BHP Billiton - Change of name to BHP Group

[idpickering]

Following shareholder approval, BHP Billiton Limited and BHP Billiton Plc have changed their names to BHP Group Limited and BHP Group Plc, respectively, effective 19 November 2018.

BHP Group Plc's ticker on each of the LSE and JSE will change to "BHP" on 23 November 2018.

In connection with the name change, on 23 November 2018, BHP Group Plc's ISIN will change to GB00BH0P3Z91 and SEDOL will change to BH0P3Z9.

https://www.investegate.co.uk/bhp-billi ... 00058330H/

[Gengulphus]

How tedious... It creates a load of scattered updates I need to make in my records, especially to tickers, and if I miss some simply by not immediately remembering that they're there, I'll encounter problems later when I eventually spot that a spreadsheet isn't updating correctly, or that it's complaining that I've tried to match a sale of one share to a purchase of another, or other similar problems. Nothing major, but there will be a load of scattered bits of unexpected admin work triggered by noticing that something isn't right, or rather worse, errors caused by failing to notice something that isn't right... And while I accept that sometimes, shareholders have to accept such extra admin work for the benefit of the company, and that name changes can be to the company's benefit if they alter its image in some significant way or (very rarely, but I've encountered it once) are legally required, but I cannot see that a change from "BHP Billiton" to "BHP Group" does anything like that...

Gengulphus

[SuperCally]

And if that weren’t tedious enough, I now have to revise my internal Aide-Mémoire from Bacon Lettuce Tomato to Brake Horse Power...

[idpickering]

It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. We are but very small share holders in the grand scheme of things.

Ian

[kempiejon]

And if that weren’t tedious enough, I now have to revise my internal Aide-Mémoire from Bacon Lettuce Tomato to Brake Horse Power...

Or back to Broken Hill Proprietary of 1885 or so. https://www.bhp.com/our-approach/our-history

[Arborbridge]

I agree: how tedious.

It may have no knock on effect, but it may. That is, various apps which download prices or whatever, now have to alter their tickers. Waste of effort, but of course BLT won't know about, or care about, the inconvenience they inflict on third parties.

Arb.

[monabri]

Does the change " add value", if not, why spend money on rebranding and all the other non trivial costs?

[minerjoe]

well they sold off the "Billiton" bit - so doesn't make sense to be called BHP Billiton any more

[TUK020]

And if that weren’t tedious enough, I now have to revise my internal Aide-Mémoire from Bacon Lettuce Tomato to Brake Horse Power...

Or back to Broken Hill Proprietary of 1885 or so. https://www.bhp.com/our-approach/our-history

Or Browning High Power if you are into pistols

[Arborbridge]

well they sold off the "Billiton" bit - so doesn't make sense to be called BHP Billiton any more

The ticker "BLT" didn't make sense for a company called BHP Billiton either - so why didn't they leave BLT as the ticker and leave us all in peace?

Arb.

[midgesgalore]

It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. We are but very small share holders in the grand scheme of things.

Ian

Hi Ian, hope it's not too stormy in the northern Isles.
Related to what Gengulphus posted ...
You are correct, it shouldn't bother you much if you remember to make changes to the HYPTUS digital look data sheet from "BLT" to "BHP" on 23 November 2018 and as long as digitallook remember to do it too (oh and also the guys you select to provide the dividend info).
Maybe no look November will save us though, ha ha ha!

I have also seen previous chart share price history taking a few weeks to update for a new company name change on the HL site (if you like to see that kind of thing). I remember it took a while for "SL." SP chart history to become "SLA". Slightly more complicated story there though.

Happy days, midgesgalore

[idpickering]

It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. We are but very small share holders in the grand scheme of things.

Ian

Hi Ian, hope it's not too stormy in the northern Isles.
Related to what Gengulphus posted ...
You are correct, it shouldn't bother you much if you remember to make changes to the HYPTUS digital look data sheet from "BLT" to "BHP" on 23 November 2018 and as long as digitallook remember to do it too (oh and also the guys you select to provide the dividend info).
Maybe no look November will save us though, ha ha ha!

