Nice rises Friday and today,after being tipped up by Money Week magazine ,with first half sales up 86%,and a cheaper Broadband bundle than Car Phone warehouse,a forward p/e of 15.4 and a likely takeover target seems the one to be on in a guarateed consolidating sector.

Pipex plotting carve-up for Tiscali deal
Sale to be announced in weeks

By Chris Williams → More by this author
Published Wednesday 13th June 2007 12:15 GMT

Exclusive The breakup of Pipex and sale of its residential broadband customer base to Tiscali is looking increasingly certain.

Insiders at the takeover target say the terms of the deal will be announced in four to eight weeks.

In the meantime, managers are working out the personnel carve-up, with employees destinations in the split already decided.

Tiscali's poor reputation for customer service, worsened by its response to a recent extended email outage, is said to have set some Pipex staff against the sale.

The Register also understands that Pipex's WiMax licence, which complicated speculations over the UBS-brokered auction of the firm, will remain with the rest of Pipex, concentrated on business customers.

As part of the deal, Tiscali will provide the refocused ISP with access to its unbundled network, which is one of the most extensive in the UK and should lower its costs in providing broadband. Tiscali has unbundled more than 400 exchanges, compared to Pipex's 100.

Pipex has about 570,000 customers across its broadband brands, which include Toucan and Bulldog. Each of the big players in the dog-eat-dog communications market - Virgin Media, BT, Sky, Carphone Warehouse - have been linked with a bid for the firm, but have all fallen by the wayside amid rumours of an over-ambitious valuation and concerns over its diverse interests.

Italy-based Tiscali, which has almost 1.5 million subscribers in the UK, stepped into the spotlight in the middle of May when it confirmed it was in early discussions with Pipex.

Back then, Goldman Sachs analysts valued Pipex's telecoms business at 211m and the hosting and network services at 178m.

As middleweights lacking profile and resources compared to the bundling frontrunners, Tiscali and Pipex have similar problems in attracting residential customers.

Jonathan Coham, a broadband analyst at Ovum said: "This is an interesting move, but Tiscali needs more than just subscribers to maintain its position. They've typically been a low-spending broadband provider, with limited additional services...they'll need to follow this up."

Tiscali and Pipex refused to comment on this story. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/13/tiscali_to_buy_pipex/

thanks for the article, but the market looks underwhelmed ...... time will tell whether or not this is just so much wishful thinking

Come on guys look at the trading range over the years, this is dead in the water.

Highly recoomended when MW and Methuselah were school pals sitting together in class.

cynic and Dave...are you both joined at the hip.

These two are also appearing on COH.

No at the head, as two are better than one.

strange comment .... actually i have (misguidedly?) held these for a while .... could more sensibly ask why the pair of you remain in a permanent state of puerile bickering

YES I THINK THAT YOUR DISCRIPTION IS SLIGHTLY ABOVE ADEQUATE ON THIS ONE CYNIC

CYNIC whe face with a continued diatribe of ignorant ignorace, one has a choice either squash it, or squash it

YES AND I AM PLEASED, BUT ITS ALWAYS BEING TIPPED SOMEWHERE AND HAS BEEN MANY TIMES OVER THE PAST YEARS---BUT SADLY GONE NOWHERE.

David - disappointed to see another one-sided effort from you on this thread, having just detatched myself from the brewing argument on the RGT thread. I sense a pattern emerging here which is a shame.

as an aside, and i am afraid i am too lazy to check back to yesterday, but i note that UBS(??) has now built up 16% .... Q - is this for themselves or a client?

Queen1 whatever you views the facts clearly stand out.

This is another stagant stock!

The only pattern here is one of stock that get ramped to death and fail to perfom over time, say the past two years!

10B .... the facts in this instance are whichever you wish to choose! ..... one could argue, as you do, that PXC is never ever going anywhere ..... or .... as is my inclination, to believe that PXC will inevitably merge with another ...... Tiscali may be the one; time will tell ...... meanwhile, it is almost inconceivable that PXC will go bankrupt, unlike a number of other stocks that are heavily promoted on this site, ranging from dodgy E&P outfits to and through coffee shops, biodegradable plastics manufacturers, software houses etc etc

Morning cynic, surely its not for us to postulate on where a company can stave off going through the hoop!

We are here to make money.

I do this with Blue Chips for the Divis and any SP advance thrown in for luck.

Or with Recovery Speculatives. I give themn two years to show hopes etc-

Takeovers are good buys only if they profit the shareholder and I would not buy into a stock trusting it will be taken over---takingover sounds better to me with good organic growth.

I mentioned two here, RGT and PIPEX and relegate them to dreamers land in the hope that some shareholders may be sparked into life to prove me wrong.

After all these BBs are to stimulate, openly discussing/and an investigation into shares from which we can all learn.

The rest of your comments I fully concur with

my own view is that i think the downside on PXC is very limited, so though i am arguably a bit overweight there and running an acceptable loss, i am inclined to stay put ..... for how long i shall remain patient, i do not know .... as for RGT, it is not a stock i know at all

Hi Cynic with respect I am only interested in the upside.

upside is probably to 16+ if deal with Tiscali or another done ...... once that is out of the way, then would not be surprised to see Dubens take the balance private quite quickly, adding a further 2-4p

I TRUST YOU ARE RIGHT BUT DO NOT SEE THAT HAPPENING MYSELF.

BUT GOOD LUCK ANYWAY.

TheRegister is reporting that Tiscali is taking a keen interest in Pipex's residential broadband service. It claims insiders at Pipex have suggested that the terms of a deal would be expected in the next 4-8 weeks whilst the company plan on how to divide up the business. It also claims that Pipex staff are not very happy about the proposed transfer.

This change would help Pipex re-focus itself as a business service provider. It is suggested that this deal would give Pipex access to Tiscali's LLU network which is one of the largest in the UK and currently four times larger than Pipex's own LLU deployment. Tiscali's LLU network and Pipex's customer base do not seem that bad a match from a commercial point of view, although we have no doubts a section of users will be concerned over performance.

hotrott .... thanks for the post, but i think it is several days old