Member Info for tony2119

Think you’re spot on re US but even if the market fell 10% those long for the past 3 months are well ahead

Plus I’m not sure what exuberance you think needs to come out of the FTSE...it’s already a pretty sad story

That is excellent re the fibre rollout efficiency. Have they improved significantly beyond the 300 mark given in Dec?

That is far more relevant and impactful than revenue hit from reduced business usage

Fair point but the market is a crapshoot. It’s not efficient. Is Tesla now worth 5x what it was at the beginning the year based on future cash flow...no way.

You can look up historic consensus on the BT investor relations page. Analysts’ EBITDA forecasts for the next 2 years - their numbers haven’t really budged over the past 2 years. It still is circa 7bn EBITDA. What has are the capex and free cash flow numbers. As the former has risen FCF has shrunk....all that extra FTTP.

Which is a good thing if you can wait several years and believe FTTP will wash its face, bad if you value stocks on yield (divi hunters), FCF (some analysts refer to low FCF) or certainty (pension, final 1/3 pricing, 5bn for those places in the middle of nowhere).

For lots of people BT isn’t worth holding now because let’s face it they muffed the dividend cancellation and they are at real risk of getting screwed over by public servants. They are also very slow at cutting headcount IMO. I’m a bit sick of the extravagant goodwill shown to their workforce.

But it’s ultra cheap if you can bear the risk. Comcast paid 15x EBITDA for Sky. BT trades at 3-4x EBITDA and future capex will drop enormously.

You are right. Just remember the facts;

- circa 7.5bn EBITDA
- 10bn market cap + 12bn real financial debt
- pension deficit liabilities - anyone’s guess. Unless you understand maturity matching, duration etc, be reasonable and don’t offer an opinion, wait for the review
- so, 3x EV to EBITDA which is ludicrously cheap

Jenson has gone out on a limb and committed to EBITDA increasing next year. That’s a sackable offence if missed, so I personally am counting on that as a probable outcome

Goldman’s are pumping billions into altnet fibre via CityFibre. I would probably back the investment decisions of Goldman’s over Corporal Jones....

All the big catalysts - pension review, OFCOM consultation on final 1/3 / regulated asset base, £5bn remote households subsidies, half year results - are months away with the exception of the H1 results. So the SP might just drift which is understandable

BT is an excellent investment, just bide your time

Not a chance. By the time any gov body repurposes anything with countless ‘stakeholder engagement’ reports and other tripe TW will have built another 1,000 homes

Anyone have an informed view of whether this inflation surge that the gold price is predicting would be net positive / negative for BT? Positive for the liability discount rate in the scheme but negative if interest rates on debt rise. Anyone looked through the last AR at the profile of debt in the notes? How much is bank debt, securities, linked to inflation all that stuff? Cheers

Hi Velo

Technical analysis isn’t for me but that’s not to say it doesn’t work for others. I’m not knocking it.

But today’s move....surely it was driven by new information I.e a broker upgrade and not old & priced in info I .e tech analysis??

I’m sorry that BT made you redundant

I think there is something to the risk of privatising the losses but where you are wrong is on the leadership of BT. Half of them are ex BCG consultants who joined to get rich. I know several in senior positions. It’s a game of cat and mouse but to get what the government wants, good broadband for all, they have to pay up, simple as that, or else it won’t be built

One follows the other. Improve your NPS and churn and customer loyalty follow. Yes, in FMCG / grocery

Hang on though, if you be believe this is a great buy then algos & passive funds are responsible for creating such opportunities, and how’s that a bad thing?

If the market was near perfectly rationale and near perfectly priced retail investors would never make any money because we’d be the last to get the info

News flow for BT is all positive. Ofcom will allow pricing to include investment up front for the 1/3 of the country that’s tricky to reach. NPS improving for I think 16 straight qs is huge. The banks just want OT split and Campaign through the share price which is fair enough they want to make money too

Fleccy, NC..., others with telco backgrounds - any view on the proportional impact of banning Huawei on the several UK telcos? Do BT use more / less Huawei kit in % terms than others, that is what would be interesting to know, in ballpark terms. Cheers!

Agree UncleBuck. You probably don’t need or want an immigrant’s opinion on the British civil service but you’re getting it, the civil service in this country is the worst. Nothing works and the ones I have dealt with hate the private sector. BT management isn’t the problem. It’s the government and unless you find a way to hold them over a barrel like the housebuilders have they will screw you to the detriment of your company and the users / public. E.g rail franchises.

Agree I never understood the angst about the CEO. He’s exactly what they need. Smart, basic things, done right and quickly - bringing back call centres, focusing on NPS, shutting down regional offices where I bet nothing much ever gets done.

Yeah saw that, it was a bit of a row back from last week though I thought?. This time he said a value trap...for those looking for quick wins. Last week, a value trap pure and simple. Maybe I’m reading too much into it

Yeah I’m not saying there’s a takeover or investment in the works. What I am saying is that some groups probably approached BT and discussions were had. It’s in the FT today. What didn’t happen is the CEO hatched a plan to talk the share price up.

Eckster - so dumb. He’s a made man and not incentivised by the money. He’d happily ignore the share price and focus on turning the business around. They’ve been approached. Jensen could easily have finagled the message to the market to pump the share price if he wanted to. Instead he just said it’s rubbish.

Got to look at the EV value which is closer to 30bn. If no debt and no cash it’s the market cap.

This is my biggest worry too. I work in retail, there’s a letter doing the rounds from Richard Walker who owns Iceland replying to some lackey at HMRC who was trying to pull Iceland up on some trivial technicality in the middle of Covid. Beyond unbelievable. The bureaucracy in this country is incompetent and power hungry and don’t have a lick of commercial nous. I saw it with the Virgin trains franchise and pensions too, and clearly BT has been victim to it too and I’m not sure how that’s going to change. They hate private enterprise and would cut off their noses to spite their faces and prevent BT from making a decent return even if it meant reduced FTTH coverage

To be fair it should be near an all time low. I recently bought more because I like its long term outlook, but BT has not been well run. The Legal Separation nonsense is like something out of that Big short movie