Forum Archive Index - February 2004

["tennyson@caverock.net.nz" <tennyson@caverock.net.nz>]

No surprises in the Telecom result released this morning.   This raising 
of the dividend from 5c per quarter to 7.5c per quarter has been well 
signalled.

The 20% profit improvement made a good headline.  But take out the 
one off gain from the sale of Sky TV shares and the improvement falls 
to 10%.  

Debt is down by around a billion dollars over a year ago.    If the cost 
of that borrowing was 7% that means an interest payment saving of 
$70m per year (or $35m per half year).   

Strip the debt reduction and one off gain from the the result and the 
profit looks flat.  Overall revenue increase is 1% but tellingly none of 
that comes from the troubled Australian arm.

Waiting in the wings are the write downs on the 025 network and 
whatever expenditure is needed to get 3G mobile services up and 
running.   

While I welcome the increase in dividend, I find the half year result 
underwhelming.  TEL looks like a hold to me at these prices.

SNOOPY

discl: hold TEL

--
Message sent by Snoopy 
on Pegasus Mail version 4.02
----------------------------------
"Dogs have big tongues, so you can bet they don't 
bite them by accident"


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To remove yourself from this list, please use the form at
http://www.sharechat.co.nz/chat/forum/