I have also seen previous chart share price history taking a few weeks to update for a new company name change on the HL site (if you like to see that kind of thing). I remember it took a while for "SL." SP chart history to become "SLA". Slightly more complicated story there though.

Happy days, midgesgalore

Thanks for your post, and I'm glad to report that the weather up here in Orkney isn't all that bad, although it does get windy. The great views and quality of life more than make up for it.

I've never used HYPUS digitallook data sheet, and don't use their portfolio facility either now. I do use their screener though. My HYP is in my ISA held with Halifax, so that's my only way to see my HYP. I'm hoping Halifax will get their finger out with the name change.

Cheers,

Ian.

[Dod101]

Like Ian I have never used HYPTUSS and have no idea what it does. I do not have any record of the tickers either for any share. Platforms I think do that for me if I want to buy or sell. I have had name changes over the years but it has not bothered me in the slightest. Does all this record keeping make you a better investor, improve the investment outcome? I thought not.

Much ado about nothing.

Dod

[Arborbridge]

Well, thanks for the empathy guys.
No one said changing the ticker was some sort of insuperable problem, just that it is "tiresome", I think was the word. Why mess about with something which has worked OK, even if "BLT" always seemed a bit wayward for "BHP" - why cause the effort for all the authorities and individuals involved?

It's nothing like the nuisance which occurs with corporate changes such as SLA and presents: just one more elephant trap which might potentially go wrong.

Arb.

PS Ian and Dod may not be interested in keeping records, but both benefit from those which other people post and comment on, and the knowledge which has been accumulated by the effort of those posters. At the very least, strip out all the threads which include reference to past performance of shares, dividends or portfolios, and you wouldn't have nearly so much to comment on or criticise.
Those that can, do, but hold up their successes and failures for those who don't to criticise. Such is life.

[Raptor]

You are correct, it shouldn't bother you much if you remember to make changes to the HYPTUS digital look data sheet from "BLT" to "BHP" on 23 November 2018 and as long as digitallook remember to do it too (oh and also the guys you select to provide the dividend info).
Maybe no look November will save us though, ha ha ha!

I have also seen previous chart share price history taking a few weeks to update for a new company name change on the HL site (if you like to see that kind of thing). I remember it took a while for "SL." SP chart history to become "SLA". Slightly more complicated story there though.

Happy days, midgesgalore

Just to let you know I have posted on Financial Software to give Kiloran and IAAG a heads-up.

Raptor.

[Dod101]

I am not criticising those who hold voluminous records. I just do not see the point. If I thought there was a benefit I would do it myself. Neither can I criticise HYPTUSS since I do not know what it does to help. It obviously helps some and I may well be missing something but I am getting on fine without it.

On the subject of BHP, I cannot imagine that the Directors care very much about the apparent inconvenience they are putting their shareholders to. It has happened to me on a number of occasions (a change of name of one of my investments that is) but I do not recall it being tiresome, just make the change and move on.

Name changes always seem to me to be pointless unless for instance the name becomes downright misleading and since BHP Billiton has apparently sold the Billiton bit, maybe that is the case here.

Dod

[OZYU]

For investors own record keeping, it all hinges in the original design of one's own system.

At the very outset, since names and code changes are not that rare events, I decided to dissociate external codes/names from internal ones through a simple use of one for one 'friction' tables, a clutch plate if you want a broad analogy. Standard systems design/analysis stuff. You need a similar technique for some automatic sortings anyway if you import data. So they can change names and codes long as they want, it would then takes about two seconds to fix that way.


Generally easy to implement post original design too unless you have a mess of badly designed spreadsheets which don't use linked tables, pivots and slicers to the full, hence only enter data once and once only as you should.

Ozyu

Don't hold BLT

[Gengulphus]

Like Ian I have never used HYPTUSS and have no idea what it does. I do not have any record of the tickers either for any share. Platforms I think do that for me if I want to buy or sell. I have had name changes over the years but it has not bothered me in the slightest. Does all this record keeping make you a better investor, improve the investment outcome? I thought not.

Much ado about nothing.

