"Once upon a time tls never touched FCF" - How was that...

"Once upon a time tls never touched FCF" - How was that possible? If TLS did not use FCF, where was the money from for past dividends? Care to explain in more details?

100% with your analysis the result is shocking. Paying dividend with more than FCF is crazy. Feels like the management is just trying to kick the can along without considering the sustainability. Is the dividend policy forcing them to maintain it in this way?

It's likely many people had high expectation that during COVID period, while most other business facing big trouble, cloud enabling businesses including communication facility providers should do well. Dropping some percentage of profits may be acceptable considering other impacts, however. I am not clear what exactly are the TLS business lines and prospect though. Generally speaking, such a bold dividend action is reckless.

Some people still try to use 5G prospect as a placebo to overcome the disappointing results. I think they see it wrong. 5G will not improve the business turnover, it will just shift the business from the same customers of older 4G. And worse, to the telcos, they have to fork out big bucks to upgrade infrastructure to maintaine competitive. 5G itself is not very meaningful to current world. For example, auto driving does not need 5G, unlike many claimed. Forget about the hypes, there is almost nothing 5G can do that 4G cannot. My understanding is 5G is a lose-lose technology for the telcos, only good for the equipment manufacturers/suppliers. And in fact, 5G can never complete with all fibre NBN network in terms of performance (speed, latency, jitter, stability, you name it).