reports
- James Ratzer
UK consolidation Should VMO2 consider shutting down its HFC network?
Two of the most common questions we get asked at the moment are: 1) How will the UK broadband market consolidate?, and 2) What can VMO2 do to turn around their performance? We believe an interesting answer to both of these questions could be for VMO2 to consider shutting down their HFC network and moving to wholebuy Openreach’s FTTH network. This could be both value accretive for VMO2 and BT – and allow for a more rational UK market structure. In this thought-piece, we explore further how this...
- James Ratzer
CityFibre Q3: Significant customer acceleration with Sky launch & BT ...
CityFibre has just released a Q3 trading update which highlights the acceleration in customer volumes that they are seeing with Sky – and this is likely to put incremental pressure on BT, especially if momentum accelerates further in Q4 which we think could be likely.
- Ben Rickett
- James Ratzer
UK Fixed Market Review: Fewer lines to go round BT back to Neutral. D...
We now think the UK physical broadband line market is shrinking for the first time due to the impact of high penetration, FWA, satellite, mobile tethering and low economic growth. It is difficult to see this structural trend changing in the foreseeable future and we therefore adjust our view of UK fixed market growth – cutting our 2030 forecast for UK wireline broadband lines by 10%.
- James Ratzer
TalkTalk (1st lien: From Overweight to Neutral) Update on new initiat...
In early June, we upgraded the TalkTalk 1st lien debt to Buy – and it has since rallied from 45 to 75. We have also now seen a good degree of the Consumer changes that TalkTalk highlighted were coming earlier this year and based on what we have seen, we see no reason to change our existing forecasts. In this note, we therefore run through the new initiatives, the valuation and hence, the driver of our decision to move the 1st lien bonds back to Neutral.
- James Ratzer
- James Ratzer
- Russell Waller
Why you should be reading the Tariff Tracker – a leading SR indicator
We publish monthly front book pricing data in our Tariff Tracker product. In this report we show some new analysis looking at how front book tariffs are a good leading indicator for service revenue trends in mobile and fixed, including new work looking at discounted and undiscounted prices.
Liberty Global Ltd: 2 directors
A director at Liberty Global Ltd sold 45,000 shares at 11.459USD and the significance rating of the trade was 64/100. Is that information sufficient for you to make an investment decision? This report gives details of those trades and adds context and analysis to them such that you can judge whether these trading decisions are ones worth following. Included in the report is a detailed share price chart which plots discretionary trades by all the company's directors over the last two years clea...
- James Ratzer
TalkTalk (1st Lien - Overweight) New capital injection a mixed blessi...
TalkTalk has announced a new funding arrangement of up to £100m of extra liquidity. They have also provided new guidance and we run though our take on the new funding and the new guidance. We then provide an update to our forecasts and what this might mean for M&A possibilities
- James Ratzer
Vodafone (Buy, £1.20, +40%) Q1 26: Clearer evidence of value over volu...
Vodafone’s Q1 results do show some signs of improving revenue growth in Germany with a more disciplined approach to pricing. We think Vodafone still looks very attractively priced at the moment, but we believe a longer-term outlook from management would help to underpin more confidence in the investment case.
- James Ratzer
- Ben Rickett
- James Ratzer
- Russell Waller
EU Telecoms: Half-time 2025 Review Sector has outperformed: More sele...
The European Telecoms continues to outperform: up 17% YTD vs. the market up 10%. While this is great to see, adding to the 12pp outperformance in 2024 and supporting our investment thesis of improving regulation, it does mean the equity upside story from here is becoming more selective.
- James Ratzer
TalkTalk (Overweight 1st lien) Deeper dive on customer trends and est...
There is a lot of focus (quite rightly) on TalkTalk’s customer trends as a longer-term indicator of their growth trajectory but the initial Q1 results suggested a wide range of outcomes.However, we now have more detail on this from the company and in this note, we take a deeper dive into the precise customer trends and provide an updated set of forecasts. For BT, we then also assess the potential impact that this might be having on Openreach.
- James Ratzer
- James Ratzer
Vodafone to Virgin spectrum sale: More details revealed
As part of the Vodafone-Three merger (VOD3UK), the merging companies committed to sell a portfolio of spectrum to VMO2. The details of that spectrum portfolio have now been formally disclosed by Ofcom, which has published a notification listing the frequencies that are due to be transferred (LINK). In this note, we run through the final decisions and implications for potential UK revenue share.
- James Ratzer
BT (Buy, 265p, +47%) Was 240p Upside beyond the mythical £3bn FCF t...
BT’s target to reach £3bn FCF by the end of the decade has almost become mythical in status. Initially set back in 2021, is it the longest-standing piece of guidance (ever) in the telecoms sector? Quite possibly – and yet we are only half-way there.
- James Ratzer
The company started seeing signs of recovery as subscriber losses begu...
As we expected, the UK merger completed this morning, so we wanted to take this opportunity to highlight the note we put out on Saturday, in which we published our new model (including the UK merger, and assuming Vodafone buys out the Hutchinson minority in 3 years’ time). The terms of the deal are as initially announced. We believe the value creation is +9p per share, included within our 120p price target. We still see >50% upside from current levels.
- James Ratzer
Vodafone (Buy, 120p, +56%) Was 135p Target price/ model update: T...
We don't usually aim to publish price target updates over the weekend, so please do forgive us, but with today being May 31st and Vodafone's desire to close the UK merger during H1 and at a month-end, we would like to think that the UK deal closing could be very imminent - and maybe even today.
- James Ratzer
BT (Buy, £2.40, +46%) Dig a bit deeper and it is better than the headl...
Going into these results, we believe that two numbers were in focus – the Openreach line losses and the new FY26 guidance. In this note we dig into both of these in more detail and highlight why having TalkTalk as a major ISP on the Openreach network is causing them specific issues driving some of the higher line losses.
- James Ratzer
Vodafone (Buy, 135p, +82%) FY 2025: Trying to move the debate on from ...
The broad theme of Vodafone’s results remains the same as in past periods: Germany has been disappointing and has been the main focus of the market, but other parts of the business have been able to offset it, with increasing weight now on Vodacom for FY26.
- James Ratzer
BT (Buy, £2.40, +45%) TNT Sports exit - what are the financial implica...
The FT has reported that BT could sell its 50% stake in TNT Sports to WBD – maybe this week alongside FY results on Thursday. We assess the potential financial implications of this as it might be positive vs. market perception but could be negative vs. our valuation.
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