I too have never used HYPTUS, and I don't dispute that record-keeping is much ado about nothing for you - you know your own circumstances far better than I do. But it most definitely isn't much ado about nothing for me, for the very real reason with only a bit under 25% of my HYP in tax shelters, I need (and indeed am under a legal obligation) to keep records for my tax return.

Gengulphus

[StepOne]

How tedious... It creates a load of scattered updates I need to make in my records, especially to tickers, and if I miss some simply by not immediately remembering that they're there, I'll encounter problems later when I eventually spot that a spreadsheet isn't updating correctly, or that it's complaining that I've tried to match a sale of one share to a purchase of another, or other similar problems. Nothing major, but there will be a load of scattered bits of unexpected admin work triggered by noticing that something isn't right, or rather worse, errors caused by failing to notice something that isn't right... And while I accept that sometimes, shareholders have to accept such extra admin work for the benefit of the company, and that name changes can be to the company's benefit if they alter its image in some significant way or (very rarely, but I've encountered it once) are legally required, but I cannot see that a change from "BHP Billiton" to "BHP Group" does anything like that...

Gengulphus

Hi Gengulphus,

You could always create your own key for identifying companies and use that in all your spreadsheets and then just create one lookup table to map your key to the genuine ticker. (That's if you need the ticker at all - I'm guessing you use it to pull prices using a macro?). I'm not sure I need to post this as I'm pretty sure it's an option you will have considered anyway, but posting anyway just on the off-chance and in case anyone else might be interested.

Cheers
StepOne

[Gengulphus]

How tedious... It creates a load of scattered updates I need to make in my records, especially to tickers, and if I miss some simply by not immediately remembering that they're there, I'll encounter problems later when I eventually spot that a spreadsheet isn't updating correctly, or that it's complaining that I've tried to match a sale of one share to a purchase of another, or other similar problems. Nothing major, but there will be a load of scattered bits of unexpected admin work triggered by noticing that something isn't right, or rather worse, errors caused by failing to notice something that isn't right... And while I accept that sometimes, shareholders have to accept such extra admin work for the benefit of the company, and that name changes can be to the company's benefit if they alter its image in some significant way or (very rarely, but I've encountered it once) are legally required, but I cannot see that a change from "BHP Billiton" to "BHP Group" does anything like that...

You could always create your own key for identifying companies and use that in all your spreadsheets and then just create one lookup table to map your key to the genuine ticker. (That's if you need the ticker at all - I'm guessing you use it to pull prices using a macro?). I'm not sure I need to post this as I'm pretty sure it's an option you will have considered anyway, but posting anyway just on the off-chance and in case anyone else might be interested.

Thanks. Agreed that it's an option, but it would involve quite a bit of work on my existing spreadsheets (*) - a good deal more than the changes required to them to deal with the change on a more ad hoc basis. It would of course be a solution to this ticker / name change and all future ones, whereas the ad hoc solution is only one to this ticker / name change, so it would eventually be less work overall - but ticker / name changes aren't all that frequent. So in terms of the use of my time, your solution requires a fairly large 'capital' outlay to obtain irregular and not-very-frequent 'income' type returns in the form of future 'cost' reductions. So far, I haven't found that bargain compelling and so have stuck with the ad hoc solution. And while the ad hoc solution is always a bit tedious, I'll generally accept that tedium reasonably happily if it's part of a bigger corporate action (e.g. Six Continents (SXC) changing its name & ticker to Intercontinental Hotels (IHG) as part of its demerger of Mitchells & Butlers) or I can see a reasonably concrete reason for the change. And even in cases like this one, I'll still accept it - but I do get a bit irritated in the process!

(*) I will totally agree with OZYU that my spreadsheets could have originally been designed much better! Basically, they, their purposes and my spreadsheet expertise have all grown over the many years since I started keeping my records in spreadsheets, and since I've acquired the required spreadsheet expertise, the job of redesigning and rewriting them from scratch (and testing the results thoroughly!) has always been too daunting in the light of other things I need or want to do...

Those many years are incidentally also a major part of the reason I don't use HYPTUS - I already had my spreadsheets going and working pretty well before HYPTUS first appeared. The other major part is that my spreadsheets deal with CGT calculations - not entirely automatically, but enough to greatly speed them up and make them less error-prone.

Gengulphus