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| Share Name | Share Symbol | Market | Stock Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bt Group Plc | BT.A | London | Ordinary Share |
| Price Change | Price Change % | Share Price | Last Trade
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| -1.40 | -0.75% | 184.05 | 16:35:28 |
| Open Price | Low Price | High Price | Close Price | Previous Close |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 183.75 | 183.05 | 185.85 | 184.05 | 185.45 |
| Industry Sector |
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| FIXED LINE TELECOMMUNICATIONS |
| Top Posts |
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Posted at 08/6/2025 08:15 by freddie01 BT’s Openreach threatens to block new TalkTalk customers over unpaid billsBT’s Openreach has threatened to block TalkTalk from putting new customers on its broadband network in a move that could derail the struggling telecoms operator’s turnaround efforts. The warning, issued this week, is the latest step in an escalating financial dispute between TalkTalk and the UK’s largest broadband network. The heavily indebted telecoms provider has missed several monthly payment deadlines to Openreach, its biggest supplier, because of cash flow issues, the Financial Times reported this week. The late payments have varied in size but amounted to a “small percentage” of the total amount due, estimated at about £60mn per month, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person added the outstanding bills had now been paid. TalkTalk, which currently hosts about 3mn of its 3.2mn customers on Openreach’s network, shed 400,000 customers in the year to February. Last year, shareholders including Sir Charles Dunstone injected £235mn to help shore up TalkTalk’s finances and pay off a separate debt to Openreach. That refinancing was precipitated by a similar threat from Openreach last year to block new customers, according to three people familiar with the matter. TalkTalk and Openreach declined to comment. James Ratzer, analyst at New Street Research, said a move by Openreach to block new TalkTalk customers would be “unprecedented in the UK market” and would do “material damage” to TalkTalk’s efforts to turn around its business. TalkTalk has struggled since it was bought by Toscafund, a London-based hedge fund, in a £1.1bn leveraged buyout in 2021 that added £527mn of debt to its balance sheet. The Salford-based company secured extensions to about £1.2bn of its existing debt as part of a refinancing in December. As part of that agreement, its bondholders can take control of the group unless it has at least £20mn in cash available at the end of every quarter. New Street Research estimated TalkTalk had £42mn of cash available at the end of February. TalkTalk’s shareholders could inject further capital into the business if required, according to a person familiar with the matter. Last month, in a call with analysts, TalkTalk indicated it may suffer a net loss of a further 300,000 customers this year. However, that forecast was predicated on the company attracting 100,000 new customers — a target that could be out of reach should Openreach refuse to host new business. TalkTalk’s £562mn of senior secured bonds were trading at 46 pence on the pound on Friday. Its junior bonds were trading at just 11 pence in the pound, indicating that investors have doubts the company will be able to repay its debts. The financial dispute between Openreach and TalkTalk is also raising concerns over the knock-on impact on BT Group, owner of Openreach. BT chief executive Allison Kirkby acknowledged to analysts last month that “one challenged communications provider” had “caused headwinds” for BT. |
Posted at 06/6/2025 07:12 by freddie01 Casualties of the UK's big fiber push may soon litter the marketA report from Neos Networks draws attention to the difficulties faced by 'altnets' in a UK broadband market still dominated by BT. The UK used to be the Southampton Football Club of full-fiber broadband. Much like the struggling soccer team, now stuck at the murky bottom of the English Premier League, it was buried beneath dozens of other names in rankings of fiber rollout by European countries. That all changed several years ago after some intervention by government authorities, which forced telecom incumbent BT to run Openreach, its networks arm, as a legally separate company. An influx of capital into rival networks met with an Openreach fiber response. Today, nearly three quarters of all homes have access to a full-fiber service, according to Ofcom, the UK telecom regulator. It is a dramatic improvement from the 12% that had access at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, and seemingly rare evidence of a successful infrastructure project. Or is it? Concern has mounted about the dire state of the UK's "altnets," the companies investing in fiber alternatives to Openreach. In a report issued last month, Neos Networks, an operator of UK wholesale infrastructure, warned that "many altnets are now struggling to generate the revenue needed to ensure longer-term sustainability." Costly rollouts of full-fiber networks, sometimes by companies with a tiny local footprint, have been largely ignored by consumers. Last year, just 15% of homes passed by altnet infrastructure had subscribed to an altnet service, said Point Topic, an analyst company. Most of that expensively laid fiber was as dormant as a Southampton footballer. That rate of 15% is far below the 35% a company must achieve to be commercially viable, according to data from Bain & Company. Nokia, the biggest vendor of fiber equipment outside China, broadly agrees. "There's no doubt there will be some casualties, particularly at the investor level," said Lee Myall, the CEO of Neos Networks. Four's a crowd The market is now arguably overripe for consolidation. At its last count, Neos estimated there were still more than 100 altnets active in the UK, roughly one for every 300,000 homes. This would not be so problematic if there were less duplication, and yet some areas are now served by multiple lines in what the industry refers to as "overbuild." A merger between unconnected networks covering the same premises would look pointless. The likelihood is that some will simply go out of business. Clever mathematicians aren't needed to figure out that a 35% take-up rate for commercial viability caps the number of sustainable networks at three per home. "BT, another biggie and a challenger outside your door – if you've got that, you're in a good position," said Myall. "Another one? Well, maybe, but then the two challengers are probably in a race to the bottom of some kind." Competition from Openreach and BT's retail arm is the problem many have faced. The incumbent telco has been criticized by rivals like CityFibre, a big, wholesale-only altnet backed by Goldman Sachs, for overbuilding other networks. "Incumbents are overbuilding to save market share," said Greg Mesch, CityFibre's CEO, at the Connected Britain event in September last year. Yet BT has made no secret of its plans to reach 25 million homes with its full-fiber network by the end of next year. And it can hardly be expected to sit by and let altnets poach Openreach customers still on copper-based broadband networks. Results that BT published on May 22 revealed that Openreach lost as many as 450,000 broadband connections in the six months to March 2025. In the last two years, it has lost more than 1.3 million, about 6% of its entire broadband customer base. Boss Allison Kirkby has admitted to BT's vulnerability in areas where Openreach has not yet deployed fiber but an altnet has. In further bad news for the altnets, BT recently announced plans to speed up rollout with the goal of reaching 23 million homes in total by March 2026. This would mean extending fiber to another 5 million homes over the course of the fiscal year, beating the 4 million that Openreach added to its footprint between April 2023 and March 2024. Upselling fiber to a customer on copper is much easier for BT than winning an entirely new fiber customer is for an altnet, according to Jeremy Chelot, the CEO of Netomnia, an altnet that has already participated in consolidation. "It's a lot easier to migrate from one technology to another than to acquire a new customer," he told Light Reading last October. This could help to explain why BT can boast a fiber take-up rate of about 36%, more than double that of the average altnet. "That challenge of teasing people away from what they've always known is a tough one," said Myall. His company's survey of 100 senior decision makers at UK altnets found the two main challenges they face in converting subscribers are the existing contracts homes have with incumbents and a lack of customer awareness. Homeless equipment Openreach's plan to shutter a big number of its current exchanges is another sore point. As the company replaces copper with fiber, it aims to shrink the estate from around 5,500 exchanges previously to just 1,000 by the early 2030s. Altnets reliant on exchanges earmarked for closure are expected to lose about £1.4 million (US$1.9 billion) as they are forced to plug gaps, according to Neos. Yet in a low-growth market, Openreach is under pressure to slash costs. It is also obviously confident a nationwide fiber network can be operated with fewer facilities than it previously required. "The issue is more about the cost to change and the disruption, and we're going through some of that ourselves," said Myall. Broadband equipment used by Neos is currently installed in about 550 BT exchanges. "It takes time and manpower away from other things that you could be doing that would be more progressive, rather than remedial," Myall added. The UK broadband market is clearly more competitive than it used to be. At the end of last year, there were 2.7 million connections on altnet infrastructure, according to Point Topic, compared with the 6.5 million Openreach had in March. This ignores Virgin Media O2, the UK's other big fixed-line operator, which claimed to have passed about 6.4 million premises with its full-fiber network by the end of last year. In the days of copper broadband, the infrastructure options were effectively limited to Virgin Media's cable, then covering only about half the country, and BT. The worry for anybody else is the rising take-up at BT while its fiber footprint grows. That subscription rate has gained six percentage points in the last two years, to its March level of 36%, and Openreach already covers about 64% of UK homes with fiber. As the figures increase, the short-term opportunity for some altnets could vanish. "We know that the more fiber we build, the more customers choose to connect to us so that we'll keep going until we reach 30 million and we will be the only nationwide fiber platform," said Kirkby on BT's last earnings call with analysts. It is hard to imagine BT would have been so active, or the UK so fiber-rich, without that influx of capital into challenger networks. But to reach that stage, the country has had to invest in a lot of fiber that seems unlikely ever to be used. |
