Wednesday newspaper share tips: BP dividend a luxury for investors

The oil company held its quarterly dividend at 10 cents a share as $2.6bn of write-downs and restructuring charges sent it crashing into losses for the fourth quarter and full year.

A $3.31bn loss was reported for the fourth quarter, with underlying profits crashing 91% to $196m, well shy of forecasts, sending the oil major to a $6.48bn full year loss, with annual underlying profits plunging by just over half to $5.9bn.

Underlying operating cash flow for the fourth quarter of 2015 remained solid at $5.9bn, but while the total for the year stood at $20.3bn, this was down by more than a third on 2014.

Although the slump in the oil price sent the upstream business into a loss in the final quarter, the downstream arm partially offset this with a strong set of counter-cyclical results of flat profits compared to the prior year.

Questor said the oil giant has done a lot in response to the falling oil prices, “cutting the fat from a business that grew comfortable with oil at $100”.

That includes slashing spending on projects and selling non-essential operations.

It noted that things are getting tight at the oil giant, with cash generation from drilling and refining oil only just covering its capital spend.

However Questor pointed out the company couldn’t change its dividend.

“In truth BP probably had little choice, or they would have faced a mutiny from the income seeking shareholder register,” it said.

“But, paying dividends out of debt is unsustainable in the long term.”

The column said while it is going to be painful for income investors, “the dividend increasingly looks like a luxury in such a difficult market”, and advised selling shares in BP.

In The Times, Tempus was picking through TalkTalk’s latest results, including the impact of the cyber-attack late last year.

The FTSE 250 telecoms provider did report revenue growth of 1.8%, though it lost 101,000 customers in the three months to 31 December 2015.

TalkTalk suffered a serious cyber-attack early in the period, which saw the company suspend sales to new customers for a short time and see significant damage to its brand value.

The company's board said the cyber-attack had a trading impact of £15m, and created exceptional costs of £40m-£45m.

TalkTalk's on-net customer churn during the three months was 2.1%, of which 0.6% was estimated to be the impact of the attack.

Of the 101,000 customers lost, TalkTalk estimated 95,000 of them were due to the attack.

Tempus said life isn’t entirely back to normal at the telco after the attack, but the company is optimistic by putting our profit and dividend forecasts.

“These are not normally released at the third-quarter stage, but the numbers indicate that if you strip out all the one-off costs, profits are moving forward strongly as the company adds to its average revenues per customer by selling more services.”

The column said the loss of customers probably wasn’t as bad as expected, and would have been helped by the company’s decision to offer a free upgrade.

However the main negative factors for the company come down to competition, specifically BT’s acquisition of EE being approved and Sky’s intention to move into the mobile phone market.

Tempus rated the shares at ‘buy long term’, citing the high dividend yield.

“Customers might as well take the income while they await further changes in the sector driven by regulation.”