Telecom Plus CEO and CFO buy after the August update

Telecom Plus PLC Telecom Plus PLC does not make money the way a pure utility does, or the way a telecom carrier does, or the way an insurer does. It makes money by bundling household energy, broadband, mobile and insurance into one recurring relationship and then trying to keep that household inside the bundle long enough for cross-sell to do the work. That is the engine. The stock tends to care less about any single product line than about whether the bundle is still pulling in new customers and whether the market believes the company can keep doing that after a year when earnings have already normalised.

That is why the August update mattered before the filings did. The company said on 17 August that it was keeping full-year guidance for adjusted pre-tax profit at £80 million to £90 million in FY27, ending March 2027, down from £132.2 million in FY26. It also said multiservice customer growth in the first four months of FY27 was slightly ahead of the 10% annual target and more than 2.5 times the 3.9% rate achieved in FY26. Shares had already bounced more than 6% on the day of that update, trading around 880p to 906p, after the June results hit the stock hard enough to trigger a £40 million buyback and a halved dividend. The insider buying landed into that reset, not before it.

The August update gave the stock a floor, not a verdict

The market has been trying to decide whether Telecom Plus is a normalising utility story or a still-compounding subscription story. Those are not the same thing, and the valuation usually changes when the market decides which one it is. The June results pushed the name into the first bucket for a while. The August trading update tried to pull it back toward the second. The stock’s recovery to the high-800p area after the update says the market was willing to listen, but not yet willing to forget the profit reset.

That is the backdrop you should keep in mind when reading the filings. The company is still operating in a competitive UK residential market, with energy, broadband and mobile all under pressure from pricing, churn and the usual customer-acquisition grind. Telecom Plus has also been leaning on broadband customers added through the TalkTalk acquisition while pushing organic multiservice growth. In other words, this is not a sleepy regulated utility where the only question is the next allowed return. It is a bundle business, and bundle businesses live or die on retention, cross-sell and the quality of the customer base they can keep stitching together.

Burnett and Schoenfeld bought after the reset

The first filing to matter was from Stuart Burnett, the chief executive. On 19 August, he exercised vested incentive awards and sold part of the resulting shares to cover tax liabilities, leaving him with a net addition of 81,153 shares and a holding of 146,792. The euro-normalised filing value attached to his activity was about EUR 493,175, and the underlying transactions included shares acquired at nominal prices and shares sold at approximately 866.68p. That is not a casual gesture from a CEO who had just watched the company reset guidance and then recover some of the damage.

Nick Schoenfeld, the chief financial officer, followed a similar pattern. His filings showed a net gain of 84,640 shares to 127,160. The euro-normalised values in the filing set included amounts of EUR 350.35, EUR 230,093.12, EUR 273,125.09, EUR 47,977.33 and EUR 40,416.82 across the reported transactions. The mechanics matter less than the direction. Both executives ended up with more stock, not less, after the update. That is the part the market will notice first, because it is the part that says the leadership team was willing to add exposure after the company had already told the market FY27 profit would be lower than FY26.

Gemma Godfrey, a non-executive director, also reported a small bed and ISA transaction on 20 August, selling 637 shares at 872.62p and buying 628 at 873.878p, leaving her with 1,995 shares. That is a much smaller signal than the executive filings, but it still fits the same day’s pattern. The board was not stepping away from the stock. It was, in aggregate, leaning into it.

What our scoring likes here, and why it does not do the work for you

Our scoring leans on three things in this case: the chief executive role, the cluster of multiple insiders trading the same name within a month, and the size of the filing relative to the company, which came in at about 0.06% of market value for Burnett’s main buy. Telecom Plus sits in the small and mid-cap band where insider information has historically been least priced in, and that is part of why the name screens well. The score is not the story. It is a way of saying the filing is not random noise.

The company also sits in our “sweet-spot” cohort bucket for chief-executive buys at EUR 300 million to EUR 1 billion names. That bucket has a sample size of 2,278, with a 51.9% 90-day win rate and a 6.16% average return over 90 days, plus a 59.99% average return over 365 days. That is historical cohort data for a role-and-size bucket, not a forecast and not a promise about Telecom Plus. It tells you that this kind of filing has had a workable track record in a similar part of the market. It does not tell you that this one will work.

The business still has to earn the right to rerate

Telecom Plus has a straightforward pitch and a hard execution problem. The pitch is that households will take more than one service if the bundle is priced and managed well enough. The execution problem is that energy, broadband and mobile each have their own churn dynamics, and the company has to keep the bundle attractive without giving away too much margin. That is why the August update mattered so much. If multiservice customer growth is still running ahead of the annual target, the market can at least argue that the bundle is still working.

The company’s new five-year strategy targets doubling multiservice customers by FY31, supported by partner-network momentum and cross-selling. That is a real ambition, but it is also the kind of target that only matters if the company keeps converting growth into profit and cash. FY27 guidance of £80 million to £90 million adjusted pre-tax profit tells you the near-term earnings base is lower than FY26. The stock can still work from there, but only if the customer engine keeps turning and the market decides the June reset was too harsh.

The insider buying fits that debate because it came after the company had already acknowledged the lower earnings base. If the executives had bought before the June results, you would read it one way. Buying after the profit reset and after the August update is a different animal. It says they were willing to add stock once the market had already repriced the name and once the trading update had shown the customer engine was still moving in the right direction.

Why the peers matter more than the headline does

The UK utilities and multiline services space has spent the year digesting normalised earnings after the energy-price volatility of prior years. That matters because Telecom Plus is not being judged in a vacuum. Centrica and BT Group have both had to explain their own versions of normalisation, with Centrica talking about stabilised retail EBITDA and BT pointing to fibre-build progress. They are different businesses, but the comparison is useful because it shows how the market is treating defensive cash generators that still have to spend to defend their franchises.

Telecom Plus sits somewhere between those worlds. It has utility exposure, but it also has telecom and insurance cross-sell. It has a recurring revenue feel, but it still has to win households one by one. That makes the stock more sensitive to customer-growth evidence than a pure utility and more sensitive to margin pressure than a pure subscription platform. The August update gave the market a reason to believe the growth story was not broken. The insider filings gave it a reason to think management believed that too.

The broader UK market backdrop has not been especially forgiving. Interest-rate expectations still matter, sector rotation has been choppy, and the FTSE 250 context has left utilities mixed rather than cleanly bid. In that kind of tape, a stock that has already been cut on a profit reset can bounce quickly on any sign that the operating story is intact. Telecom Plus did exactly that after the update. The insider cluster then arrived as confirmation, or at least as a willingness to own the rebound rather than just talk about it.

The cluster is useful because it is specific

This was not one director tidying up a vesting schedule and calling it a day. Our cluster data shows 3 distinct insiders, 12 recent declarations, and a run of executive buys concentrated around 21 August. Stuart Burnett appears repeatedly in the recent declarations, and Nick Schoenfeld is there alongside him. That concentration matters because it reduces the chance that you are looking at a one-off administrative event with no broader meaning. It is still not a guarantee. It is just more informative than a lone print.

The size also matters. Burnett’s main filing alone was about EUR 493,175 in euro-normalised value, and the net increase in his holding was 81,153 shares. Schoenfeld’s net increase was 84,640 shares. Those are not token amounts for a company with a market value of about EUR 787.6 million. They are meaningful additions to personal exposure, and they came after the company had already told the market that FY27 profit would be lower than FY26. That is why the filing deserves attention even if you are sceptical of insider buying as a category.

The read breaks down if you treat the buys as a substitute for operating evidence. They are not. Telecom Plus still has to show that the first four months of FY27 were not a temporary burst and that the 10% multiservice target can keep holding. It also has to prove that the lower profit guidance is a reset, not the start of a longer de-rating. The executives can buy stock and still fail to deliver the operating numbers. Markets have seen that movie before.

What to watch after the filings settle

The next real test is not whether the stock can hold the post-update bounce for a few sessions. It is whether the company can keep showing multiservice customer growth that stays ahead of the annual target while the market digests the lower FY27 profit range. If that happens, the August buying will look like management leaning into a reset that proved too severe. If it does not, the filings will look like a well-timed expression of confidence that never translated into a better earnings path.

You should also watch whether the market keeps focusing on the June drawdown and the buyback, or whether it starts to re-rate the name on the five-year strategy and the customer-growth cadence. Telecom Plus has already told you the near-term profit base is lower. It has also told you the bundle is still growing. The insider cluster says the board is willing to own that version of the story with real money, not just words. The next update will tell you whether the market agrees.

The company’s own numbers will matter more than the filings from here. The stock is around the point where a decent operational run can still repair a lot of June damage, but only if the customer metrics keep doing the work and the profit reset does not keep widening. That is the setup now, and the next trading update will be the first clean check on whether the August buying was early or merely brave.

This is not investment advice.