Is it really necessary to challenge another poster to back his or her view with a wager? I'd rather just hear the arguments back and forth.
:rolleyes:
Printable View
can we crack $4 on the close it should be close
No strong opinion on SPK's valuation here, couta, and certainly not one I'd want to bet on! I still hold a few though, a legacy from the Telecom days when the business looked to be a lot more "stable" than it does, to me, in this quickly changing technological world. I confess I don't understand current issues sufficiently and therefore probably should sell.
Spark NZ acquires marketing automation provider Ubiquity
What do we think?
------
https://www.nzx.com/companies/SPK/announcements/302439
Still trading Spark and making good money.
https://www.nzx.com/companies/SPK/announcements/302756
taking back control of there retail stores - good move, telstra heading that way too by the look of things
Hi Tech company reconnecting with its customers via physical brick and mortar reality...Hmmm really!!!
oh well..best of luck with that
With their turn back in time strategy..I suggest a good product for their shops
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...jtdxdgXebnw_Bw
From a business perspective the stores serve a valuable role by providing hands on experience with new potential handsets, support, and training services.
Can anyone provide any insight as to why Spark is currently in an uptrend and Telstra is currently in a down trend? Spark PE is 17.6, Telstra is 9.7.
There must be a few big reasons for this... May be more competition in Oz? I don't really follow either company but it looks interesting that 2 dominant players in their own markets can have such different SP action.
Apart from being in different countries with (currently ) quite different economic trajectories, one needs to recognise that (despite their similar histories) they are quite different companies. Telstra might be better compared with Spark and Chorus combined given that TLS is doing the NBN (fibre) rollout in Australia (whereas SPK has no involvement in that here in NZ)
Also, Spark seems to be making the transition to a content provider faster than TLS - Im not even sure if TLS has a content component (perhaps shareholdings)
TLS does have some massive cash flow positives from the govt guarantees it obtained from the Australian government for doing the NBN but it hasnt yet proved how it will fill those cash flow/revenue gaps once that is all completed.
Personlly I think TLS has been oversold
Thanks for your thoughts. Makes you wonder if Spark are invulnerable to these things. At 18 x earnings, there is a fair amount of optimism this is not the case.
The 5 year TLS chart tells a big story, it looks like negative sentiment was behind them until August 2015 when the tide turned.
I think you guys need to look somewhat wider - I was curious on the same point a few years ago but I looked somewhat wider than just Australia, and if you do you should find a number of telcos on rather lower P/E's in the US for example.
looking good for all new time highs hopefully, some people must think like me - cheap stock nice div lol
Their retention and aquisition plays have been very good; Spotify, Netflix, lightbox and 1GB free daily data. Wonder what will happen when the Spotify deal comes up for renewal. It's a major reason many people stay with and join Spark on mobile.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/ind...ious-customers
strategy update coming
https://www.nzx.com/companies/SPK/announcements/303375
investor update
- lowest cost operator through automation and job cuts - will offset commoditised broadband and mobile offerings I guess
- more value offerings - point of difference to retain customers
- pg 39 very interesting they have no real presence in any of the categories apart from Qrious so are they going to aquire businesses or grow there own?
imagine they will start up again
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/ind...rnet-of-things
competition already in this space.
Spark Digital are still bleeding high-margin business customers to competitors such as DataCom, with no end in sight.
And if they were Zaphod either the CEO Spark Digital or Simon Moutter would have been fired or Spark would be out of business.
Which part of your narrative do you need to adjust Zaphod?
No narrative adjustment required, Major. Having worked for Gen-I (now Spark Digital) and having dealt with them for over a decade as a major corporate customer, I am acutely aware of their situation, including their strengths and weaknesses.
Datacom secured direct access to major corporate accounts previously held by Spark Digital, supplying hardware, software and services. Datacom’s strategic focus on the service side of the business allowed them to leapfrog Spark Digital’s efforts.
You should note that several changes to Gen-I's leadership team occurring during this time, culminating in the amalgamation and rebranding of the company to Spark Digital.
However if you care to look at the Reuters report "BRIEF: For the six months ended 31 December 2016, Spark New Zealand Ltd revenues increased 4% to NZ$1.79B. Net income increased 13% to NZ$178M. Revenues reflect Spark Digital segment increase of 8% to NZ$658M, Spark Home, Mobile & Business segment increase of 1% to NZ$985M, Spark Connect & Platforms segment increase of 16% to NZ$22M. Net income benefited from Spark Connect & Platforms segment loss decrease of 8% to NZ$166M." Spark Digital segment increase of 8% to NZ$658M.
