Speculation about Smart Telecom & its future

lucernarian

Just because Smart is aiming to make a profit, it doesn't mean that they are not trying to attract a takeover bid. Smart's share price should be recovering a bit after some progress was made in the LLU talks.

dub45

The Fool wrote:

They can "announce" all they want it doesn't make it happen, they aslo "announced" to be that they could supply me broadband 18 months ago.
I know this is probably not there fault but they are saying they have 6000 customers "waiting". How many of them (like me) got pi$%ed off waiting and signed up with another provider.

I don't claim to be an expert in shares (quite the opposite) but I would distinguish between turnover and profit.

btw you'd hardly expect them to announce they won't make a profit until 2020:D

Dont forget that when Smart come into an area they begin immediately to recruit people most of whom would not have known of Smart's good value offers previously and even people who sign up elsewhere will for the most part only be on a six monthly contract and can move on anytime after that.

The Fool

Slydice wrote:

wow, smart shares are really cheap. anyone know how I could go about buying some?

Hope you guys took my advice and invested in magic beans instead

The Fool

http://www.rte.ie/business/2006/0908/smart.html

Nuttzz

http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1685764&issue_id=14628

Answering shareholder questions, Mr Casey said the company had run out of cash and was currently depending on large shareholders to write cheques on a week-to-week basis.


Lots of things have gone against smart, customers unable to port numbers etc. Shame to lose a telecoms company here but i have heard some nightmare stories about them, i'd say an Eircom or BT operation will gobble them up in a couple of months

paulm17781

It would be a shame to lose Smart. They were the first company to take on Eircon in a proper way, sadly with our weak regulator it failed. They set the bar for how telecoms should work here.

Sponge Bob

Whatever about the travails of Smart there is no doubt at all that the BB operation would be taken over as a going concern and kept running. If you are in the process of signing up where there already is a live Smart exchange , carry right on !

Never forget that without the activities of Smart and the old skool NTL none of us would have a 3 mbit package under €100 in this country and would not have an upload greater than 128k at under €200.

I assume carphone warehoouse (aka talk talk) and Sky are the biggest potential taker overs, they will take no **** from eircom either . Smart , in hindsight, may have ben the devil eircom knew

paulm17781

This can only sound jingoistic though it isn't meant too....

One of the things I like about Smart is that they are Irish owned. It is well and good to say Sky or Talk talk will take no crap from them as they are big companies, BT have yet to show any muscle on those grounds so I don't see another big company doing so.

Maybe Smart will pull through, has the outcome of their 3G license come yet? If they hold on to that they will be fine.

Foxwood

I wouldn't be so quick to write Smart off. They didn't announce that they're going out of business yesterday, despite the aptly named Fools comments. The actual volume of shares sold off yesterday still wasn't all that significant.

They're still doing substantially better than Magnet on the LLU front, despite eircoms best efforts. Perhaps this sudden scare might even give ComReg a clue about what ComRegs screw ups really mean.

spurious

Smart are like the Cuba of Irish telecoms - fighting against outrageous practices by a big bully and still in business despite the best efforts of Eircom.

Viva Smart - Venceremos!!:)

Foxwood

The Fool wrote:

Hope you guys took my advice and invested in magic beans instead

There are 379 million shares in Smart. 4.4 million of them were sold yesterday. Not much of a crash there.

(According to the Smart Investor Relations web page, there were 55 million shares traded on the 17th of May, 54 million traded on the 13th of June, 37 million on the 7th of July, 52 million on the 7th of August, and 35 million were traded on the 5th of September. So I don't think a sell off of 4 million shares necessarily amounts to a particularly significant event).

The Fool

Foxwood wrote:

There are 379 million shares in Smart. 4.4 million of them were sold yesterday. Not much of a crash there.

(According to the Smart Investor Relations web page, there were 55 million shares traded on the 17th of May, 54 million traded on the 13th of June, 37 million on the 7th of July, 52 million on the 7th of August, and 35 million were traded on the 5th of September. So I don't think a sell off of 4 million shares necessarily amounts to a particularly significant event).

Will you take your head out of you a$se, shares fell in value by over 50%!!

themonk

Loads news last few days about smart having problems ... usual mumbo jumbo about business but there was mention that plans to be llu unbundled in 60 exchanges by jan 2007 maybe scaled down ( "stop expanding reach of the service" source tribune.ie ) .... worryingly could the existing residental access service go into decline >? .... what happens to services that go tits up .. are contracts cancelled if they do ... sound like nostradamus here dont i

dub45

themonk wrote:

Loads news last few days about smart having problems ... usual mumbo jumbo about business but there was mention that plans to be llu unbundled in 60 exchanges by jan 2007 maybe scaled down ( "stop expanding reach of the service" source tribune.ie ) .... worryingly could the existing residental access service go into decline >? .... what happens to services that go tits up .. are contracts cancelled if they do ... sound like nostradamus here dont i

If the worst comes to the worst we move to a new isp - and who would be around to worry about contracts???????

tech

They got a savage hammering on Today Fm Sunday Business show yesterday morning, I think you can download them as Podcasts if you want to listen !

Sponge Bob

BB/DSL customers will not suffer any loss of service from all this .

Moriarty

Guys, please remain civil. Hostile attitudes will get people banned.

spurious

Smart are still the best option out there, regardless.

Thank Smart for Eircom's recent announcement of dropping prices.