Posted at 22/5/2025 17:32 by davius Great day, only regret it that I only added 2000 shares early doors. Should have had the faith and bought heavier. C'est la vie.JPMorgan cuts BT price target to 286 (290) pence - 'overweight' Clearly they view the results as unacceptable, haha... Though 286p would do just nicely. Anyway, this from II: Among the biggest risers, BT Group staged a significant turnaround over the course of today’s session to maintain the run that has now lifted shares by 17% this year. The widely held stock returned near the two-year high seen in April as investors eventually warmed to annual results, including reassuring guidance for the current financial year. BT also pledged to accelerate the full fibre broadband rollout programme, having passed the point of peak capital expenditure in the 2024 financial year. By the end of the decade, the capex figure is set to decline by more than £1 billion from the 2025-26 level. Bank of America, which lifted its price target by 2p to 210p following the results, said: “BT is 12 months away from free cash flow inflection as network build matures and current dividend growth can accelerate. UK consolidation is an upside optionality.” |
Posted at 22/5/2025 15:20 by netcurtains Gut feeling, that fall and rise has annoyed a lot of small investors who were shaken out. I must admit I was out to start with then got back in.... But you never know if you've been played a mug twice..... It shows you generally speaking its best to buy and hold - but that 4% fall this morning really made a lot of people sell - it went through my virtual stop loss....Getting back allows me to get some back but its annoying because now I'm in the dark as to what is really going on. Its as clear as mud. |
Posted at 20/5/2025 08:37 by freddie01 Vodafone and BT earnings preview: restructuring efforts under scrutinyUK telecom heavyweights Vodafone and BT are set to report their FY25 results in May, with investors watching for progress on strategic initiatives amid industry-wide challenges. |
Posted at 18/5/2025 19:15 by fatmansays BT Group’s Strategic Divestiture: A Telecom Giant’s Bold Pivot to Profitability and Streaming DominanceJulian West Sunday, May 18, 2025 6:48 am ET 40min read The telecom sector is in the midst of a seismic shift. Companies like bt group are redefining their core strategies to focus on high-growth areas, offloading non-core assets that drain capital and distract from profitability. BT’s impending sale of its 50% stake in TNT Sports to Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) epitomizes this transformation— The Burden of TNT Sports: A Strategic Divestiture Unveils BT’s True Potential TNT Sports, a joint venture with WBD, was BT’s ill-fated attempt to leverage sports broadcasting as a lever for broadband growth. Launched in 2022, the venture aimed to lock in subscribers with exclusive Premier League content—a strategy that backfired. Fierce competition from Sky and Amazon’s deep-pocketed bids for sports rights, coupled with rising operational costs, turned TNT into a financial anchor. Its £187.5M pre-tax loss in 2024 alone underscores the futility of this experiment. By divesting, BT gains two critical advantages: capital reallocation and strategic focus. The UK telecom giant can now redirect resources to its core broadband and mobile businesses, where it holds dominant market share. With CEO Allison Kirkby’s pledge to spin off international operations into a standalone unit, BT is sharpening its focus on its home market—a move that aligns with shareholder demands for higher returns. WBD’s Acquisition: A Play for Streaming Supremacy Warner Bros Discovery’s acquisition of BT’s stake is no mere acquisition—it For WBD, this is a low-risk, high-reward bet. The transaction likely closes below BT’s £750M stake valuation, given TNT’s underperformance, but the long-term upside is immense. HBO Max’s European rollout, enhanced by sports content, could attract millions of subscribers, transforming WBD’s streaming business from a cash drain to a profit engine. Financial Realities: A Catalyst for BT’s Shareholder Value Analysts forecast BT’s stock to rise to $2.34 in the next 12 months—a 6.69% premium from its current price of $2.19—a figure that understates the true potential. While GF Value’s $1.86 estimate reflects near-term uncertainty, the strategic clarity of this deal could catalyze a re-rating. BT’s core UK telecom business is already profitable, with strong cash flows and minimal debt. Offloading TNT removes a major earnings drag, freeing capital for dividends, share buybacks, or reinvestment in growth areas like 5G and cloud services. The March 2026 deadline for the stake sale adds urgency. Investors who buy BT now could benefit from a potential premium if the deal closes above current expectations—a possibility if WBD accelerates its timeline, as rumors suggest. Why Buy BT Now? This deal is a strategic pivot with three key catalysts: 1. Immediate Earnings Boost: Shedding TNT’s losses will improve BT’s bottom line, likely driving a multiple expansion. 