Having lost around 20% of its value in the year to date, is now the time to buy BT PLC (LON:BT.A)?
Definitely not, is the rather blunt retort from a group of highly rated City analysts.
According to the number crunchers at Deutsche Bank, the former state telecoms monopoly still has a lot on its plate.
There’s the threat posed by Virgin Media as it rolls out its super-fast broadband, the spectre of the ever-innovative Sky plc (LON:SKY), which is launching into the mobile space, and Vodafone plc (LON:VOD), which is chomping into BT’s core fixed line market.
At 379p a share, the stock is just not cheap enough to buy, according to Deutsche, which repeated its ‘sell’ recommendation and crimped its price target back 25p to 345p a share.
Taking the opposing point of view was the American bank Citi, which repeated its ‘buy’ up to 460p, although it noted the telco’s pension deficit remains a worry.
That said, if the shortfall in the retirement pot turns out to be smaller and more manageable than forecast, this could provide a catalyst for the share price, Citi’s team of crack analysts said.
It seems Citi’s rather than Deutsche’s view on the stock resonates with the spread-sheet jockeys of the Square Mile.
Of the 16 analysts polled by the Broker Forecasts site, nine were ‘buyers’ of BT and only two were ‘sellers’. The remainder were sitting on the fence.
At 10am, BT was changing hands for 378.5p - down 1.6% on the day.