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Around the end of the month, it seems FTSE 100 it is expected to decrease by about 2.7% in October.
BT Group (LSE: BT.A) fell further, with a dip of 7.7% during the month. I’m starting to think it could be one of the best-value Footsie dividend stocks you can consider buying for a long time.
Hot speed
I’m writing this as BT Openreach engineers are making a nasty racket outside my window. But I won’t hold that against the company.
It will be a while before I sign up. But BT are talking about bandwidth of up to 900Mb per second, which I find amazing. When I started writing for The Motley Fooli had a 33.6kbps dial-up modem. I feel old!
However, the point is that BT has passed the peak of its use of fiber broadband. And that means the future should be less about expenses and more about income.
A cash cow
That should be good for the dividend. The forecast shows 5.7% this year and rising modestly, supported by a strong wage cap.
I still don’t like BT’s huge debt, which reached £19.5bn at the end of last full year. And the company’s pension fund deficit rose to £4.8bn, even after the £0.8bn contribution.
That can come back to bite.
But if BT can continue to manage things as it has been doing, it could continue to be a budget cow.
Real estate
I like the real estate investment trust (REIT), even though it hasn’t been popular for a long time. I put my eye on it British World (LSE: BLND) meanwhile, with the share price down 10% in October.
It’s had a good 12 months, but we’re still looking at a 36% loss over the last five years.
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Business investment
British Land is in the real estate business. It has “strategy to focus on campuses, retail parks and urban London logistics“. And as of the time of the last full-year report in May, that looks set to pay off.
The biggest risk I see is in weak property prices. Or, at least, perceived weakness due to the feeling of the property market being low.
But year-end net asset value per share came in at 562p, ahead of the 399p share price at the time of writing. We will have to wait till November 20 for this year’s H1 update on that.
Debt financing
The trust reported a 37.3% loan-to-value ratio for those final results. And that means there’s less debt that needs servicing, and high interest rates haven’t helped that.
However, prices are likely to drop significantly. And forecasts show a dividend yield of 5.5%, rising slightly over the next few years.
I fear that interest rate expectations may have been built into the share price, and we may be facing a period of weakness.
But this one is on my short list too.
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