Member Info for snoopz

There is nothing dramatic going on here - just normal market ebbs & flows. A month ago the share price fell to about £2.05 after the ex-dividend drop, and the ftse was over 9300 a couple of weeks ago. Day to day movements are interesting, but unless there is some significant news, usually meaningless. Having said that, the shares might be in trouble if we fall through the £2 floor. That might be a tipping point!

@Aus3009

Nope, I’m not claiming to be right — and I can see why you might be confused with this one particular case, since it concerned a telecoms company with UK operations. NTL was legally incorporated in the United States, and the entire group filed for Chapter 11 protection in the US courts. The jurisdiction was America because the parent company itself was American.

Although the UK subsidiary was heavily leveraged and loss-making, the Chapter 11 application was fundamentally about the US parent drowning under Wall Street debt. In the late 1990s, NTL had raised billions through high-yield bonds and other instruments in New York, governed by US law. Its subsidiaries in the UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Switzerland, and elsewhere were effectively collateral damage in a group-wide restructuring.

Ofcom has since tightened the regulatory framework to the point where no UK broadband operator could realistically replicate NTL’s Delaware-parent, US. junk-bond, UK-subsidiary structure, and still hold critical network licences. In other words, the NTL episode is a historical quirk — interesting academically, but irrelevant to today’s altnet debate. None of the modern fibre altnets are incorporated in the US, so Chapter 11 is not available to them.

If one of them gets into serious trouble, the path is the UK system - first, negotiation with lenders over write-offs or restructurings, and if that fails, Administration. In substance, Administration isn’t so different from Chapter 11 — the goal is the same, to protect the business while debts are restructured and creditors take a haircut. The main difference is that Chapter 11 offers a more formalised and court-supervised process, often with more time to complete the restructuring.

@Aus3009

This is an impressively daft suggestion, even by your standards. Do you seriously picture a bunch of American companies flying in, digging up our roads and stringing poles across British hedgerows, all without bothering to register in our beautifully multi-cultural paradise? Even if a UK broadband operator has a U.S. holding company somewhere in its ownership structure, the operating subsidiaries here would still fall under UK insolvency law. Some altnets are indeed funded by private equity investors based in the United States (Goldman Sachs, KKR, etc.), and may use U.S. legal entities in their fund structures, but the operating businesses remain bound by UK law. Chapter 11 would never magically apply to their debts in Britain.

And since you’re such a stickler for grammar, consider spelling "debt" correctly next time.

What does a Chief People and Culture Officer do? And what does her Associate do?

@AbjectPerformer

Is that the same Philip Jansen you called a "massive w4nke" recently?

@KICKTHEJAMSOUT

Exactly, I know all that. We should be up to £4.24 quite soon the way we are heading. However, £4.67 might be a stretch.

But what's up with you? Have you given up your life as a troll and are now going straight?

@Terraplane

All true...but a masterstrokr by Patterson in buying EE with BT shares and then tanking the company so they were almost worthless!

Still, I'm confident Deutsche Telekom will soon be able to sell those shares at a profit!

Https://bestbroadbanddeals.co.uk/broadband/guides/closed-providers/

Link for anyone nostalgic about the good old days:

https://bestbroadbanddeals.co6uk/broadband/guides/closed-providers/

This is what will happen to 95% of the altnets scraping around for funding at the moment!

Aus3009

Sooo, you're back! You and your troll friends have been noticably absent recently - which has been very nice for us all. What happened - were you all off on some kind of bonding execise? I suppose they'll all be joining in with there bid nonsense again tomorrow!

Anyway, regarding your message. It's all the usual incomprhensible gibberish to me - so, I'll leave others to respond!

@expatwelsh

Very perceptive comments. Actually, I only used Polo as an example as his name often pops up on this board...so I know how loved he is. Of course his slide rule is no more magical than any of the other analysts. BUT he's far from being the only pessimist amongst the bunch. And unfortunately they have been more accurate than the optimists in recent years.

However, once somebody has a certain mindset (which has been proved right in the past), it can be difficult to change. My opinion is that there are numerous reasons to be optimistic about BT's prospects over the next few years - and I'm very pleased to see the market seems to agree with me!

UBS analyst Polo Tang has recently maintained his £1.20 “Sell” rating on BT, arguing that competition from alternative full-fibre networks (altnets) is putting sustained pressure on BT’s pricing and market share. He’s not exactly the most popular figure on this board but he’s no fool either (OK, OK, you'll all disagree). He has access to some of the best analytical tools in the industry, so it’s worth asking if he has a point?

