Bt Share Discussion Threads

[montyhedge] 13/5/2018 11:51

GSK have not risen their dividend for 4 years. BT 7% yield for two years, then GP said growth expected in 2020. 13,0000 jobs cuts, can't increase dividends yet, would not look good.BT could be the bargain of the year.

[hamhamham1] 13/5/2018 11:38

How many other ftse100 companies could you see being potentially worth double the current share price in say 2 or 3 years are there?

[minerve] 13/5/2018 11:37

Dividends are frozen for three years careful. I read somewhere. So with inflation it isn't a progressive dividend and will not be yielding 7%.

[careful] 13/5/2018 11:34

If we take an optimistic view, then the known vastness of the problems give BT a huge opportunity for improved performance.
And we start with a PE of 10 and a yield of 7%.

[hamhamham1] 13/5/2018 11:27

Old systems are common place in any big business which is over 30 or 40 years old. You would be amazed what is still functioning out there in many big companies.
If BT can adopt management and work practices more akin with Deutsche T. Then leveraging BTs huge infrastucture and customer base then this company will fly again.
It is very fixable IMHO.

[toon1966] 13/5/2018 11:24

Careful - I really wouldn't read too much into the article. But let's hope the 'source' is offered VR.

[careful] 13/5/2018 11:15

Just read the article above.
what a shambles BT is, and I have a significant holding.

The problems are at least now out in the open.
A massive trimming of staff is required and lots of investment updating old systems.
Then there is the heavy weight of the pensions holding BT back.

Patterson will only survive if he becomes more dynamic, no more Mr. Nice guy.
Serious work to be done.
Too many in the lifeboat and everyone drowns.

[toon1966] 13/5/2018 11:11

Have to say it's rather sad and in-keeping with this article, that the main source has in 20 years of employment at BT not bothered asking what CSS stands for! It actually stands for Customer Service System and I first used it in 1988-89.

[nige co] 13/5/2018 10:36

The 13,000 'savage' layoffs at BT could be preparing the company for a sale, insiders say

[hamhamham1] 13/5/2018 08:43

A bit of old-ish news but theres money in security and DDoS protection aspect is getting more and more popular with companies finding it vital to keep their internet front end up and running.
A lot of the time the DDoS protection provider (eg BT) will reroute inbound internet traffic when a DDoS attack is detected from initially hitting the client company's load balancers and webservers direct. The DDoS protection provider will suck all the inbound traffic to them first, clean it up then forward the good traffic on to the client company's load balancers and webservers. This takes a lot of monitoring to get a good baseline to detect real DDoS anomalies and to react and then divert traffic. Some companies just leave it permanently redirected so the scrub is always on. But once you have companies signed up and on-board they usually stay to maintain stability and service levels. Great revenue stream.

Note, and these additional services are sold alongside BT providing the client company with an internet connection which could bring BT tens of thousands of pounds a year on its own. Larger companies tend to have several internet connections provided by different ISPs for resilience.
Or seperately client companies may have multiple offices and BT provides private connectivity (MPLS is popular) to join the offices up, again thousands of pounds a year for BT.
There are so many other revenue streams throughout BT that get missed as people just look at the broadband and landline business. Now with EE on-board that's even more just in that same consumer level of the market. That's me done for the day, sorry for going on about the other stuff :)

[toon1966] 13/5/2018 08:35

Pressures on Gavin -

[hamhamham1] 12/5/2018 06:28

I agree with a previous post that Deutsche Telekom and BT could merge, to create a partnership, and leverage the best of both worlds to create a huge player.

[nicholasblake] 11/5/2018 22:56

Two points:

1. If the div had been cut, under the current regulatory guidance the pension scheme would have had its hand out to gobble all the saving, and used it to buy overpriced bonds (i.e. dead money); and

2. I really do think the fibre to the premises roll out has extraordinary upside, but one shouldn't underestimate the resource strain from the work programme involved. I think the City is being naive in thinking things can be done much bigger and faster. CityFibre has talked a good game, but I suspect its new owners are going to found out the hard way that walking the walk is a lot harder than they realise!

[diku] 11/5/2018 22:05

Anybody think a merger deal with either Deutsche Telekom or US AT&T would be a good fit...

