LONDON, UK - JUNE 20TH 2015: The homepage of the official BT (British Telecom) webiste, on 20th June 2015.
BT share price has crawled back in the past few days as investors buy the dip. The stock rose to a high of 126.35p, the highest point since November 3. It has risen by over 12% from the lowest level this month, giving it a market cap of over $15 billion. It is the 48th biggest publicly-traded company in the world. It is half the size of Vodafone.
BT Group has been under pressure in the past few months as inflation rises and its revenue and profitability growth stalls. Earlier this month, BT said that its revenue rose by just 1% in the six months to £10.4 billion. This growth was helped by the company’s OpenReach business and offset by the decline in its Enterprise revenues.
Further, its EBITDA rose by just 3% to £3.9 billion as the company continued cutting costs. Reported profit plunged by 18% to £0.8 billion while capital expenditure increased to £2.6 billion. It has increased its OpenReach expenses as demand for internet continued. The company’s net cash flow increased to £2.9 billion.
BT Group, facing significant challenges, has decided to reduce its costs. It estimates to save over £1 billion in the coming years. The most recent BT news is that the company is looking forward to merging two of its struggling divisions in a bid to save more costs. It seeks to combine its Global Services (GS) and Enterprise unit. It now expects to save £3 billion.
In the past, BT share price has been struggling because of the company’s Global Services division. Most recently, the company was forced to write off £350 million in this unit. In a statement, BT Group said:
“We recently increased our target from £2.5bn to £3bn of annual cost savings by 2025. We’re already more than halfway to achieving this but to hit our goal we will continue to deliver further savings by simplifying our product portfolio.”
So, is BT Group a good buy? BT Group has not been a good investment for years. Indeed, the BT share price has plunged by 75% from its highest point in 2015. Unfortunately, the company has no major catalyst going forward.
It has substantial debts and the only hope is that the cost-cutting measures will improve its profitability. Therefore, while BT has a strong dividend yield of 4.4%, we believe that there are better opportunities elsewhere.
The daily chart shows that the BT stock price has been in a slow recovery pace in the past few days. In this period, it has risen from a low of 114p when it published weak earnings to a high of 127p. The stock remains below the key support at 134.80p, which was the lowest level on October 21st. It has moved slightly above the 25-day moving average while the RSI has moved above the neutral point of 50.
Therefore, the stock will likely remain under pressure in the coming weeks. If this happens, the key level to watch will be at 100p. A move above the resistance point at 134p will invalidate the bearish view.
This post was last modified on %s = human-readable time difference 11:05