That's incompatible with Mr Beeblebrox' assertions which means that dear Zaphod falls into one of 3 categories (a) one of the old dedicated Telecom haters who will never let go no matter what such as Troyvdh who finishes up with unintelligible long drawn exclamations of irrational bile (b) one of the dedicated band of people who have a spouse/lover/friend/relative/neighbour working for one of Spark's competitors (c) an ex Telecom/Spark employee who left under a bit of cloud and is now looking for utu.
Pity we can't reserve this thread for rational discussion....
Massive volume going through over the last few days, equal number of buyers and sellers so SP trading in a few cents range. I don't think Salt will do well with their Short here.
On the other hand as he hasn't offered any tangible facts and the facts published by Spark and Reuters etc in their periodic reports don't show any evidence of Geni/Spark Digital going bankrupt or having a bad time then I prefer to remain calm and rational. Spark will report in August on it's latest results including for Spark Digital and it will be seen then how credible, if at all, Zaphod is.
It is in the nature of normal business, particularly with large enterprises, that there is a certain turnover of customers including large customers. And other customers are brought in to replace them and the overall trend is usually upwards. In Spark Digital's case by 8%. In fact if your existing customers are growing solidly then you can afford your numbers of customers to fall and yet you yourself as a business still grow on the back of growing demand.
I suppose I have been observing/investing in the NZX for about 39 years so far and I have seen and heard a number of loud Wolf! cries about companies from people who are self interested for some reason and wish to make themselves seem more important than they are and to affect the target company to make it easier for their own competitor. Some such people have ended by being banned from Sharetrader for bad behaviour....
When did I state or imply that Spark Digital was going bankrupt, MT? The market for IT services continues to grow but SD is not gaining new business as well as Datacom who have grown their branch network and general IT services businesses very quickly over the past 5-10 years. I suggest you speak with other professionals in the industry to gain their opinions.
Constructive debate about the merits of companies is what this board is all about. What I have observed over the years that anyone who disagrees with the "group think" is often ostracised for 'crying wolf'.
My personal opinion is that Spark remains a solid company, but that there are some significant challenges ahead as the communications business become a low-margin commoditised service, and the corporate IT services business is exposed to further competition by local and multi-national vendors. The continued development & delivery of value added services for consumers and a focus on corporate customers in the SD space are the way forward.
You are welcome is disagree of course.
Personally all out now at 390 on SPK.
What I was told is all those software changes to bring them up to speed is still having issues though restructuring is still going on. Happy to hold them first after the Asian crash and recovered big time on accumulations when they took all HP employees servicing them (project Marley) to their care. Good dividend paying company still but my affinity to it lately has gone stale.
GL to all holders.
It's a perverse Party. Spark down, Auck Airport down, Contact down, Fletcher up - just a matter of time until Feltex and Bil and JudgCorp and Standard Insurance reappear and go zooming upwards.
NZ $ must be even further up - must check that.
All those overseas shareholders are getting shifty.
About time Spark picked a date to give their next results - or have they already?
Yep, it's one of NZX's periodical perverse parties. Good news from NZ trade results so NZ $ goes up which makes Spark shares worth less to overseas holders.
really has trouble getting and staying over 3.90
It's a really crazy and illogical situation for Spark because most of it's shareholders/shareholding live/are held overseas which won't be remedied until most of it comes back to NZ.
NZ economic growth improves - NZ dollar goes up so Spark goes down.
Inflation gets worse - NZ dollar goes up expecting higher interest rates to control inflation so Spark goes down.
Balance of Trade/Bal of Payments improves therefore NZ dollar rises and Spark goes down.
Employment improves NZ dollar goes up and Spark goes down.
Immigration increases which goes in parallel with growth so NZ dollar goes up and Spark falls.
NZ debt goes down so NZ dollar goes up and Spark goes down.
On the other hand Unemployment goes up NZ dollar goes down and Spark improves.
Inflation improves (it can't at the mo because it's zero) NZ dollar goes down and Spark improves.
Spark trading and profit improve overseas shareholders take their profit and Spark goes down.
So you can see the dice is loaded against us. Nevertheless I have a high regard for Simon Moutter's ideas and stewardship and faith that shareholders will get increasing rewards in the medium term. So I see Spark as a stable investment and prefer it to Fletcher which is in a business cycle and liable to unexpected disasters.
At the least some NZers and NZ institutions (Kiwisaver etc have increasing funds to invest in NZ) can take advantage of the skitterish overseas investors and slowly buy them out.
