Member Info for Longish

Hi Newbie,
' A question for you Longish, will the new tower company still be owned by vod or are they going to sell the masts to dispense with them?'

I dont think it has been decided and probably good reason. I would guess an operator could save 15% or 20% by sharing masts with another operator in the same location. A buyer wouldnt want a mast and then not use it.
So alot of work to do to before deciding to sell, leaseback or some hybrid mast sharing arrangement with all owners of towet assets country by country!!

The OECD says the average state pension in the EU is 62% of final salary. In the Netherlands its 101%
In the UK it is 26% and falling. Duncan Smith is also proposing the state pension is extended to age 75!
I would love 62% of final salary vs relying on stock market divs...

Z Score
One stand out point from memory is the poor Z scoring telcos generate due to their uniquely large network assets.

The move to next gen technologies is generally toward a lower network cost per 'unit'.
Could argue an adjustment needs to be made in calculating the z score to establish the 'relevant' incremental cost, not use the accumulated total historic cost.

Unfortunately, if that principle is accepted, the total network cost might need to be written down to its 'fair value' and most CEOs and CFOs would want to avoid a write down.

Thank you Velo. Good analysis on the revenue profit. Thats typical telco financial behaviour after running full P&l customer and product profitabilty. Once the bottom line is under control, can relax sales rules, add low margin wholesale and, woohoo, revenue and profit growing again!! A bit like the VOD O2 deal in germany!

If the sp dips after US/ HSI tonight, will buy back...

NR and MDV doing well on their purchases at 128.7. UK CEO did well to sell at 185.
Hanging around 150 has moved VOD up 5 places in the FTSE whilst BHP, RLX etc have dropped..
Cant argue with that?

LoL, my stop loss triggered on the open and kicked me out at 157.871. You live and learn

Av, definitely recommend a diversified portfolio of risks.

Hi Andy, I guess that's why many retirees buy annuities - timing capital drawdown on a 20% movement on a £50 share!!
High divs offset my falls and I can take capital another day ...

As you say, not the same industries and congratulations on the gain over the last 12/18 months. Unilever has its own weaknesses though, and the current hi valuation may be the frothy consequence of inventory building/ trade wars/ ultra low -ve interest rates. Retailer brand loyalty may not be so sticky going forward.?

The shelf life of 5G is probably 8-10years and telecoms a moated market...If I was PJ, I would time good news on strategic execution in H1 reporting rather than drip drip drip individual deals … although UBS have also been negative on the lack of strategic news in the short term. Its worth noting PJ bought a lot of shares at over £2 so I am sure he isn't sitting on his 'posterior' and no plan to make some money.

In any event, I have c£10k in BT divs just about to hit the bank account and going on holiday :-). If I had held Unilever I would be taking profit and going on holiday too ;-)

Patient: Doctor, Doctor, I think I am a cricket ball
Doctor: Hows that?
Patient: Dont you bl**dy start!

'Do you base any of your investments on this kind of nonsense? '
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I have a research interest which influences my investment decisions. I am not currently writing but always mentally benchmmarking against the original data set (from wireless intelligence database). I ran multiple regressions on company financial measures, technology (diffusion), commercial service subscriptions, interest rates, gdp per capita etc for 5 years before and 5 years after regulatory intervention. I was specifically focussed on telco market asymmetries within the UK, EU and Global market definitions but was also drawn to the influence of interest groups representing other industries and how value can be traded between markets...I wouldn't necessarily recommend it but I enjoyed the journey and academic rigour, like trying to find my own version of the grand unified theory!

So, I dont rely on PE and yield % ratios to make investment decisions exclusively but intuitively use them as measures of value v growth.

But to be clear, I am a long term BT hold for the dividend but disappointed in the SP performance. I do think the SP will come back and may yet surprise to the upside given the current politics and trade negotiations.

I think AV makes an interesting point comparing lo PE and hi Div yields and I can see the historic logic of a portfolio with hi PE and lo Div yields like Fangs etc. 50% of my income in retirement comes from the market, roughly half Divs and half Capital drawdown as I am in the decumulation phase....

On the assumption AV is not winding us all up or a shorter looking for panic selling among PIs etc, ... how does a growth stock with hi PE and lo Div perform in a lo growth environment with recessionary economic signals etc compared to a hi Div yielding stock? Bloomberg tells me investors seek out Div stocks and abandon growth stocks in this phase of the cycle?

'Haha, it'd be funny if I was that Engineer'

LoL. If it was you, you also taught me 4GL on an old IBM mainframe..

'would you know whether i'm just BS'ing?'

No, lol, but I believe you. I first learnt what a multiplexer was in 1989 when I tripped over it and pulled a cable out. Met the engineer investigating the outage and the rest is history...Cisco, Inmarsat, ICO, MCL, CW, BT, 3, TMob, Batelco, Colt, Vodafone...

:-) they are in a frame. Share certificates were beautifully embossed. Have collected a few, AT&T, Eurobonds etc. Also lots of stamps from the early days of international interconnect ;-)

Fleccy, LoL, I still have my 2 NTL shares for my original £100 of Nynex plus £174 cash. Happy days.

From previous posts, we noted degrees of regulation depending on the level of competition in individual exchanges, locales etc. For the regulatory economists, they probably have achieved some grand formula where marginal cost equals marginal revenue equals the long run average incremental marginal network cost....When 'enough' meets all those conditions we have the perfect stuck in the middle conundrum.

Bojo wants grandstanding fibre to the population which if Openreach is allowed to IPO would fund the necessary investment imo and callibrate with subsidiary investor market strategies like Comcast or BT Retail ?

'I’m unclear about the future too'.
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I think that's why an Openreach IPO could make sense and create 'material' strategic clarity. EU imposes big fines on the FANGs for antitrust, I don't know if that it is shared with the operators. BT needs to have something big in the pipeline...maybe listing on the DAX. BT Group is delisting US end of September..

Hi Andy, thanks, yes I do. But not 9% yield !! ;-)

Hi Andy, fingers crossed the new CEO will announce that one big thing, like VOD, that lifts and holds the SP. Ideally before rebasing the div which I live on in retirement...

Makes sense to me, its not financial stress . TMobile head office, Orange head office, BT head office, Openreach head office and all the associated buildings and campuses. Then there is the general shift toward software defined network routing, 5G strategy, working from home, edge networks etc all add up to a smaller property portfolio with savings used to reinvest as regulated and maintain profit..