Originally posted by nocelery
Thanks for the well wishes clear.png! Am confident but one can never be certain, hence a relatively small short position while I wait, not a huge fan of derivatives but thought I would have a punt ...
FYI, I have been in and out of this stock since T1 (my first stock purchase! - went all in - multiple purchases under several addresses - showing my age!). It has sometimes been my largest position. I used to trade options all the way to when the price was $9+ ... heady days. Got out and came back to the stock when it hit sub $2.60 several years ago with a monster yield - got out in the high 5s (a bit early) ... so far it has been a great ride for me ... looking to get in again but given Penn's track record, I do not think he is the man for the necessary job > brutal cost cutting and patience. Nothing fancy - that is all that is needed.
It was not long ago we had Telstra eHealth and investments in startups, etc ... basically destruction of shareholder value. A few years ago when their network was clearly superior, Telstra should have paid monster dividends or preferably annihilated Vodafone and Optus by simply dropping prices and focusing on mobile rather than fanciful pipe dreams outside their core competencies. It is a game of scale. here was all this crap about not wanting to be just a network operator ... I do not understand why not? In a low interest rate environment, if they behaved like a high yielding utility, the share price would have done very well.
The gap in networks is closer now and it will be tougher ... they still have the best network, but the gap is smaller and I think many businesses and people will not care about 5G, 99G, Super G, blah ... it is like the old CPU arms race - at some point the extra speed is not that relevant. Look at the PC upgrade cycle for a comparison - what happened? - people stopped caring and started focusing on mobility because what they had did the job.
I could be wrong ... and look forward to being a shareholder again!
Tried to give you a "Great Analysis" but it seems I shot mine off a little early
You've done an excellent job with this over time, well done!
I remember the days of $9 also but wasn't in until low $3's before drop to $2.60 then all the way back to $6+
Hindsight would say I should have trimmed more of my position up there but, had a few nice trades on the way up as well as holding some for a substantial time, gone in quite hard again lately and am happy with where we are heading in the medium term, I think possibly even short term, Verizon will show the way with wireless and TLS will be like the little Aussie version.
(20min delay)