2. Shareholder Returns: Freed capital could fuel buybacks or dividend hikes, appealing to income-focused investors. 3. Long-Term Growth: BT’s core UK telecom business is primed for 5G adoption and enterprise cloud services, with minimal competition in its home market. WBD Closing Price Conclusion: BT’s Bold Move Signals Telecom’s Future BT’s divestiture of TNT Sports is more than a cost-cutting move—it’ Investors should act now: BT’s stock is undervalued relative to its post-divestiture potential, and the March 2026 deadline is a looming catalyst. This is a rare opportunity to buy a telecom leader at a discount, poised to benefit from both its own operational excellence and WBD’s streaming ambitions. The sell-off is over—BT’ Time to act before the market catches up. |
Posted at 04/4/2025 07:05 by freddie01 2 Top Stocks in the European Telecoms SectorWhile the sector as a whole looks fairly valued, there are still opportunities for investors. Key Morningstar Metrics for BT Group Morningstar Rating: ★★★ Fair Value Estimate: GBX 190.00 Economic Moat: Narrow Forward Dividend Yield: 4.97% Despite pressures in its cost base coming from wage inflation and alternative broadband networks that are stealing lines from it, we believe BT is faring well in a competitive market. First, it’s managing to maintain revenue growth in its consumer division with price increases that offset wage pressure from unions. Second, Openreach is still showing sizable operating leverage, with EBITDA growing at mid- to high single digits thanks to the scale of being the largest network in the country. BT is also ambitious with its long-term cost plan; it intends to reduce its headcount from 130,000 employees in 2023 to 75,000-90,000 by 2030. We believe cost-cutting is paramount in the no-growth telecommunication industry. We see BT’s dividend as maintainable and believe management has room to steadily grow it in coming years. |
Posted at 05/3/2025 08:29 by netcurtains BT investors fear Trump/Vance more than investors in most other stocks.Not sure why? Is BT big in Canada/Mexico and China? |
Posted at 28/11/2024 10:31 by smurfy2001 djnzloop, no it wouldn’t keep going down why would it? This is the shortsightedness of investors nowadays, relying on price movement rather than looking to the fundamentals. You have 2 billionaire investors on board, capex has peaked on fibre (that’s a buy signal in itself) then you have 10s of thousands of job losses to come plus the dividend is on the way up. |
Posted at 22/11/2024 08:02 by freddie01 BT cuts annual revenue forecast – what's next for the telecoms giant?BT has trimmed its sales forecast, but the overall outlook remains positive and big investors have bought in. Should you invest? The “weak” performance of BT’s “problem child” business unit is still hampering CEO Allison Kirkby’s turnaround plan, says Jillian Deutsch on Bloomberg. BT was forced to cut its sales forecast for the year to 31 March 2025 by between 1% and 2% on 7 November. This was caused by a 6.8% adjusted revenue decline in the division serving business customers. As a result, overall second-quarter revenue fell 3% to £5.09 billion, below analysts’ expectations of £5.23 billion. BT’s shares promptly slipped by 5%. It’s not surprising that BT’s business unit isn’t doing very well, says Hargreaves Lansdown’s Matt Britzman. Higher expenses and “a tough competitive landscape make it a tricky place to operate”. But investors can console themselves that profit and cash-flow guidance has been “left untouched”. What’s more, as the fibre rollout gathers pace, BP is not only “benefiting from higher prices and a more favourable mix of fibre versus older technology”, but also from the prospect of an end to the “massive investment” the rollout involves. Expect a major improvement” in areas such as cash flow. Should investors buy BT? Hopes that “once the digging has finished and 5G investment has been made”, BT can become a “strongly cash-generative provider of critical 21st-century infrastructure&rdquo It’s certainly “easier to earmark disposals than to snuffle out buyers”, says Lex in the Financial Times. So BT may have to settle for raising “a few hundred million here and there” from sales over an extended period of time. But some companies may be interested in the unwanted elements of BT, including rivals and private equity. Partial sales such as joint ventures are another option. What’s more, shareholders should take heart from the fact that Kirkby does have form when it comes to such “complicated clear-outs”. She oversaw a similar process at Sweden’s Telia. BT has reportedly hired bankers to sell financial services unit Radianz, says Rupert Neate in The Sunday Times. Overall, investors have been “impressed&rdq |
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