So, it provides a natural hedge against adverse trends in the NZ economy - without the hassle of investing overseas.Quote:
On the other hand Unemployment goes up NZ dollar goes down and Spark improves.
Inflation improves (it can't at the mo because it's zero) NZ dollar goes down and Spark improves.
:cool:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/ind...our-with-tuanz
thought there would have been better industry to investigate- lines companies, supermarkets, insurance etc
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=11897828
datacom big margins , be interesting how spark compares
Someone has got me wrong, I haven't bought or sold Spark for a couple of years. I just hold for the high dividends it pays and watch the irrational gyrations of the overseas dominated shareprice with cynical amusement. At the moment I'm just waiting Spark's next announcement which can only be a matter of weeks away. I do have some other shares, one which was bought as a capital appreciation play now shows every sign of turning into a cash dividend cow :-)
3.90 again? must be soon
big day tomorrow for spark lovers , telstra just released there results makes compelling reading
Telstra down over 10% on both exchanges atm, 52 wk lows, OUCH. Let's hope Spark can do better than this tomorrow.
Solid result with no change to dividend or 2018 dividend guidance.:)
It did, 13% rise in profit, same dividends as last year, plans for the future.
Lesson for the future to all those scaredy cats who recently sold off because they equated Spark with Telstra: Spark is different from Telstra! Take 100 lines and write that out.
Hope Spark have extra 20m gain from selling their land property every year until nothing left.
The whole market is down across the board, panic now. Sell everything. It's the last days. Get under the bed and read Revelations. Haven't checked the NZ dollar yet. When stocks like Auck Airport are significantly cut you know something is wrong with the cutters, not Auck Air.
good result, I would imagine the shares should be well supported even more so after telstra decision yesterday.
When you compared the 2 charts telstra ( or even telco in general in aus) was heading down while spark was going up, people were confused as they couldnt understand how this could be.
As MVT has said spark should not be compared to telstra different fish in telco sea for various reason even though the general theme is the same.
Why telstra price go down is because they had no choice but to drop dividend this was evident mths ago as they had a gaping hole in there cashflow in the years ahead after nbn payments finished , smart people were switching out of telstra into spark which offered steady business less risk and nice fat divs.
I expect more disenchanted telstra investors to switch.
So the Spark report is in and I quote "IT revenue is up 19%" and also that "Spark has signed some big new contracts".
How does that fit in with "Spark Digital are still bleeding high-margin business customers to competitors such as DataCom, with no end in sight" Zaphod?
So it seems that the investors (scatter brained twits) who sold Spark recently because North Korea fired a rocket up and over Japan and down the other side are now buying again. If they paid any attention to World News and History they would know that this is the third time North Korea has done this.
Really "investors" should be required to gat a warrant of fitness and those with half their brain missing should be taken off the road.
It fits very well MT, thanks for asking. Revenue up 19% on the back of organic growth then is it MT? Or is that revenue growth related to the acquisitions? Some minor investigative research into Datacom's much more rapid growth in NZ and their client list would be quite revealing MT. Revenue higher than Spark Digital, yet the company is much younger.... They must be getting customers from somewhere, including my former colleagues.
No need to be so defensive about you favourite share. Spark are doing well, but some constructive criticism is good for objectivity.
Does anybody know the dates related to the dividend? I can never get their site to work for me and all I get is the full year to March last.
still struggling around 3.90 and if vodaph lists i guess related selling could take place
Vocus selling its NZ investments includes slingshot,NZ Racing and Orcon(i think)
1QFY18 Trading Update - New Zealand
- Net broadband subscriber growth in Consumer of 3,365 in 1QFY18
- Taking unfair share in UFB – 16% share of all UFB connections in 1QFY18
- More than 50,000 UFB customers with a reduced churn rate of 1.4% in 1QFY18 (FY17 1.9%)
- 4,704 active energy customers and fastest growing energy retailer in Auckland
- Bundling opportunity growing - energy attachment rate for new broadband customers 14.5% andmobile 13.3%[/COLOR]
55% of all subscribers signed in 1QFY18 were digital only sign ups- ]Business & Government sector activities restructured under Vocus Communications branding
- GM for business segments appointed recently
- Vocus Communications energy services launched, targeting the SMB segment [/COLOR]
Trader Jackson
Correct, they are preparing the NZ business for sale - wonder if this means listing or trade sale? Probably trade sale, but to who and at what ratios? Vodafone before they list?
