George Frangeskides, Chairman at ALBA, explains why the Pilbara Lithium option ‘was too good to miss’. Watch the video here.
Much different view of BT from the media, forward thinking with input from the big cheese’s, backing up some of the cost saving synergies, CEO succession planning and thinking behind BT Sports/Warner JV future with Warner having an option to buy-out.
Cont…
BT’s customer service is much improved thanks to measures such as bringing call handlers back to the UK, Allera said. He winced as he recalled its position three and a half years ago when BT’s consumer business was being integrated with EE’s. “BT was the most complained-about operator,” he recalled. “Our brand score was weaker than TalkTalk. That’s shocking — for a market leader to be behind a challenger.”
Complaints to the industry regulator Ofcom about BT’s landline and broadband are now falling closer to EE’s market-leading lows, although it still lags behind on its small mobile business.
Allera said savings on marketing will be significant when the group only has one brand. “Everything was split,” he explained. “We spend £250 million on comms a year, but split 50-50 across both brands — they’re each number three, four or five in their markets. If we combine it, we’d probably be the number one brand.”
Analysts said the process of simplifying and integrating the business under the EE brand was likely to lead to other sub-brands — such as Plusnet, BT’s budget broadband and mobile provider — being subsumed into EE. Allera admitted that Plusnet’s future is being assessed, although he declined to give specifics on the review: “You’ll see some changes over time. You know our future direction.”
While cutting back on duplication, Allera wants to stretch the EE brand into new areas through partnerships with other companies.
This includes a deal, expected to be signed soon, with security group Verisure to provide mobile phone- connected home security, where users can monitor their cameras, alarms and sensors through 5G.
EE could also potentially provide gaming equipment under contract. “Why can’t you have an Xbox like an iPhone — where if you drop it, you get it replaced?” Allera asked. EE already sells consoles, but under this scheme customers could pay a subscription for the kit every month and either buy it outright or upgrade to a new model at the end of the contract.
The brand could also sell travel insurance, he added. “We know when you’ve landed in Spain — we already send you a text. So why don’t we say, ‘If you want travel insurance for £5 a day, click here’?”
Selling insurance might not be as exciting as football, but it is a lot less risky.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bt-plots-life-after-football-with-shift-to-ee-zb056c3r7
A ‘vanity’ decision to bid for football rights and poor customer service hurt the telecoms giant. It hopes a simpler structure will pay off.
When then BT chief executive Gavin Patterson declared in 2013 that he was launching the former state telecoms giant into the glamorous world of Premier League football, it put a rocket up the share price.
For investors tired of owning a lumbering, low- growth utility company, the move to create BT Sport and buy broadcasting rights to top-flight sport signalled a potential upgrade to the company’s prospects beyond those of a humdrum owner of phone and broadband cables.
Sadly for Patterson, and BT, it was not to last. Dogged by continuing spats with regulators and politicians over the company’s slow rollout of fast broadband, as well as a dismal customer service history, critics soon started arguing that football was a distraction from its core businesses. Not only that, but sport exposed BT shareholders to the vagaries of the broadcasting rights market in Premier League and Champions League matches, pitching the company against Sky and potential newcomers such as Amazon in multibillion-pound auctions every few years. As a result, costs spiralled.
Meanwhile, profit warnings, an Italian accounting scandal and a failure to keep dividends rising sent the BT share price tumbling from its once-dizzy heights. Patterson eventually quit — forever to be associated with what critics saw as the “vanity” decision to go into sport.
Last week, his replacement Philip Jansen completed a deal to sell BT Sport into a joint venture with the US media giant Warner Bros Discovery, as part of what will be a managed exit from sports broadcasting.
BT will now only be liable for half the sports rights costs, and Warner has a call option allowing it to buy out BT’s stake after two or four years if it wants to — a likely outcome, analysts said.
“We’re not wedded to the idea of owning content,” said Marc Allera, who runs BT’s consumer arm. “We offer our customers Netflix, Amazon Prime, Sky content. We don’t have to own those rights. But we’ll see. Nothing is definitive — we have the optionality, they have the optionality.”
The deal marks something of a milestone as BT moves to simplify its consumer businesses, led by Allera, who is widely seen as the heir to Jansen as chief executive.
In April, the company announced that the BT name — synonymous in many people’s minds with old-fashioned, poor service — would only be used for business customers, with all its work for households transferring to the EE brand, the mobile network that merged with BT in 2016.
“We broke cover at the end of April,” Allera said. “We’d been worried people who’d worked for BT for some time would just react badly to it, but it turned out they were the most enthusiastic.”
Cont.
Cont…..
Virgin Media O2 is exploring an acquisition of TalkTalk with a view to transferring its customers from the Openreach infrastructure owned by BT to its own cable network.
It is understood Virgin Media O2 is now carrying out due diligence, including looking at TalkTalk's preexisting relationship with rival network builder Cityfibre, and may seek to agree a deal in October.
TalkTalk did not offer any further comment on its annual report.
In the broadband provider's annual report, auditors highlight a series of unusual accounting practices.