[diku] 11/5/2018 21:55

When you announce 13000 job loses...staff looking at each other thinking who is it going to be...staff morale could well suffer...if you are forced to leave or getting a sweetner then do you care?...I think GP will voluntarily step down or be forced by the board within the next 6 months...since the Italian saga it has been a downer...

[pacemaker1000] 11/5/2018 19:34

As an employee I can only confirm that internally BT is a mess and always has been.
As far as getting end user installs and fixes are concerned. that lies with the inept work management tool that BT has spent millions on, and continue to do so, which sees engineers zig zagging across the country.

[essentialinvestor] 11/5/2018 18:56

Careful, I spoke with someone yesterday who holds a senior position in BT,
who made the exactly same point-a lack of unified/common vision.

That starts with the CEO.

[andyberg] 11/5/2018 18:49

7 layers of management between a C3 engineer and Gavin P....Go figure where the moneys being wasted!

[kazoom] 11/5/2018 18:33

careful 11 May '18 - 17:30 - 28126 of 28128

About 6 months ago, RMG were in a similar position to their sister company BT.
Restructure, pensions negotiations, pay deals, changes in working practices. All negotiated with the same union the CWU.

RMG were at about 360p. It all turned out well and today they are trading about 70% up at 630p.

Many other differences of course but let us hope for a decent outcome here as well.

Interesting observation careful, but important to remember that RMG have been privatised for nearly 5 years (and are still pretty much a domestic monopoly in their traditional market) whereas BT was privatised nearly 35 years ago. RMG have just made some of the types of changes BT made decades ago, so not really imho a good comparison.

It's something of a fail by Gavin imho :
Either
> These are logical efficiencies that have de facto been there all the way through his tour at the top, in which case he has clearly failed to control the business of which he is CEO.
or
> There are areas of the business that now clearly need to be closed down to focus smaller resources on the truly value creating parts. In which case he has really failed to communicate that message.

My understanding (probably not very informed these days ) is that there are inefficiencies caused by empire building amongst the Senior / Higher Middle managers, pedalling their own agendas through building teams of enthusiastic yes (wo)men.

BT has spent over the years a serious amount of "consultancy" spend on the likes of Deloitte & such looking into the markets in which they operate when BT itself had far superior expertise on these matters but I do not believe they spent much on whether the senior management structures actually worked.

That is not an uncommon trait amongst big businesses to be fair, but it seems to me that (despite remaining a well positioned and potentially exciting business) BT has been mired over the last few years by an ineffective and destructive senior management culture.

Nevertheless I have remained bullish (and wrong so far) that the strength of the business would overcome the weakness of the management - I think that case still holds.

There is as understand it though NO common vision across the business as to what BT (as a whole) is or what it does - that's clearly a failure that has to be put at the feet of Gavin P. I think he has a really limited time now (and I may be being generous) to create that unified view and deliver on it.

He's a clever and I'm told nice guy, but he is rapidly running out of time to convince anyone he is (now) capable of making the changes required.

[smurfy2001] 11/5/2018 18:14

I know people that cancel their BT fibre weeks before their prices rises after their 12/18 month discounts. Why don't BT stop the discounts and just offer cheaper prices that you remain on after the initial contract period? Wouldn't there be far less customer churn?

[toon1966] 11/5/2018 18:10

schofip - no chance, there's no way a private equity firm would be willing to work in such a regulated market and would they be willing to shell out billions to upgrade the network?

[pacemaker1000] 11/5/2018 18:07

Careful. I’d love to agree but the RMG recovery started when the union agreement was made. We moved in the opposition direction after the same deal

[schofip] 11/5/2018 18:04

This company needs to be bought up by a private equity firm, turned around, broken up and sold on. I suspect 13000 redundancies would be the thin end of very large wedge. I imagine a couple of Indian or Chinese investors may fit the bill or Blackrock, KKR etc.

I don't think the current management have the knowledge or backbone to turn this company around. They are out of their depth.

[hamhamham1] 11/5/2018 18:01

Strategic asset? Maybe?
But foreign takeovers of companies like Vocalink (where UK banks swap money) or Worldpay (where 40% of UK internet payments go though) have all happened. Never say never IMHO.