If Bt has bought back 2million 5 thousand shares to day. How come it shows on trades as a sell?

StockMarketWire.com
BT has announced that Clive Selley is to be the new chief executive of Openreach. Selley , who is currently CEO of BT Technology, Service and Operations (BT TSO) will replace Joe Garner, who is leaving to become CEO of Nationwide Building Society. The handover will take place this quarter.

Completion of the acquisition of EE Limited
Following the announcement earlier today regarding the Admission of 1,594,900,429 Consideration Shares, BT announces that completion of its acquisition of EE Limited took place today. Together with the Consideration Shares, Deutsche Telekom and Orange have received cash consideration of £3,464m in total. As a result of the acquisition, Deutsche Telekom and Orange own 12% and 4% respectively of BT's issued share capital.

As described in the Prospectus, the appointment of Timotheus Höttges to the BT Board has now taken effect.

BT Group's third quarter revenues have risen 3%, leaving the company's year-to-date revenues flat.

In results released on Monday, the company said revenue for the three months to 31 December 2015 was £4.59bn, with revenue for the nine months at £13.25bn.

Reported profit before tax also rose 24% for the quarter, up to £862m, and year to date profit up 18% to £2.14bn.

The FTSE 100 company also announced a new organisational structure following the acquisition of EE, a brand which is said will be retained.

just spotted this in an RNS yesterday
not sure when the official figures etc are published, but it explains the recovery of the stock in the last couple of days .....

For the year ended 31 March 2015, BT Group's reported revenue was £17,979m with reported profit before taxation of £2,645m.

JP Morgan Cazenove today reaffirms its overweight investment rating on BT Group PLC (LON:BT.A) and cut its price target to 490p (from 530p).

OPENREACH TO BE MORE INDEPENDENT AND TRANSPARENT

StockMarketWire.com
JP Morgan Cazenove has reduced its rating on BT Group (LON:BT.A) to 'neutral' from 'overweight', given the long list of headwinds faced by the telecoms group which are likely to cap any upside potential.

The broker has also lowered its target price to 440 pence a share from 490 pence.

"Whilst we continue to view BT Group as a high quality business with market leading assets, it faces a large number of headwinds in the coming 12 to 18 months," analysts commented.

"We believe these headwinds are sufficiently large in number, complexity, duration and potential adverse impact to keep investor enthusiasm subdued for the foreseeable future."

Deutsche Bank today reaffirms its sell investment rating on BT Group PLC (LON:BT.A) and cut its price target to 370p (from 390p).

StockMarketWire.com
BT Group's reported revenue rose 35% in the second quarter, and growth in underlying revenue excluding transit adjusted for the acquisition of EE up 1.1%.

Reported earnings per share were down 10%, adjusted earnings per share were up 4%.

Underlying EBITDA adjusted for the acquisition of EE was up 0.9%.

The group booked a non-cash specific item charge of £145m following initial investigation into inappropriate management behaviour in BT Italia.

Net cash inflow from operating activities of £1,734m, up £489m and normalised free cash flow3 of £894m, up £325m reflects timing of receipts and payments within the year; net debt £9,573m.

Interim dividend of 4.85p per share is up 10% and the outlook is unchanged.

Reported revenues for the half year rose 34% to £11,782m and pre-tax profits were up 9% at £1,388m.

Chief executive Gavin Patterson said: "This is a positive set of results, both operationally and financially, and we remain on track to achieve our full year outlook. We've made good progress on the integration of EE and the delivery of our synergy targets.

"Our consumer facing lines of business have performed well, but in the enterprise space, UK public sector continues to be a challenging market. Across the group, we continue to drive cost reduction and productivity improvements. Customer experience remains a key priority, and we're stepping up our investments in the second half of the year.

"And we'll continue to invest in our ultrafast and 4G plans in 2017 and beyond. Ofcom's consultation on the Digital Communications Review closed earlier this month; we've submitted our response and will continue to engage with Ofcom to reach the best outcome for the UK."

Early morning sell.

I'm getting in... this is an oversold position.

StockMarketWire.com
BT has warned it expects to take a hit of of around £530m on its Italian business, which is far greater than the amount it first anticipated.

The group announced on 27 October that an initial internal investigation of accounting practices in its Italian business had identified certain historical accounting errors and areas of management judgement requiring reassessment.

It said: "At that time, we announced the write down of items on the balance sheet by £145m, being the then best estimate of the financial impact of these issues.

"Since then we have progressed the investigation, which has included an independent review by KPMG LLP of the accounting practices in our Italian operations and our own comprehensive balance sheet review.

"These investigations have revealed that the extent and complexity of inappropriate behaviour in the Italian business were far greater than previously identified and have revealed improper accounting practices and a complex set of improper sales, purchase, factoring and leasing transactions. These activities have resulted in the overstatement of earnings in our Italian business over a number of years.