The budget broadband provider TalkTalk has been warned by its auditor that presenting its accounts on a going concern basis is increasingly risky as it comes under pressure from its £1.1bn debt pile.
In the company’s annual report, which has not been published on its website or filed with Companies House but has been made available on request to bond investors and seen by The Telegraph, auditors from Deloitte highlight a series of unusual accounting practices.
They conclude that in a reasonable worst case scenario, TalkTalk would only be able to meet the covenants on its debt by excluding more “exceptional items” from everyday costs, such as acquiring and retaining customers.
Lenders typically restrict corporate borrowers’ debt to a multiple of their underlying profitability, so reclassifying more costs as exceptional can keep them within the limits. Breaching these covenants can lead to insolvency procedures. The rules around TalkTalk’s debts become more restrictive next year, the auditors said.
Highlighting an increased level of risk to TalkTalk’s status as a going concern they added: “We have identified a key audit matter related to going concern as a result of the judgements required to conclude there is not a material uncertainty related to going concern.”
Deloitte said there was a “high level of estimation” in how revenues were recognised, and “a high level of management judgement” in the decision to account for the £31m costs of switching customers from copper to fibre broadband as exceptional. The auditors concluded it was within accounting rules.
TalkTalk, Britain’s fourth-largest broadband provider with four million customers, is controlled by the investment fund Toscafund following a buyout that ended its run as a public company last year. Its chairman Sir Charles Dunstone, also founder of Carphone Warehouse, retains a significant stake.
Sir Charles is now in talks to sell the business to the cable operator Virgin Media O2 and is reportedly seeking as much as £3bn including debt. That target price drew scepticism within the telecoms industry and the City of London, however. Rivals and investors have for years observed TalkTalk’s struggles at the bottom end of the broadband market with a business assembled from disparate acquisitions.
Its latest annual report suggests TalkTalk has not found life much easier as a private company. Its statutory loss before tax in the year to February widened to £28m from £11m. Net debt increased by £120m and TalkTalk burned about £80m cash.
Churn – the rate at which customers are gained and lost, and a crucial driver of costs – climbed from 1pc in last year’s accounts to 1.6pc this year, although last year’s figure was amended to match. Without acquisitions, overall customer numbers fell around 120,000.
Cont.
£20k per week that is.
Well said Fleccy, the average footballer from the Europe’s top leagues can’t be trusted to remember their passports as the clubs employ people to facilitate travel for all concerned. I remember reading some premier league stats b4 the pandemic saying the bottom 5% earners earn £20k on average. So £1m a year for sitting on the bench or a young player on their first contract, easy money compared to any FTSE CEO.
I’ve heard a few times now that the government want OR nationalised or under government control, when I queried this, I was told that this view was commonplace in Whitehall. If true, this opens up all kinds of permutations with DT and Drahi, on who wants what and what is OR worth? And if delisted would HMG want just a 51% controlling share and the rest listed on the LSE or owned by BT whoever owns it. Interesting times.
Have a nice day Fleccy. You c’on back ye hear.
Very very rarely does BT finish in positive territory (less deduction in real terms) on x div days.
Big thumbs up and smiley faces galore.
Well-well, Shareprice finished a tad better than X Div value deduction. A small win indeed. Onward and upwards.
Yes indeed IP3LY.
Simon, it’s treated as paid income by HMRC so tax needs to taken at source. So some of the shares are sold, with the proceeds on their merrily way to the Treasury.
I think there’s a fair chance of the share price reducing by ex div value and some. Down 12p to 149p. Grrrrr! Up again on Friday. GLA
AP, I’ve said as I’ve seen it, article in the press showed Lisa N at a picket line in Stockport chatting to all in the Frame (15ish) who looked north of 50, some very much older. There were no youngsters, ie younger than 35 in the snap. The people with most to gain from this strike are the personnel that will/should be with BT longer than the guys in the snap. The picture tells me that the younger people in BT are not striking and are the happiest with £1500, and as Jake stated the new intake signed up for the T&Cs offered at the time.
I note that Lisa Nandy joined the BT Picket Line even against Starmer’s ban. Looking at the media pictures, clearly the strikers are no spring chickens and all very much in latter years.
Aus, Instead of a swear jar I was thinking of having a negativity jar. Everytime you have a pessimistic thought you put a a quid in.
It's half empty.
Given a 10p swing today, and the share price finishing where it closed last night, I’ll take that. Monday is another week.
Up 6p, so 168p
DT must be scratching around for news stories again, Royal Mail upped their stamps by 12% earlier this year, and nobody batted an eyelid. Lots of household goods and transport fuel costs and heating/energy costs have all increased beyond inflation. Even Ronald McDonald upped the price of a little Mac earlier in the week by 20+%, why? because everybody’s cost of sales have increased. It’s no different for BT with fuel and maintenance costs for vans, electrify for exchanges, staff costs etc. DT saying this a tax on working from home, it’s quite the reverse, BT is the great facilitator in providing the connectivity to allow WFH to happen.
I’ve jumped out of BP and L&G today and topped up on BT at 162p.
DYOR.
10p down on Q1 results against market expectations, very strange.