss of the premium if they let the rights lapse.

It’s still a positive move by them as far as I am concerned.

Al

The negatives...

Debt, Capital Expenditure, Court Case, Pension Deficit, Competition, and of course OFCOM.

It's cheap for a reason.

There are some pluses, the yield, has it fallen far enough, break up possibilities, etc.

Would not be surprised is consumer division EE gets separated at some stage, I assume combining retail brands is a start in that direction. May do a GSK HALEON type split.

'daytrading etc is destroying stability'

Day trading has little or no impact on the stability of a company the size of BT.

Even shorting has little or no impact, for every share they sell to go short, they have to buy when closing. i.e. zero impact.

Issue is market sentiment and the other obvious issues, like pension, debt, court case, competition.

Regardless, I have bought in the last two days, and intend to hold until I get my target of circa £1.50. Will reinvest divs, if they pay it.

I like to catch falling knives....

A Quick Look through poundashares posting history tells me that they are a former holder of this stock at much higher levels.

Clearly bitter about that holding, one assume he took a significant loss, so now pushes the BT is crap narrative.

All just an assumption, perhaps he’ll explain, or perhaps I’ll post a few examples, better still have a read.

The majority of the holding looks like call options. Which I guess means that the downside is limited to the option price.

They also appear to have a small amount out on loan, to shorters I assume.

Has anyone had any updates on the court case, can't find any info beyond the headlines late January 2024. Also a brief update that stated the trial was over and a decision is awaited.

I did check BT's last full set of accounts and whilst it is mentioned (under risks), they seem pretty confident of a win, and stated that they have made no provision for a possible fine.

Doing my homework, it does seem like an attempt to cash grab by a former OFCOM employee , and his financial backers.

Does anyone have a view, personally I have somewhat assumed that the drop since January may be a result of this, and that the result if it goes against BT is largely in the price (wishful thinking at best, I guess).

Also, generally speaking the loss of a retail customer, means they gain a wholesale customer. If we assume many move from BT/EE to Sky, etc. Given we provide Sky and many others with wholesale services.

As an aside, when I was working for BT, as a senior customer ops manager in Global Services (now retired), I visited the Network operations centre at Adastral Park. Whilst there the management made it clear to me that we (BT) made more money from wholesale customers than retail customers. I asked why, and he stated that we have zero customer support costs, and that the ISPs take care of that themselves. Whether this is still true is debatable.

"now you have countless independents with aggressive pricing rolling out FTTP and poaching customers."

OK, if the competitors pricing is so aggressive, why did they cry like babies to OFCOM when BT cut wholesale prices to customers like Sky.