"The investigation into the financial position of our Italian business is now substantially complete.

"The adjustments identified have increased from the £145m announced in our half-year update to a total of around £530m. We are still evaluating what proportion of the total adjustments should be treated as prior year errors, and what proportion should be treated as the reassessment in the current year of management estimates.

"Work is also ongoing to establish how these adjustments should be reflected in BT Group's financial statements for the current and previous periods in light of applicable accounting requirements.

A recovery play here but not sure when.

Will the gap be filled?

Louis Capital note today:
"**** A GOOD DAY TO TRY TO PUT ALL THE BAD NEWS OUT BUT IT IS NOT EASY TO HIDE THE FACTS - While all the headlines this morning concentrated on the problems in Italy and the multi-year accounting irregularities, the company pushed out an even more important development - the UK PROFIT WARNING AND WEAKNESS ACROSS THE BOARD in international markets.

**** BT CONFIRMS A SLOWDOWN IN THE UK AND CONFIRMS NO PICK UP IN PUBLIC-SECTOR CONTRACTS IN CONTRAST TO PREVIOUS Q4's - The company also confirms that they are seeing weaker pipeline for business in the UK, that budgets are being squeezed due to Brexit and that public sector contracts are ending sooner than expected. However the profit warning is not restricted to the UK business only.

**** THIS IS A PROFIT WARNING ACROSS THE BOARD - BT confirms that they are seeing similar pressure in the international corporate market. This does not bode well for the "Global Services" division which was recovering and implies pressures across the board and across divisions. As such today's event is not really concentrated in Italy - Italy is just a small sideshow in a business which is under pressure all over.

**** NEXT EVENT : I EXPECT TO SEE AN ADJUSTMENT DOWNWARDS IN DIVIDEND EXPECTATIONS. The weakening fundamental health of this company is not in line with a 10%pa dividend increase policy. Watch this space - a cut in dividend or at best a flat dividend will be the next major newsflow.

**** THE MAIN FUNDAMENTAL RISK IS STILL TO MATERIALIZE : INVESTMENTS IN CONTENT CANNOT BE JUSTIFIED and will lead to earning dilution and a decrease in Return in Capital Employed (ROCE) and this will become more visible with the upcoming auction of the European Champions League in 2017. I calculate the breakeven point of a BT TV sports customer at nearly £32/month. They will never recoup that cost and hence this is purely a very expensive retention tool which will fail and lead to earning dilution. The fact that BT has now started to charge nominal prices between £3.5-£7.5/month for BT sports does not change the facts that they are still 5-10x away from break even point.

**** TRADING STRATEGY : STOCK CLOSING ON MY PT OF 300p. However, the fundamentals have now changed and hence I have to look at my valuation models again. Under no circumstances will I be a BUYER of the stock at these levels as any dead cat bounce over the next few sessions will be short-lived. Numbers have to come down and with 15 BUYS and only 3 SELLS the analyst community is still to turn. The majority still hold the wrong conclusion that investment in content is beneficial for BT, so we still need to see the BULLS turn before we even get close to a BUYING opportunity."

Haitong Broker note:
"BT Group / BT/A LN - Bitter disappointment, but stock has overreacted
Under review
Today BT [BT/A LN, 313p*, Under Review] warned about (i) BT Italy and (ii) the outlook for UK public sector and international corporate markets, which is a bitter disappointment to us. More so because, we think, these two issues are far from the most consequential drivers of BT’s share price at current levels: we think regulation and the pension deficit remain much more important determinants of BT’s net present value.

During the call, BT said that prospects for the rest of the group (c.80% of total EBITDA-capex) remain good, but management should have brought forward 3Q FY17 results (out this Friday) to talk much more expansively about this. Not doing so, we think, was a mistake.

Based on our experience of BT and our work on the company to date, we think management has chosen to reflect the causes of today’s profit warning onto revised FY17 and FY18 guidance, but not the continuing good performance of other BT divisions (e.g. BT Consumer, EE and Openreach). As ever, BT always errs heavily on the side of caution.

We think this also because, despite today’s profit warning, BT has not changed dividend guidance of ‘at least 10% growth’ in FY17 and again in FY18.

We need BT to report full 3Q FY17 results this Friday before we settle on our new numbers, fair value and hence recommendation. Therefore we place both under review until then."

Sounds a very reasonable assessment from Haitong.

Although the update on the Italian business grabbed the headlines, the division only contributed around 1 percent of the group's core earnings for the year to the end of last March.

"We expect the market to react negatively to the deterioration in trading in public sector and international corporate," analysts at Citi said.

"In addition BT risks a credibility hit that this protracted and significant distortion to its accounts in Italy has happened at all." Citi has a "Buy" recommendation on the stock.

That gap is looming!

BT European chief to resign over Italian scandal