I am a trader as well as an investor and hopefully this thread will reflect both aspects ....

We should start by saying this is a highly speculative share and the market takes no prisoners.

Over the last 18 months I made lots twice in the early days - then lost it back - bought a million at 2.6p average - founded the TAG - bought another half a million or so at sub 1p - sold most at average 4.25 - bought back at 2.2p and less - sold most at 3.5p and now buying back - overall a good net profit at this time.

I think the d4e will happen (say 90% chance) and the 3% currently talked about will give or should give a price equating to say 3/5p. Longer term on succcess of d4e and progress in the sales market the shares should move to around 10p - assumming markets are not in freefall.

I am looking to buy at any time and hoping for a war generated dip - when I do I will let you know.

The TAG site is a great place for catching up on the TWT news and I will post here as well.

Currently trading on TWT is light (1.7 million traded) and the price is down a littlw with a wide spread (2.01/2.35p). This is a sets share and you must expect a crtain amount of manipulation in these troubled times - FTSE down over 4% intraday

I have a core holding of at least half a million shares and intend to be a long term investor at this time.


ainsoph


http://www.investoraction.co.uk - currently we have 804 registered members holding around 100 million shares in total

23 April 2003







Re: Annual Report and Accounts 2002 : Summary Financial Statement 2002 : Notice
of AGM to be held on 12 June 2003 and Form of Proxy.



A copy of the above documents have been submitted to the UK Listing Authority,
and will be shortly available for inspection at the UK Listing Authority's
Document Viewing Facility, which is situated at:



Financial Services Authority, 25 North Colonade, Canary Wharf, London, E14 5HS.

Tel: 020 7676 1000

Singer pocketed 1.8m Telewest payoff

Chris Tryhorn Guardian
Wednesday April 23, 2003


Singer: handsome payout will dismay Telewest shareholders

Adam Singer, the man who headed troubled cable giant Telewest as it came close to bankruptcy, picked up a cool 1.79m when he was ousted by the board after a two-year stewardship that saw billions wiped from the company's value and the loss of 1,500 jobs.
According to the company's annual report published today, Mr Singer got a golden goodbye of 1.42m in compensation for losing his job.

Mr Singer's payoff was calculated as two years' worth of his 600,000 salary plus benefits, meaning he walked away from the ailing company with a total of 1.79m after seven months' work.

As well as the compensation, he received 350,000 in salary to the end of July plus 22,000 in benefits and 35,000 in pension contributions.

The handsome payout will dismay shareholders who at one stage watched as billions of pounds were wiped from their shares as the value of the company plummeted by more than 90%.

Ultimately the shareholders were forced to cede control of all but 3% of the company when the bondholders - who

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had priority over their debts - took over 97% of the shares in exchange for 3.5bn of the company's 5.3bn debt.

Telewest is still in negotiations with its bondholders, who include Deutsche Telekom and John Malone's Liberty Media, and reports have suggested the refinancing will not be completed until at least the end of May.

Only last June Mr Singer was at the centre of a row over pay when shareholders protested against bonuses totalling 690,000 awarded to him and other executives.

The National Association of Pension Funds called on its members to abstain from voting for the reappointment of Mr Singer and the group finance director, Charles Burdick, now managing director, because of their bonuses.

Telewest's annual report also revealed the executive directors were paid 440,000 in bonuses even though the firm, Britain's second largest cable company, made a pre-tax loss of 2.2bn and its share price fell from a year's high of 67.5p to 2p at the end of December.

Mr Burdick collected a 160,000 bonus while his replacement as finance director, Mark Luiz, and the group strategy director, Stephen Cook, each pocketed 140,000.

The bonuses are set according to the group's EBITDA [earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation] performance against budget, supplemented by the "achievement of personal objectives as set by the remuneration committee".

They were paid in full for 2002, the annual report says, but if Mr Burdick or Mr Cook were to leave "in certain specified circumstances" this year, a proportion of their bonus ranging between 25% and 100% would have to be repaid.

Mr Burdick could collect a similar payout to Mr Singer if he lost his job following a change of control at the company.

The terms of his contract state he would receive 24 months' notice - worth 1m - if his employment were terminated in the six months after any such change, not an unlikely scenario given speculation that Telewest may eventually merge with its rival NTL.

Mr Burdick's annual salary for 2003 is 500,000 and he is also provided with a company car, private medical insurance for himselft and his family, life assurance and income protection assurance.

