Hello Share Munchers. One of my biggest disappointments in shareland has been the poor showing of BT (BT.A) shares. At one stage my holding was up by 100%. But that was in the heady days when BT started buying sports concessions and many folks thought viewers would pay through the nose for BT TV. There were a few critics who doubted that and they seem to have been proved right...
A couple of weeks ago I noted on BT Group (BT.A) that I thought fairer value was lurking in the upper half of the 200-300p share price level. Anyhow, a big new potential buyer of some of the company's assets has come into town over the last 24 hours...although I am not convinced that Jezza and his merry band of magic money tree followers are promoting re-nationalisation of part of the company's assets because they think it is cheap…
With a stack of high-yielders which the market might suggest were due to chop their dividends (which is why, on paper, the dividend yield is high) and so far two payouts having come under the guillotine, it is with some trepidation that I thought it was time to take a look at my mini-portfolio of dividend munchers’ stocks. I offer no recommendations here but my mini-portfolio of Vodafone (VOD), BT (BT.A), Centrica (CNA), ITV (ITV) and recent addition Centamin (CEY) is supposed to be beating bank interest but most have been notable for share price slippage over the past few months. I’d better take a deep breath…….
Hello, share trippers. It’s not been long since I discussed BT (BT.) on this upstanding website. However, the shares have been rising lately and, as a lot of us are in this stock for its hefty dividend, it’s perhaps appropriate to review the chances of a still chirpier price...
Hello Share Scrimpers. Sadly, BT (BT.A) is one of my worst long-term investments. I first bought into the outfit when it went into TV in a big way, hoovering up a lot of important sports coverage deals. Even then I had a niggling doubt about whether the viewing public would pay the subscriptions. But at first, I was rewarded with a big jump in the share price as at one stage it hovered around £5. Then came a nasty decline and today the shares are valued at less than £2 a pop...
If I was a CEO putting together my first presentation document outlining how I wanted to get an underperforming supertanker of a company back into shape, I think I would start with a line something akin to 'Initial impressions positive but we need to build a better (company) for the future'. So no surprises from new BT Group (BT.A) CEO Philip Jansen in his first quarterly statement fully in day-to-day charge of the UK's best known telecoms company. However what I would then expect - silent assassin style - would be slash n corporate burn after a 'nice' start. Well blow me down...it did not happen…
I talked positively about BT Group (BT.A) being a 'tortoise not a hare' a few weeks ago observing that the real excitement about the big telecoms group for 2019 and 2020 was rooted in internal change and not (as was mooted a few weeks ago) a dramatic takeover by a name like Deutsche Bank.
I feel a bit grubby talking about it, but I see the excitement levels may be rising amongst some long-suffering BT Group (BT.A) shareholders today following weekend headlines which included the part jingoistic (and part comic) 'Are the Germans coming for BT? FTSE giant rings in top takeover advisers to help fend off bid as key date looms for telecoms rival'…
Fully listed BT (BT.A) is the largest holding in my small collection of dividend munchers by value, although for the purposes of the portfolio it is marked as one unit, along with Centrica (CNA) and ITV (ITV). Vodafone, the fourth member, is half a unit – thank goodness! Yesterday’s interims went down very well with the market, which marked the shares up to around 267p at the peak, and closed at around 260. The shares haven’t been this high since last January and you have to go back to last October before you see an extended period of higher prices than that.
It is amazing what a 2% rise in revenues and some mumbling about a top end of range ebitda performance can do but - as I write - almost perma-dog BT Group (BT.A) shares are up over 6%. I should not be so cynical as I have liked the shares for a while as last expressed at length HERE. Today's update though feels like a corner has been turned. I say this for two reasons...
I note a report in the Times which tells us that US hedgie Greenlight Capital has been building a stake in BT (BT.A) with a view to pushing for the sale of Openreach. ShareProphets readers may also be interested to note that Greenlight and its head honcho Mr David Einhorn have been in the news recently as a bear of Tesla – so since it short a stock I don’t like and long one that I do obviously I take the view that this is a genius outfit!
It has been a busy, busy week and sad sacks like me are going to be bent over a hot laptop during the weekend catching up with the multitude of earnings numbers published by corporate names around the world this week. Turning to London-based results specifically, some good news within the UK market today for the old stalwart BT Group (BT.A).
Chris Bailey is away, so can’t enjoy his ouzo o’clock moment here on ShareProphets. Instead, that falls to me. Back on May 10, when covering the full year results of BT (BT.A), Chris wrote: …the CEO - who surely the new Chairman is considering whether to keep or not. I, on the other hand, noted only last week that there looked to be a battle going on in the boardroom. So I’ll enjoy my ouzo (but I’ll save Chris a glass)!
Hello, Share Pingers. One of my most interesting shares at the moment is BT Group (BT.A). Like my learned colleague Nigel Somerville, I am stuck with a lot of its shares - which have done badly of late. The double whammy for me though is that they are now less than 210p, a few years ago I was gloating over a price of 500p. Which was nearly my original stake. And now I am out of profit.
I noted the other day that BT’s (BT.A) results hadn’t gone down very well in the market. The shares had been climbing nicely since I bought at 225p, but results day and the follow-through saw them marked down almost as low as 200p. Apart from wishing I’d waited, I’m happy to hold on for now – and collect the near-7% dividend. But I wonder if the new chairman is beginning to have an effect, in the light of a news article from Bloomberg.
I concluded my last update on telecoms giant BT Group (BT.A) with the observation that:
