As we covered here on the Fool last month, there is something funny going on with the Telstra Corporation Ltd (ASX: TLS) share price of late. Or should it be ASX: TLSDA?
Telstra shares are still trading on the ASX. But until this morning, one might have a hard time finding a pricing quote for TLS shares in recent days, the traditional ticker code that Telstra has always used.
That's because Telstra had been trading under a different ticker code for a while now. Investors wanting to look up the telco would have had to use the TLSDA code. So why the change?
Well, all of these shenanigans stem from the company's restructuring program, which is now completed as of today.
As the company outlined earlier this year, part of its T25 cost-cutting and structural strategy involves a corporate and legal restructuring. It will see Telstra Corporation Limited become Telstra Group Limited.
Nothing much will change for shareholders when the dust has settled. But it will see 'Telstra Group' technically become a holding company for Telstra's four underlying businesses, which will now be legally separated. These are ServeCo, InfraCo Fixed, Amplitel, and Telstra International.
Telstra and its ASX TLS ticker code get a shake up
Here's how management explained this move to shareholders in an ASX announcement:
The restructure was a key component of our T22 strategy and is also a key component of our new T25 strategy, announced last year. It is an important next step in our drive to increase the transparency of our infrastructure assets and to improve management focus on our infrastructure and customer businesses, and consequently provides us more flexibility to create additional value for you, our shareholders…
The restructure is an internal legal re-organisation and will not itself result in any immediate change to the underlying assets or business activities of the Telstra Group. It will provide us with more options and potential to realise additional value for Telstra Shareholders from our infrastructure assets.
So this explains why there have been separate Telstra ticker codes on the ASX. According to the company's schedule, 20 October was the last day that the TLS shares of the old Telstra Corporation traded on the ASX. After that date, the company moved to the TLSDA code under the name Telstra Group Limited.
There weren't two separate tickers for Telstra. Rather, the TLSDA code represented Telstra shares trading on a deferred settlement basis while the restructuring was underway.
But today marks the first day that Telstra Group Limited shares trade on the ASX on a normal basis. As such, the ticker code has returned to TLS. The TLSDA-coded shares will be settled on 3 November later this week.
So that's it for all of the ASX changes. But the company will technically complete this whole restructuring program on 1 January next year.
So shareholders can breathe a sigh of relief. This whole process is now pretty much finalised, and Telstra is back to its old ticker code from today onwards.