Mr Cook and Mr Luiz earn a basic salary of 370,000 and 350,000 respectively, with benefits similar to Mr Burdick's.

The non-executive directors who left Telewest in 2002 - three from Microsoft who were withdrawn in May, and three from Liberty Media who departed two months later - received no fees or compensation for loss of office.

It was their departure that triggered the boardroom coup that removed Mr Singer at the end of July.

Mr Singer took over as the company's chief executive in April 2000 after Telewest merged with TV channel operator Flextech, of which had been chairman since 1997.

Before that he had worked for the BBC and US media giant Viacom.

During the dotcom boom, Mr Singer was an enthusiastic advocate of cable because of its capacity to provide access to broadband internet, digital TV and telecoms.

Mr Singer also left with 3.15 million share options, which can be exercised at various points over the next three years.

With the company's share price limping along at about 2p, the share options are currently of little value - worth about 60,000.

However, Mr Singer can still exercise his shares at a later point.

Many analysts regard a merger with Britain's leading cable company NTL, which emerged from chapter 11 bankruptcy in January, as inevitable.

LOL !

I think TWT is fairly priced around 2p. It is difficult to see the price going north after the d4e has been finalised.

I had my digital tv box removed because the channels offered were quite frankly not worth a paying for after they increased the price recently.

Hmmmmmmmm ...... your timing is out again snappy ..... huge condition trade at a high price late yesterday after market closed ..... 13 million shares from memory. Volumes are high again today with over 21 million shares traded and a quick buy earlier could have netted a quick 10% profit - you have to be quick though. Currently 2.21 mid and up over 5%.


A or two extra is not enough to make us worry about the cost of having over a 100 channels to chose from - just the CNBS/CNN/Bloomberg channels plus the music makes it all worthwhile. Also helps the bottom line as time goes on


ains

NO I wouldn't trade these ains, I mean as an investment stock I feel they are fully valued in the 2p region.

hmmmmmmmm ..... guess you are wrong again then :-))

I wouldn't trade any of these penny tiddlers.

spreads are too large

they are too risky

cannot trade them as a CFD so must pay stamp duty each time and a brokers commission. There's better picks for short term trading out there.

I hadn't realised you ever traded anything snappy but everyone to their own ..... my brokers commission is tiny and what I care about is the net and margin. i can trade them on CFD's but choose not to.

I am surprised you spend so much time on these threads if you have no interest in them ..... Personally made several hundreds of % on some relatively recent TWT trades .... no matter it was a penny a share - on several million shares



ains

I do have an interest in Telewest and I follow the company to see if it worth buying some shares for the longer term. I don't feel that it is at this time Ains but that should not prevent me from adding my comments to this thread should it?

I am just puzzled snappy ...... you are not known as a trader or someone famous in any way ....... you are nostly known as one of the ollie/neo/gravy crowd who follow me from board to board to spam my threads .... it's hardly ground breaking news that you dislike this share on this thread. Most peeps already know that :-))


ains

Ains,

I have no interest in what opinion you have of me. I came onto this thread to talk TWT.

Nobody has convinced me to buy any.

see ya

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm ...... no one is trying to convince you to buy any ..... personally, I hope you do not.

All I am saying is you make the same sort of comments almst word for word on ALL my threads on all the bb's ..... just seems a little pointless. I am bored - everyone is bored .... surely you must be bored by now?

In the meantime trading is exceptionally quiet today at 331K and spreads are wide ..... will look to buy around 210

ains

jeeeeze, you don't have a monopoly on the shares quoted on the LSE.

I follow many shares, foolish not to look in on them every so often as an active short term trader.

see ya ains..........

snap,
I have some TWT, two tranches actually, bgt. yesterday at 2.14p, and the rest ages ago,

ps I`m not bored its great fun

NOTIFICATION OF FIRST QUARTER RESULTS


Telewest Communications plc confirms they will be announcing their First Quarter
results for the period ended 31st March 2003 on Thursday 1st May 2003.

Hmmmmmmm ..... Tempus in the TImes is not impressed .... but the Times do own a huge huge chunk of BskyB ...... hmmmmmmmmmmm

You may wonder why they suddenly mention TWT in a lead article


ains




Telewest

SURELY it cannot get any worse for Telewest? Last year the cable company finally admitted that it had become overwhelmed by its debts, forcing it to try to reach agreement with its bondholders, who hold 3.5 billion in debt.