When altnets first began rolling out FTTP a few years ago, plenty of brokers downgraded BT. It was an easy call—BT had spent years simply maintaining its existing network, with little to counter the incoming wave of new fibre providers. Here’s the trend in Openreach broadband line changes over the past few years:

2017 +463k

2018 +356k

2019 +373k

2020 +209k

2021 +183k

2022 +156k

2023 −210k

2024 −491k

2025 −814k (approx.)

The annual losses have been accelerating—so on the surface, Polo Tang’s view looks valid. But there’s more to the story. In the last two quarters, the rate of decline has actually slowed. The most recent Q1 FY2026 figure was −169k, an improvement and a trend which BT think will continue. Specifically, they said in the results as "stemming the exodus", suggesting they think they are successfully holding their ground against rivals (and they have access to all the confidential detailed figures we don't get to see).

It’s also important to note that TalkTalk’s collapse has distorted the numbers. Over the past two years, TalkTalk has lost about 740,000 customers, most of them on Openreach. Many of these migrated to ISPs that don’t use Openreach, inflating BT’s loss figures without necessarily reflecting altnet competition directly.

Looking ahead, around 6.8 million UK premises currently have altnet FTTP without Openreach coverage—roughly the same number Openreach plans to add by the end of 2026, expanding its footprint from 19 million to 25 million premises. When this build is complete, the tables will probably turn, with many customers switching from altnets to BT once they have the option.

The counter-argument is that there are also plenty of premises with Openreach but no altnet coverage, giving altnets room to poach BT customers. In practice, that’s unlikely to be a major threat as most altnets have paused builds and are seeking mergers to stay afloat, while those still expanding are mostly targeting dense urban areas that already have multiple providers.

In conclusion, I think Polo will be revising his BT ratings in about 18 months!

@fleccy

Well as you say, only time will tell. In the meantime, it seems the BT share price has broken about even on ex-dividend day given that the ftse 100 was down a fair bit!

@Fleccy

Here are a few examples of US tech companies that I thought were extremely overpriced when they first floated:

- Apple went public in 1980 at $22 per share, but after accounting for stock splits, that’s equivalent to about $0.10 per share today. The stock now trades at over $210.

- Google (now Alphabet) IPO’d in 2004 at $85 per share, which equates to about $2.50 per share after splits. The current share price is just under $200.

- Facebook (now Meta) went public in 2012 at $38 per share. The stock now trades at over $770.

- Amazon floated in 1997 at $18 per share. Today, its share price is over $220.

- Netflix IPO in 2002 at $15 per share, which adjusts to roughly $1.07 per share after stock splits. Its current share price is a massive $1,178.

These are all companies I once thought were overvalued — but I was totally wrong as they’ve become rock-solid giants. Anyone who invested even a small amount early on would be doing exceptionally well today.

There’s no guarantee Palantir will follow the same path, of course — but there’s also no reason to rule it out!

@fleccy

I have no idea what Palantir is truly worth, but their P/E ratio has nothing to do with their "$1 billion revenue". That's simply the share price divided by earnings per share (EPS). Their adjusted EPS was $0.16 in the latest results, so at CoB yesterday the P/E was roughly 180 ÷ 0.16 = 1,125. That’s a ridiculous valuation — BUT the hope is that earnings will improve, which they probably will. They don’t need "to grow annual earnings to half a trillion dollars" — they just need to become more profitable, which can be achieved in various ways (a bit like BT, really).

Most of the FAANG stocks were in a similar position in the past. For example, Amazon’s P/E ratio was over 1,000 at one point, and now it’s around 33, even though the share price is much higher.

Yes, that's exactly what I said. The ex-dividend date is tomorrow, 7th August, so anyone who holds shares at COB today, 6th August (the Record Date), will be entitled to the dividend. Anyone buying shares on or after the ex-dividend date will not receive the dividend.

The BT Ex-Dividend date is tomorrow 7th August.

So, it's possible that the price might rise today, as anyone buying will be entitled to the dividend. However, most buyers know full well that the share price will likely fall tomorrow to reflect the stock going ex-dividend.

Let's hope the share price stays above £2 by CoB tomorrow, as this is a bit of a psychological barrier that we only just broke through!

Great news! Le Patourel will probably take it to the ECHR next as the longer he can drag this out the more he gets!

I cant see any real business logic in taking over talktalk. Anyway it seems that they found another £100 million down the back of the sofa. Soon, I think you can take this off the agenda for a few months!

@AusYou 3009

You seem oddly obsessed with Russians — a lot of your posts single them out for special criticism. What happened? Were you the victim of a honey trap? Did you send money to your online sweetie?

Hey, no shame — it could happen to anyone! Well… not really. It only happens to nerds who never leave their bedrooms. But don’t worry — most of us will be sympathetic!