Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/03/openreach-to-resume-uk-ultrafast-broadband-installs-next-week.html
Network access provider Openreach (BT) has been informing UK ISPs that new installations for their ultrafast broadband products (FTTP, Gfast and SOGfast), which had previously been delayed to 1st March 2021 onwards, are now set to restart at the later date of Monday 15th March.
Readers may recall that, during early January, Openreach took the difficult decision to once again delay many new provisions of their related products (here), as well as some other services, as part of their response to the UK Government’s latest COVID-19 lockdown.
The move was intended to protect both their engineers and customers from the then still rapidly increasing spread of the virus (i.e. the focus was on limiting work that would usually require an engineer to enter your home) and mirrored similar action from last spring.
Since then the Government has announced a roadmap for ending the current lockdown, which saw the first restrictions being lifted yesterday (e.g. schools returning) – a little later than originally expected – and as a result the operator has also adjusted their own plan to include an additional delay.
In other words, Amber working conditions for new FTTP, G.fast and SOGEA broadband installations will return on 15th March 2021 (i.e. internal provisions and repair work may proceed), while their Fibre and Network Delivery (FND) teams will return to Green status on the same date (no limitations). “In all cases our engineers will continue to carry out a personal risk assessment and maintain the current safety guidelines,” said Openreach to ISPs.
Naturally you can’t add another delay to new provisions without that having a further knock-on impact for those already awaiting an installation to take place. For example, a number of readers have recently been informing ISPreview.co.uk of additional delays to their FTTP installs, although this may vary from place to place.
As a side note, we do wish that Openreach would make updates like this available to the public because ISPs rarely publish such details directly, and it has relevance for consumers.
From Ofcom website: We expect to publish our final decision relating to the wholesale fixed telecoms market review by 31 March 2021.
I remember reading somewhere about 18th of March as the date for the above so not long to go.
https://www.bt.com/about/investors/financial-reporting-and-news/latest-consensus
Snippet from sky news:
The disclosure of what was effectively a "back me or sack me" ultimatum to colleagues highlights Mr Jansen's impatience to deliver rapid change at BT, but is an unusual step for the chief executive of a blue-chip company to take.
https://news.sky.com/story/amp/bt-chief-jansen-gave-board-ultimatum-over-chairmans-future-12236480
https://www.lse.co.uk/news/BT.A/credit-suisse-says-bt-group-to-benefit-from-rising-inflation-government-bond-yields-lgiy92u4tvujuuw.html
(Sharecast News) - Credit Suisse reiterated its 'outperform' recommendation for shares of BT Group, labelling the stock an 'inflection story' and arguing that it was set to benefit from several tailwinds - including rising inflation and government bond yields.
According to Jakob Bluestone, Ben Lyons, and Evgeny Kudinov, the telecommunications group was set to extend the reach of its fibre-to-the-premises offering to 16m premises by financial year 2025.
In turn, the shift towards fibre would boost its average revenues per user, as at rivals Deutsche Telekom and KPN, they said.
A "strong" recovery from the hit taken from Covid-19 was also in the works, they said, starting from the first quarter of the 2022 financial year.
The analysts were expecting earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation would grow by 2.0% and 2.8% in financial years 2022 and 2023, respectively.
BT was "well positioned" as regards rising inflation and bond yields, as it moved its consumer contracts to CPI+3.9%.
Rising inflation would also cut its pension deficit, to the tune of £500m for each 0.7% increase in inflation, as per the latest actuarial review.
The company was also set to benefit from the Chancellor's new deductions for investment, which was the chief reason why the analysts bumped up their target price from 190.0p per share to 200.0p.
On valuation, they estimated the shares were trading on an enterprise value-to-EBITDA multiple of 4.7 times for the 2022 financial year when pensions were included, versus peers on 6.1.
The estimated adjusted free cash flow yield on offer on the other hand was 5.6%, against its rivals on 7.3%.
https://www.lse.co.uk/news/BT.A/britains-bt-says-super-deduction-will-significantly-cut-tax-bill-r4avi3qehzcik6z.html
LONDON, March 3 (Reuters) - BT, Britain's biggest
broadband and mobile provider, said the "super deduction" tax
break for investment announced by the government on Wednesday
would significantly cut its tax bill for several years.
BT is spending billions of pounds in building fibre
broadband connections to homes and businesses, and extending its
5G mobile network.
Its shares closed 6.7% higher on Wednesday.
"We are expecting to invest significant amounts of capex in
plant and machinery over the next several years, and to the
extent this proves to be eligible for the super-deduction it
could result in a significant reduction in our corporation tax
bill for our 2021/22 and 2022/23 financial years," a spokesman
said.
"This would be offset in later years by the subsequent
increase in the corporation tax rate to 25% from April 2023."
(Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
(Sharecast News) - BT Group shares surged on Wednesday after chancellor Rishi Sunak announced a new investment tax super deduction policy in the budget.
Under the scheme, companies investing in new plant and machinery assets in the next two years will be able to cut their tax bills by 130% of the cost.
The super deduction will allow businesses to cut their tax bill by up to 25p for every £1 they invest.
BT, which is currently investing millions of pounds to upgrade its UK broadband network to fibre optic, rallied on the news and by 1510 GMT, the shares were trading up 6.2% at 133.65p.
Neil Wilson, chief market analyst at Markets.com, said: "BT has emerged as one of the big winners from the budget as the super deduction tax relief will allow it to offset its fibre infrastructure spending."
He added: "Any capital intensive projects should be winners."