In January that appeared to have borne fruit. The bondholders agreed to swap their debts for 97 per cent of a reconstituted Telewest. In the weeks that followed a confident and credible management team talked of turning a profit later this year, once the financial restructuring was complete. With the shares at a cheap looking 2.15p investors might be tempted into a trading buy.

That, however, would be a mistake. The shares might be lowly in value, but they are not cheap. At yesterdays prices, Telewests bombed-out market capitalisation is 62 million. Shareholders are due 3 per cent of the new company, implying a value of a shade over 2 billion for Telewest mark two. Compare this with BT, which unlike Telewest pays a dividend. BT has 28 million residential and business customers and is valued at 16 billion. Each BT customer is worth 571; yet each of the new Telewests 2.2 million customers would be worth 909.

Nor can investors assume that the restructuring will take place on the terms outlined. Managements winter confidence has dissipated as negotiations with the bondholders are dragging on. Not everybody is content with the 97:3 split because even that measly proportion leaves a lot for shareholders. The ratio will probably hold, but the actual market value of the reconstituted company is likely to be well under 1 billion.

Finally, there is a strategic problem. Between BSkyB, in which The News Corporation, parent company of The Times holds a 35.4 per cent stake, and BT, UK cable NTL and Telewest lacks scale. The two need to come together to match their competitors better. But that will not be on the agenda for months. Avoid.

Ticking up at this time


LONDON (AFX) - NTL Inc and Telewest Communications PLC said in a joint statement that they have over 1 mln cable broadband customers across the UK.
newsdesk@afxnews.com

Cable guys celebrate 1m broadband milestone

London, April 30 2003, (netimperative)



by Chris Lake

Cable network operators NTL and Telewest today announced that they have amassed a combined 1m cable broadband users.


The news comes just six months after it was revealed that overall broadband subscriptions surpassed the 1m mark. It is now estimated that there are about 1.5m residential broadband subscribers in the UK.

The cable operators, which are expected to merge in some shape or form, have been working together to co-promote broadband services to residential customers.

The two companies attracted about 250,000 new broadband users since the beginning of the year. NTL had about 500,000 subscribers in December, double that of Telewest, the smaller of the two operators.

Some 12m households are capable of receiving cable broadband. The cable operators claim that three out of four consumers that have the choice between cable broadband and ADSL choose the former.

However, NTL is something of a serial offender as far as the Advertising Standards Authority is concerned, having recently been rapped on the knuckles for the umpteenth time regarding misleading advertising campaigns.

The ASA found NTL in breach of its code of conduct after it marketed a "High Speed" 128Kbps service as 'broadband', despite it being only twice as fast as most dial-up services.

NTL stood up to the ASA by presenting documents that originated at OFTEL and the DTI, which defined broadband as "a service of 128Kbps or above". ASA upheld its ruling by suggesting that most consumers would consider 'broadband' to be a service that offers speeds in excess of 500Kbps.

Nevertheless, the 1m cable modems that NTL and Telewest have distributed around the UK back up NTL CEO Barclay Knapp's claim that the cable industry is playing a key part in making Broadband Britain a reality.

He said: "The history of Broadband Britain will show that the cable industry drove its

development." His counterpart at Telewest, MD Charles Burdick, described the news as a "significant milestone".

E-commerce Minister Stephen Timms said: "The challenge now is to extend this choice to users across the UK, and particularly in rural areas. So that no matter where we base our businesses and make our homes, we can all benefit from the significant benefits that

1st quarter results are out today



LONDON (AFX) - UK cable TV, broadband and telecom operator Telewest Communications PLC posted a 15 pct rise in first-quarter EBITDA but saw more customer losses in the first quarter.
"The focus on broadband, cash generation and profitable customers meant that, as expected, we experienced customer losses during the quarter," said chief executive Charles Burdick.

"Nevertheless, household churn has fallen and with the reinvigoration of our marketing, especially around TV, we plan to see a return to customer growth in the second half of the year," he added.

As a result of the continuing improvements in gross margin and cost control, the group's EBITDA rose 15 pct to 105 mln stg.

Total turnover, including its share of UKTV (a joint venture with the BBC), for the quarter was 335 mln stg, flat compared with the first quarter of 2002.

The company cut a further 100 jobs, taking its workforce to 9,080 from 10,668 a year ago. Net loss for the quarter was 184 mln stg, reflecting 36 mln stg in bank interest, 81 mln stg accrued bond interest and 48 mln stg of foreign exchange losses on dollar-denominated debt.

The company, in the midst of a 3.5 bln stg debt for equity swap, said talks are continuing with its creditors