BT investors waiting for Jansen’s call on dividends
IT’S been the year of the dividend cut for some of Britain’s best-known blue-chip companies.
British Gas owner Centrica, Marks & Spencer and Vodafone have all given their shareholder payouts a trim this year.
Are we about to see BT follow suit?
Speculation is mounting in the City that the former state-owned telecoms giant will do just that.
And analysts at UBS added to that on Friday when they predicted that BT’s chief executive Philip Jansen would cut the dividend by a third.
Jansen, who took over from Gavin Patterson earlier this year with a repair job on his hands, pledged to hold the dividend for this year and next at 15.4p a share, which is worth £1.5 billion, but did warn he could reduce it to fund his plan to connect 15 million homes and businesses in the UK to superfast broadband by the mid-2020s.
UBS analyst Polo Tang reckons the dividend will drop to 10p per share in 2021, saving BT around £500 million.
That spare change will come in handy when BT splashes the cash to fund Jansen’s ambitious full-fibre plan.
ENTERTAINMENT ONE, the film and TV production company behind Peppa Pig, became the latest listed company to reveal that it will fall into the hands of foreign buyers last week as it agreed to a £ 3.3 billion take over by American toy maker Hasbro.
The deal to buy out Entertainment One’ s shares at £ 5.60 each in cash helped t he share price spike 31 per cent on Friday.
However, they ended the day at £5.82, which is comfortably higher than the offer price.
This suggests that investors feel a bidding war for the company could yet break out.
Could a ri val bidder come out of the woodwork this week?
PERNOD RICARD may be a French spirits maker listed in Paris, but investors in London should keep an eye on its annual results this week.
That’s because the performance of the company usually moves shares in Diageo, the London-listed firm behind Johnnie Walker whisky and Smirnoff vodka.
Earlier this year, it was rumoured that Diageo was weighing up a takeover of Pernod Ricard, whose tipples include Jameson Irish whiskey.
Speculation has died down in recent months, but if Diageo is interested, any fall in Pernod Ricard’s shares after this Thursday’s results will make a takeover cheaper.