Shareholders Boost UK Broadband ISP TalkTalk’s Funding Deal to £120m
The debt riddled TalkTalk Group has issued an additional update this afternoon on their recent £100m funding deal (here), which reveals that the funding level has been increased by £20m to total £120m. The modest boost came other existing financial stakeholders agreed to participate.
According to the statement: “The new funding facilities will be used to strengthen the group’s working capital position and support new product and other investment across its two businesses – PXC and TalkTalk. The Group also confirms that more than 90% of its first lien creditors and approximately 87% of its second lien creditors have signed up to a support agreement to implement the transaction announced on 25th July.”
The news follows shortly after the provider published its annual accounts (here), which among other things revealed that they made a statutory loss before tax of £465m for the year ended 28th February 2025 (up from £153m last year). The group’s overall level of net debt (excluding leases) has now risen from £985m last year to £1.2bn this year, or from £1.78bn to £1.96bn if you include leases.
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Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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So it’s now an extra three months working capital then, for a business that blatantly isn’t working.
I do wonder quite what the shareholders expect to happen in those three months. Zimbabwe-style hyperinflation might help them out, but I somehow can’t see it happening.
What is it that the shareholders see that we don’t?
Transformation of the business’s operations, some details of which are covered in the report.
A path out of the mess. If you’d spent £500k on a house and it had problems, and your choice was to spend £50k to repair it or just let it collapse, what’s the rational choice? Assuming you trust your builder?
A top class network?
With all the funds being given too TalkTalk, is it possible they may still rise like a phoenix from the ashes? Surely investors are not throwing good money after bad! The saga continues.
The underlying core business is sound. Absolutely nothing wrong with the wholesale side and £695million gross profit in their last financial results. However, the group as a whole is being dragged under by the level of debt it carries. If they can somehow do a deal with their lenders then all might not be lost – a prepack administration is probably their best bet in all honesty.
Do a deal with their lenders? — Another One? Nothing but deals done with their lenders/shareholders, too keep the buisness going!
Been with talk talk for years on a FTTC product and always had 8ms ping and 60mbs. Use my own eero wireless mesh system and openreach modem and always been bomb proof. It just works. Always offered me a decent price to stay on renewal and very happy. Not much profit in fTTC with at £21 equiv I’d assume but I’m happy.
@Carl: With stat’s and price you given, you won’t want to see TalkTalk go belly up anytime soon! 🙂
Shareholders and creditors are supporting TalkTalk with what is is essentially a debt restructuring because they believe a turnaround is feasible and better than allowing TalkTalk to go bankrupt. PXC is looking to be profitable and a bunch of unwanted legacy customers have been moved over to Utility Warehouse. There are many things a financially-stabilised TalkTalk can do with its 3.2m customers and I suspect it’s not making the most of its TV Hub, the only Android TV box provided by UK ISPs.