When LUMN talked about the two asset sales (that close in the first and second half of this year) the CEO Jeff Storey said it could create pressure on the dividend during the Q2 2021 conference call results. He said: I do realize that will put pressure on our dividend after we close these transactions and the further we get into our investment program. But as of now, we are not faced with that trade-off decision, and we'll continue to balance the return of cash to shareholders through dividends and buybacks while we accelerate our investment in Enterprise and Quantum Fiber growth. Obviously ..read more

When LUMN talked about the two asset sales (that close in the first and second half of this year) the CEO Jeff Storey said it could create pressure on the dividend during the Q2 2021 conference call results. He said: I do realize that will put pressure on our dividend after we close these transactions and the further we get into our investment program. But as of now, we are not faced with that trade-off decision, and we'll continue to balance the return of cash to shareholders through dividends and buybacks while we accelerate our investment in Enterprise and Quantum Fiber growth. Obviously ..read more

It's anyone's guesstimate how management will allocate the capital from the transactions (see links below). Why? Because they are not saying, however they gave an important target to shoot for noting they will be leverage neutral over the next few years. An overview of the transactions with Stonepeak and Apollo which will net approximately $8.5 billion in cash before any cash taxes if NOL's fall short can be found at: Lumen - Lumen to Sell Latin American Business to Stonepeak for $2.7B Lumen - Lumen to sell local incumbent carrier operations in 20 states to Apollo Funds for $7.5 billion The q ..read more

During the integration phase of CenturyLink and Level 3 Communications (now Lumen) part of the focus was cutting unprofitable revenue. This can be confirmed up to a point, that being through mid-2019. Revenue declined while management was able to maintain gross margins, indicating unprofitable revenue was being cut as the below visual indicates. Something changed, from mid-2019 through 2020 revenue slowed but losses in gross margins accelerated indicating profitable revenue was being lost. My analysis, given managements 2021 guidance, indicates this trend will continue through 2021. Results c ..read more

Are the investments Lumen (LUMN) is making creating value or destroying value? One way to get a feel for this is to compare ROIC (Return on Invested Capital) to WACC (Weighted Average Cost of Capital). We will look at data over a ten-year period to see specific yearly performance but also to get a feel for where the company is going. Up through 2016 and part of 2017 reflect Old CenturyLink and previous management. The next few years reflect the integration of the company cultures, etc. Here is the deal with this comparison, If ROIC is greater than WACC+2%, the company is creating value becaus ..read more

One way to measure the safety of the dividend is to look at revenue at risk. Revenue segments at risk and TTM (trailing twelve month) totals ending at 2Q20 in millions: · Medium & Small Business: 2643 · Wholesale: 3,906 · Voice: 1,723 · Other: 127 Total Revenue at risk: 8,272 Revenue segments not at risk to complete the picture and TTM totals in millions: · Enterprise: 5,715 · IGAM: 3,450 · Broadband: 2,884 Total Revenue not at risk: 12,049 My view is overall revenue will decline for years and so far, it has been dragging down gross margins (dollars). The revenue at risk is not going to z ..read more

$CTL Exclusive to Seeking Alpha (link below) ,https://seekingalpha.com/article/4366125-reason-centurylink-stock-is-priced-low ..read more

Teekay Group (TK) the parent company of Teekay LNG Partners L.P. (TGP) and Teekay Tankers LTD. (TNK) held an investor day conference back on 11/6/2019. Link at: https://www.teekay.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Teekay-Group-2019-Investor-Day-Presentation-1.pdf This blog will focus on slide 31. On this slide TK showed the potential uplift based on TNK and TGP’s stock price. Fast forward to today with markets down close to 30% from the highs. We can expand the range on slide 31 and extrapolate values based on current prices. Here is a partial of slide 31: TNK had a 8:1 reverse split so the pri ..read more

The Teekay Group (TK) gave their 3Q presentation on November 14, 2019. They included Teekay Tankers (TNK) performance through this date along with Q3 data. We'll use Q3 as our starting point for comparison purposes. The data was reported as TCE or (Time charter equivalent). First, what is TCE? Source "Time charter equivalent (TCE) is a shipping industry measure used to calculate the average daily revenue performance of a vessel. Time charter equivalent is calculated by taking voyage revenues, subtracting voyage expense, including canal, bunker and port costs, and then dividing the total by th ..read more

My first article on this topic in March 2017, “Is A Turnaround In The Cards For Mid-Size Crude Tanker Stocks?” I projected the following cycle to bottom by the end of 2017 and turn up in 2018. This was based in part on global oil demand growth and global fleet growth or capacity growth. The data predicted the cycle going forward from 2017 based on actual data from 2011: The graph confirmed a past trough and peak in 2012 and 2015 and predicted 2017 as the bottom. Obviously this prediction was too early however the cycle would resume at some point. Fast forward two years with data through Octo ..read more