Spark has never recovered it's dividend since going Ex on Sept 21st at $3.84, actually quite out of character for the stock, struggling around $3.60 for a while now.
Yes that's the good thing about SPK, it's like a hedge fund, if things don't go to plan, just keep holding for the next divvy. More to do with the big overseas boys moving money around due to currency fluctuations, and US interest rate projections, than the possible VOD listing IMO. Disc-My biggest holding.
I jumped on this train today. Looking forward to the divis.
From website: Subject to no adverse change in operating outlook, Spark anticipates paying a total FY18 dividend per share of 25.0 cents that is at least 75% imputed. This dividend is likely to be made up of an ordinary dividend determined by earnings, topped up by a special dividend to maintain a total dividend per share of 25.0 cents.
H1 FY18 Results Announcement 21 Feb 2018,
Dividend paid 1st-2nd week of April,
So what will shake the sp up? (ignoring that tiny red drop underneath the trend line?) Perhaps a good time to buy. (Discl: don't currently hold but watching.)
Attachment 9406
I am tossing up between MEL, SPK or GNE and of course HGL but that seems quite expensive atm....?
SPK down to $3.50 today. Looking attractive from a dividend point of view.
trading range breakdown? i picking broadband numbers under pressure margin squeeze as an issue to come.
if it is the vadafone listing i cant see customers leaving spark broadband just go to the new boy on the block......I see it more the funds needing to sell spark and buy vodafone to balance their passive funds....thats my theory anyway...been known to be wrong before...just ask my wife....she,s always right
Current rates are in keeping with annual fluctuations. I have been trading this lot since before the flood and I get the same touch of panic every year until I go and look at the chart and see where it went last year and the year before at this time. My trading drops now to the 250-60 range (sell as close to 260 as I can and buy back as close to 250 as I can). Still the same margin of profit but a lot more care needed.
I'm assuming you mean 3:50 - 3:60 Craic
I picked up a few Spark this morning based on the level that I stated a few posts ago being 3:46 where a bullish gartley has played out to the tee. I guess the yield helps this.
I'm in the unusual position of coming into a wad of cash soon from my property sale so it will be necessary to have more in equities even if we are in a bear from here on.
Wow ... $3.39. I've been resisting the temptation to do any topping up anywhere just at the moment, but with the dividend yield on this I'm finding it increasingly hard to resist ...
I think that sum's it up plus institutions will want o some piece of the pie in vodafail and given its chequered history the pricing of the float will need to be cheap.
We saw all the incumbent players in the retirement industry have their SP's come under serious pressure when OCA listed last year.
330 will be the test, hasn't dipped under that for a long time. The one thing with this share at the moment is the rising interest rate reaction in the market, and a lot of overseas money being invested in SPK for the yield. The CPI update tomorrow will be worth monitoring imo
The overseas money is the big driver with this stock and there is a lot more of it than most other stocks on the NZX, currency fluctuations is another driver. Current price is a steal IMO ,for those divvy lovers out there. PS-Im currently down 8% and it makes up a big portion of my portfolio.
On the ball i reckon revenues up but margins down, more cost cutting to come to prop up profits for the next financial year and was that a profit warning in there? if they accelerate this.
no mention of any aquisitions or looking to do any? just cost cutting .... seems to be the same story right across the telco space thats for sure.
So, warning they might miss the forecast for the full year, reporting a 3.4 per cent fall in profit for the six months to the end of December ...
... but still sticking with 25 cps at least 75% imputed.
Be interesting to see what the market thinks of this, I admit I am not smart enough to work out which way this will go.
Disc: Hold, and employee.
Overall a pretty solid result, mobile revenues up, cloud/security/service management revenue up, proves it's progressing along it's path of becoming a true tech company. Dividend unchanged and outlook unchanged, albeit only 75% imputed this time. SP will probably drop as a lot of others have of late following results eg GNE(Good result but down) plus the US being down. PS-Still the pick of the Telcos IMO.
Mr Market unimpressed, down to $3.39 already
Tough day on planet SPK, the US money movers getting board again, I won't be selling any of my large holding(Currently bleeding like a stuck pig) happy just to just keep collecting divvies and see where it is at in a year or two. I've learnt not to get involved with the big boys games.
looks like it wants to head to the 2.75 support area
Inverted hammer / (close to a) gravestone doji on the weekly chart. Looks like it could be a low/ready to bounce on heaps of horizontal supports back into 2016, though plunging indicators with room to move lower are unsettling. I'm not holding, my simple weekly system was a sell in Sept 2017. Maybe it's a buy!