French Lottery Winner

I was very heartened to read the below!

PARIS - Amid all the gloom over a stagnating economy, serial scandals and a surge in support for the far-right, France finally had a good news story to celebrate on Friday.
A man who scooped more than 72 million euros (S$122.8 million) on the Euro Millions lottery has decided to give 50 million of his jackpot to charity.
In what the Le Parisien tabloid hailed as "an incredible act of generosity," the unidentified winner from the Haute-Garonne area of southwestern France has said he will share his giveaway between around ten NGOs working on behalf of the disadvantaged.
Francaise des Jeux (FDJ), the organisation that runs the trans-national lottery in France, said the winner had asked to remain anonymous but media reported that he was single, in his 50s and does not have have any children.
"He has a strong sense of social solidarity and he believes in generosity," an FDJ spokesman said.

SingPost And Alibaba

SingPost And Alibaba announced a strategic investment by Alibaba Investment Limited into Singpost under which AIL will pay $312.5m for 30m ordinary shares held in treasury and another 190m new shares. Upon completion, Alibaba Investment Limited will command about 10.35% in SingPost. The new shares issued will be at a price of $1.42 which about 8% t the last traded price of $1.54.

I view this as positive for SingPost effort to grow the e-commerce space in SEA with a formidable backer in Alibaba.

SAT 4QFY2014

Revenue                                    = $434.6m
Operating Profit                        = $41.7m
PATMI                                     = $42.6m
Underlying Profit From Ops     = $43.5m
Underlying Net Margin             = 10%
PATMI Margin                         = 9.8%
Debt-to-Equity                          = 0.08
EPS                                           = 3.8 cents
NAV                                         = $1.27
Cash & Cash Equiv                   = $339.6m

Key costs are Staff Costs ($188.8m) and Raw Materials (91.8m) . A mediocre quarter, in my opinion.Dividend was cut from 10cts to 8cts.

Olam

I am actually quite baffled by Olam making an exceptional gain of $271m in Q3FY2014 merely by reclassifying an investment eg Purple Circle from previously being "an investment in an associate company" to being "an available for sale" financial asset. Basically, the asset previously was not marked for market but now is. To me, this is just financial accounting and it does not change a bit on how the company really is.Without this, PATMI is quite mediocre for the quarter.

BTW, I have let go half of my shares at $2.23 and all by warrants.The decision to keep half of my shares still in the company is basically twofold. Olam greatest challenges are execution and credit access. With Temasek now prominently in the picture, access to credit should be less of an issue.What remains is execution. We will see. Also at current market prices, I do not see any good investment to make if I get out completely.Olam's NAV is currently at around $1.64 so the P/B still look reasonable. Of course we must take NAV with a grain of salt and not to trust it completely.

SingPost - An unlikely winner todate!

I invested in Singpost about three years ago at an avg price of $1.12 amidst all the gloomy pronouncements of shrinking postal mail volume in face of all the new technology media info transmission. After, CNY and Christmas greeting cards have practically disappeared. Companies and government orgs cut down drastically on sending physical mail updates by offering services that do check online DIY etc. However, I noticed that teenagers will making small purchases over various websites and gotten the packages delivered via the postal system. I do not have a clue how big or important this is going to be for singpost but thought it may be able to make up for the declining postal mail.The recent performance of signpost share price seems to have vindicated my judgment but of course nobody can really tell the future. In the meantime, I have collected close to three years of dividends.So, in the final message, take  conventional wisdom with a grain of salt when it comes to stock investing.

CitySpring Q4FY2014

Cash Earnings                                   = $15.3m
(FY2014 = $60m vs FY2013 = $95m)
Net Loss After Income tax                = $3,704,000
City Gas (Customers)                        = 690,000
Net Assets                                          = $336,334,000
Borrowings                                        = $1,297,728,000
Cash & Cash Equiv                            = $304,327,000
DPU                                                    = 0.82 cents

Alibaba IPO

Finally this is the much awaited IPO for the year.It will definitely loom large in size comparable to facebook or even bigger. Here are some of the statistics. It handled $248b value of merchandise  through Taobao and Tmall, processed about $519b of payments through Alipay, raked in revenues around $8b and  made $3.5b in profits. Unlike Facebook,WhatsApp, Twitter etc, this one actually brought in in excess of $3.5b profit last year!!!It even have a online bank Yuer Bao that put monies in money markets to allow customer to enjoy a higher interest rate than traditional banks.

Softbank owned around 35%, Yahoo around 22%,Jack Ma around 9% with other institutional investors like Silver Lake Partners, VC Yuri Milner,Temasek (I think) plus Jack Ma's original partners.It think Temasek got in at around $32b valuation of Alibaba when it was trying to pare down Yahoo 40% stake.

It is repeatedly touted that the company to be valued around $130b to $230b. Even at the lower end, it will be comparable to facebook IPO.

Will I ever going to purchase Alibaba share at these prices???At the higher end, it will sell for 70X last year earnings.At the lower end, around 35X to 40X last year earnings. The company faces challenges in mobile as on one fifth of its merchants have set up shop in WeChat owned by Tencent whereas Alibaba mobile messaging app Laiwang is still a flop at this point.Big merchants are pushing for their own online shops, JD.com and others is snapping on its heels etc.Tencent and Baidu are pushing aggressively in online commerce etc.

Although I am positive about Alibaba compare to most over-hype social media companies, I still think that the IPO price is going to be excessively high. Most companies will try to IPO high to extract maximum mileage.

However, Jack Ma has definitely come a long way from being a English language teacher in Hangzhou.

SembCorp 1QFY2014

Revenue                       = $2,627M
Net Profit                     = $185M
EPS                             =  10.3 cents

Profit From Operations
Utilities                         = $91.6M
Marine                          = $74.3M
Urban Dev                    = $19.5M
Other Businesses          = $8.3M
Corporate                    = ($8.9M)
Total                            = $184.8M

Financial Indicators
NAV                             = 3.04
Interest Cover               = 17.8
ROE                             = 13.5%
ROTA                          = 7.5%
Gearing Ratio               = NET CASH

Asia Pay TV Trust 1QFY2014

Subscribers                                                       ARPU (TWD)
Basic Cable TV                        756K               538
Premium Cable TV                  126K               200
Broadband                                181K               527

Revenue                           $77,204K
APTT EBITDA               $49,771K
 Nett Assets                     $1,253,163K
NAV                                87 cents
Total Borrowings            $942m
Total Interest Rate Cost  4%
Gearing                            39.5%
Interest Cover                  4
Gross Debt/EBITDA       4.8X

LMIR 1QFY2014

Gross Revenue                                  = $27,911,000
NPI                                                    = $31,071,000
Distributable Amount                       = $16,741,000
DPU                                                  = 0.68 cents
Net Assets                                        = $1,109m
Total Debt                                         = $475m
NAV                                                  = 45 cents
Gearing                                              = 26.7%
Portfolio (Valuation)                         = $1,513m (31th Dec 2013)

SoilBuid Trust 1QFY2014

Revenue                                 = $16,839,000
NPI                                         = $14,194,000
Distributable Income              = $12,606,000
DPU                                        = 1.562 cents
Borrowings                              = $275,771,000
NAV                                        = 81 cents
Aggregate Leverage                = 29.1%
All-In Interest Rate                  = 3.12%
Interest Cover                          = 5.9
Weighted Avg Debt Maturity  = 2.36 years
S&P Ratings                            = BBB-