It's All About the NumbersI posted not long ago about how BCE was paying out more in dividends than its Free Cash Flow. Some people here talked about D&A that should be taken into account and that BCE has been paying out more than its FCF in dividends for many years. The later point is certainly true in that BCE has paid out way more than FCF for the last five years. The D&A argument is bogus since these measures are non cash items used by accountants to reduce tax payable.
Anyway, I got back from Europe not long ago and there I was using Orange as my provider. So I thought I would look for a comparison of FCF to dividends for BCE and ORAN and found the chart below. A key consideration here that investors can buy any stock and so for example if they wanted to buy a telecom then they could choose from many around the world. So you will see from the chart that ORAN is in a much better shape financially than BCE and has virtually no risk fo cutting its dividend whereas the same can't be said about BCE.
So as I said before, until BCE management bites the bullet and lowers the dividend, the shorts will continue to hammer the SP
https://www.financecharts.com/compare/BCE,ORAN/dividends/fcf-dividend-payout-ratio