Deutsche Bank downgrades BT Group to 'sell' on expected rise in capex

Analysts at Deutsche Bank cut their target price on shares of BT Group on Monday and cut their recommendation from 'hold' to 'sell', telling clients that rising capital expenditures threatened the recovery in the telco's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation.

The target was slashed from 217.0p to 175.0p.

They said they had for a time already viewed BT as one of the "least attractive" of the European telcos, due to the low levels of fibre deployment and "less advanced state of convergence competition in the UK (versus other markets).

But "However given our view that the european telcos sector is cheap which when combined with DB’s absolute (rather than relative) recommendation system, we had ranked the stock at Hold (after three years at Sell)."