Category Archive: Shares

Feb
02
2012

Research Reports on Singapore Listed Companies

Categories:

by Martin Lee

February 2, 2012

The different brokerage firms will produce their own in-house research reports on selected SGX-listed companies.

You can access the various research reports if you have a trading account with the respective brokerage firms.

Another way is to visit The Society of Remisiers website, which holds the research reports of all the brokerage firms.

However, it seems that they only store the reports for the last thirty days. Well, at least it is still quite useful to be able to find all the reports at one central location.

The website lists the research reports by the dates on which they are released, so it will be easier to find what you want using the search function.

In terms of usefulness, I will usually look at the data but ignore the target price and recommendation set by the analyst. :D

This post has no tag

Leave comment


Permanent link to this article: http://www.martinlee.sg/research-reports-on-singapore-listed-companies/

Jan
27
2012

Suspension of Pertama

Categories:

by Martin Lee

January 27, 2012

Pertama is no more. :(

Ok, I’m exaggerating it a little.

Back in June 2011, Pertama had proposed a delisting of the shares (at $0.65 a share) as it saw no need to maintain a listing status. The cash flow of the business was good, and it had no plans for any capital raising.

The free float of the shares was also very small with Harvey Norman Singapore Pte. Ltd. (“HNS”) and HNS’s subsidiary, Harvey Norman Ossia (Asia) Pte Ltd (“HNO”) collectively holding approximately 83% of the total number of issued shares. FMR LLC and Edward C. Johnson 3rd hold approximately 9%  of the total number of issued shares.

The proposal was shot down by minority shareholders at the EGM, and the shares continued to trade at a price lower than $0.65 with low transaction volumes.

The free float of the shares was in fact less than 10%, which meant that the shares had to be suspended from trading unless the company could increase the percentage of free float in the market.

As the majority shareholder had no intention to sell his shares and the company had no mandate to do a share placement to issue more shares, the shares of Pertama would have to be suspended from trading (starting from today).

A lot of retail investors would worry about such a suspension as they would not be able to get out of their positions.

Not me.

After my previous sucking thumb exercise and failure to add to my original purchase back in 2001, I did not hesitate this time. I managed to accumulate more Pertama shares since the general offer failed (By the way, this is one advantage of being a retail investor because an institutional investor will not be able to find enough shares to buy to make the exercise worthwhile).

As the majority shareholder Harvey Norman had made a previous exit offer, they are not allowed to make another one within a 12-month time frame. They had tried asking for a waiver from Securities Industry Council (SIC) to waive this requirement for them to make a voluntary general offer for all shares that they do not own but was rejected by SIC.

What is likely to happen is that Harvey Norman will make another general offer after the 12-month moratorium was up. And then Pertama will finally be delisted.

Such a buy and hold strategy (without being able to sell) might bore a lot of investors to tears, but having seated on this position for ten years, I’m happy to wait for another year. :)

Tags:

1 comment


Permanent link to this article: http://www.martinlee.sg/suspension-of-pertama/

Jan
17
2012

SGX My Gateway

Categories:

by Martin Lee

January 17, 2012

SGX has recently launched an online portal called My Gateway providing investment education for investors.

My Gateway provides market updates, recorded webcasts, calculation tools and information about the various products on SGX.

You can view historical charts of traded securities on SGX and there is also information about upcoming events and courses.

For now, stand up to win one of 5 iPads if you sign up to be on SGX’s investment updates mailing list.

My Gateway can be accessed here.

Tags:

Leave comment


Permanent link to this article: http://www.martinlee.sg/sgx-my-gateway/

Dec
16
2011

Tracking Holding of Shares in CDP

Categories:

by Martin Lee

December 16, 2011

Many people like to track their stock holdings via the brokerage platform that they bought their shares with.

As each platform will only tabulates the holdings based on the transactions you have executed with them, this could lead to inaccurate results and erroneous trades (example selling shares you don’t own).

Even if a person uses only one platform for all his trades, you can still be given the wrong information as the platform will not track corporate actions like share consolidation, stock splits, bonus issues and rights issues.

The correct way would be to track your holdings via the The Central Depository, which will give a true indication of your current stock holdings. This can be done simply via the online platform of CDP.

SGX has announced a revamp of this existing system, which will take about three years to complete.

Under the new system, Singapore’s stock brokerage firms will have access to your CDP account and your broker will be able to tell how many shares you have.

You can also choose to receive electronic version of the CDP statements instead of the physical copies that you are currently receiving. Now, that would really cut down on a lot of wasteful paper!

Tags: ,

Leave comment


Permanent link to this article: http://www.martinlee.sg/tracking-holding-of-shares-in-cdp/

Dec
14
2011

iShares Asia Local Currency 1-3 Year Bond Index ETF

Categories:

by Martin Lee

December 14, 2011

The iShares Asia Local Currency 1-3 Year Bond Index ETF was listed on SGX on 8th December 2011 last week.

The investment objective of iShares Barclays Capital Asia Local Currency 1-3 Year Bond Index ETF is to provide investment results that, before fees and expenses, closely correspond to the performance of the Barclays Capital Asia Local Currency Short Duration Bond Index in US dollar terms.

Being short duration bonds, the average yield to maturity is expected to be low, in the region of 2-4+%.

The ETF has a management fee of 0.35% p.a with a fund size of about US$9 million and uses sampling replication.

Even though the ETF is denominated in USD, the currency exposure of an investor of the ETF is really in the local currencies of the underlying Asian bonds. These include (as of 13th December 2011):

Thailand 25.15%
South Korea 24.93%
Malaysia 23.15%
Singapore 16.40%
Indonesia 4.98%
Philippines 4.02%
Hong Kong 1.38%

The returns of an investor would come from the bond returns as well as any gain or losses in the local currencies.

To give an example of why you are not exposed to the currency that an ETF is denominated in, say you have an ETF that invests into S$130 million worth of Singapore bonds. With 100 million shares, each share is worth US$1 (at an exchange rate of US$1 to S$1.30) and would have cost you S$1.30.

Assume that the value of the Singapore bonds remain unchanged but USD depreciates to US$1 to S$1. If the value of the ETF still remains at US$1, then yes, your shares would only be worth S$1.

However, the S$130 million worth of bonds should now be valued at US$130 million as the exchange rate is 1 is to 1. This means that each share would be worth US$1.30, a 30% appreciation in price. Valued in S$, your shares would still be worth S$1.30.

The main disadvantage of having a US$ denominated ETF is the spread you incur (through your bank or brokerage firm) every time you buy or sell the ETF.

You can find out more product information about this bond ETF here:

iShares Barclays Capital Asia Local Currency 1-3 Year Bond Index ETF

Tags:

Leave comment


Permanent link to this article: http://www.martinlee.sg/ishares-asia-local-currency-1-3-year-bond-index-etf/

Older posts «