Thank Smart if you're lucky enough to be away from the evil clutches of Eircom as they up the price of their outrageous 'line rental' scam.

paulm17781

spurious wrote:

Smart are like the Cuba of Irish telecoms

Smart are yet to murder a person who disagrees with them. They are nothing like Cuba.

byte

I'd imagine if the worst came to the worst, Smart would be bought by some other telecoms company for a nice price. Maybe the likes of Digiweb would be possible takers. I'd like to see another Irish company take the company over if it came to it and Digiweb seem pretty wise in their expenditure.

Cabaal

http://www.electricnews.net/news.html?code=9803782

Smart Telecom to cut 100 jobs: reports
Friday, September 15 2006
by Emmet Ryan

Smart Telecom is to cut up to 100 jobs, a third of its workforce, in an attempt to save its broadband business.


Newspaper reports on Friday morning indicate that this reduction in staff numbers is the first phase of a proposed rescue plan following a review of the business undertaken by NCB Corporate Finance. It is thought that the company's sales staff will bear the brunt of the job losses.

A spokesperson for Smart would not confirm if these cuts are related to the announcement of the closure of Smart's door-to-door sales division in late August.

The job cuts are the latest blow for the company which saw its chief executive and founder, Oisin Fanning, announce last week that he was to step down citing health reasons.

Currently Smart is reportedly spending between EUR2.5 million and EUR3 million a month to stay afloat. The company said last week that it had run out of cash and was relying on support from shareholders.

Kingspan founder Brendan Murtagh, former AIB chairman Lochlann Quinn and Martin Naughton, the head of Glen Domplex are supporting the company. While Quinn and Naughton are not direct shareholders they do provide funding for the development of Smart's broadband business through a special purpose vehicle.

Smart entered the broadband business in 2005 with the aim of capturing 64,000 customers by the end of the year. The company currently has 16,500 subscribers.

At an AGM on 8 September the company announced it had hired NCB to carry out a review of the business. With the review in its final stages it is understood the business is viable and can be rescued.

Such a shame really, I feel for Smart, eircom have never made it easy for them when it comes to LLU roll-out

wheresmybeaver

Why can't Smart sign up enough customers? Well....

I signed up for Smart back at the start of August and rang customer support every 7 days for a status report. Twice, Eircom refused Smart's applications to transfer me over to Smart. On the third go, they finally okayed it. At this stage, about 4 weeks had passed since I signed up. Called up Smart again today, and the support guy told me that the order was in limbo since Sept 4 because Eircom was out of telephone numbers for the exchange, and would release new numbers "sometime in the future". Thus, nobody in my area can switch over to Smart until Eircom decide to release some new phone numbers. The Smart support guy admitted that it could take 4 weeks or more for that to happen, then another few weeks for my Smart application to be finalised.

So of course I had to cancel my order. If I stuck it out, it might take approx 12 weeks in total. Sorry lads but I need to get broadband a bit sooner! The support guy was very sympathetic about it in fairness to him. Through no fault of Smart Telecom, another potential customer was lost. Thanks, Eircom!

No wonder Smart haven't been able to reach their customer acquisition targets. I know Eircom are simply protecting their business, but surely a regulator should look into it, if only to allow reasonable competition.. I feel really sorry for all the Smart people who are looking at redundancy.

Sponge Bob

Smart have their own numbers, is the number portability thing (which allegedly works for over amonth) being held up as eircom get new numbers for their exchanges to 'replace' the ones ported to smart.

Sounds just like the kind of king sized ****up Comreg specialises in.

Drakus

I feel sad about Smart but I think they were over ambitious with their offer of paying the full line-rental for approx 150,000 customers given that they were really never in a position to compete with the full(or even near it) Eircom/BT customer base. If only they could have gotten into more exchanges a bit quicker, I like many others would have been more than happy to become a Smart Telecoms customer. Also I'm sure Eircom furstrated their efforts at every turn.

wheresmybeaver

Sponge Bob wrote:

Smart have their own numbers, is the number portability thing (which allegedly works for over amonth) being held up as eircom get new numbers for their exchanges to 'replace' the ones ported to smart.

Oh right, didn't completely understand what the whole "number releasing" thing was about.. cheers.

You'd think that that would be the kind of thing Eircom would be obliged to worry about ONLY after having handed the customer over to Smart...

watty

murrayj wrote:

Schools all over Ireland have been denied access to proper Broadband not because it's not available but because the Dept of Education forced schools to use Smart, Digiweb, IBB and other amateurs. If these guys aren't able to deliver a service, they deserve to go out of business. I don't wish any harm to any of the staff of Smart, but they'll all get other jobs in the current climate. As far as I can see that company is run by a failed stockbroker who has openly admitted that all he wanted to do was fatten it up for a quick sale. It looks as though he has been caught out.

Because of Eircom and lack of tough regulation ADSL was available to less than 1/2 of schools. Many had to get satellite as nothing else was available.

The Dept of Education is not responsible for that.

They do however have some responsibility for NOT having a clear focus & plan for schools as to how the BB / Internet access should be used.

Over a year later ADSL is still available to less than half the population when persons with NO line and failing line are factored in.

In what sense are non-Eircom suppliers to Schools "Amateurs"?

I'd agree though that Smart's business plan has never looked robust.

Buceph

I don't suppose there's a guide to all this anywhere? Smart v Eircom, LLUs, etc..

PixelTrawler

more info on the job losses here -

76 sales guys to go...

http://www.rte.ie/business/2006/0915/smart.html