NOL

I just read recently that Ng Yat Chung is slated to take over from Ron Widdows as CEO of NOL later part of the year. Mr Ng is from Temasek but I believe he has spent the most part of his working life in the SAF. In fact he was CDF and left SAF in 2007. I remember he gave a press interview soon after he joined Temsasek as MD for Portfolio Management during the Global Financial Crisis. Then, he defended the the investment by Temasek into Merrill Lynch by saying that the "jury is still out" when the value of the orginal investment plunged. Temasek subsequently divested all the holding in BOA (when Merrill Lynch was acquired by BOA) in the early part of 2009 at a substantial loss.

Without a deep understanding of the container business and the necessary commercial background, I find it a very awkward appointment. The shipping container business is highly cyclical and he may be just lucky to catch a "good" wind. Other than that, I do not forsee how he can bring NOL to the next stage.

Luckily, I have divested all my NOL shares months ago.

May 2011

The last two to three weeks have been hectic and exciting. Attended a few rallies to get a feel of the atmosphere. Now, it is back to business. Expect the following dividends in May 2011. I did not invest or divest after the recovery from massive earthquake in Japan

StarHub
KeppelCorp
SBSTransit
SPH
FirstReit
SuntecReit
AscendasIndia
StarHill Global
LMIR
SriTrang
Wilmar

Seven Immutable Laws of Investing

I came across this in an article. Although I have came across this many times before, I still thought that it will be a good idea to put it in here so that I can constantly remind myself especially when my fingers get itchy.

I have loaded SIA, SriTrang and Mewah last week during the Fukushima nuclear scare. Also unloaded my SGS Bonds ssince I got the interest payment and the yield shot up recently. I will consider going in again if the yield drop to reasonable level.


The Seven Immutable Laws of Investing.

1. Always insist on a margin of safety
2. This time is never different
3. Be patient and wait for the fat pitch
4. Be contrarian
5. Risk is the permanent loss of capital, never a number
6. Be leery of leverage
7. Never invest in something you don’t understand

Rearranging my Portfolio

Over the last eight weeks, I have taken the initiative to divest my investments in Capitaland and reinvest the returns into Wilmar, Olam and Oceanus.

I have come to view investment in property counters to be difficult in view of the fact that earnings are typically masked by large sum of revaluation gain. With the spectre of property price controls locally and in China, I decided to get out of this counter completely.

My investment in Wilmar has been less than timely as I currently suffering from a small paper loss but I firmly believe that I should be able to reap some benefits when the prices of oil seeds stablized at a profitable level for the manufacturer. I am starting to understand Wilmar business and I believe scale is of utmost importance in such an industry albeit a bit similar to OEM contract manufacturing where Foxconn emerges the clear winner. Wilmar do dabble recently in property development in China,but I believe this a side issue and will not be its major focus.

As for Olam, I basically took the opportunity of a bad analyst report that drive down prices to acquire it at a more reasonable. My timing is not perfect though. I particularly like Olam for what they are providing eg soft commodities against the spectre of increasing world population and rising comsumption patterns.

I made small investment in Oceanus (a counter which I investigated and reject previously) as I believe the price is now reasonable and the business model of
shifting to processed abalones make more sense to me. In any case, I am still hedging my bet on this one by making only a small investment at this stage.

All in all, I have built a portfolio of commodities related companies over the last 2 months by divesting away my property counter (Capitaland)

I am looking forward to receive dividends from the following this month:-

SGSBonds
UOB Pref Share
OCBC Pref Share
K-Green
LMIR
CitySpring

K-Green

Key Statistics for FY2010

Profit After Tax (from date of listing to 31 Dec 2010)  -   $8.7million
EPU - 1.39cts
NAV - $1.16
DPU - 4.31cts
Annualized Distribution Yield - 7.9% (based on share price $1.07)
Adjusted NAV - $1.11 (excluding new units issued for Trust-Manager Fees and distribution payable)
Total Liability -  $35.892 million
Trust Manager's Fees - $2.305 million (from date of listing to 31 Dec 2010)

Currently half of the Trust Manager Fees is paid in terms of issuing new units

Property Cooling Measures

The government unveiled a spate of proprty cooling measures yesterday. It hit the Banks and Property counters. As I owned both DBS and Capitalland in my portfolio, I have also taken a hit.

But I am happy with the measures. With significant exposure to DBS, the last thing I want to see in SIngapore is a property bubble eventually wrecking the banks. If you look at Ireland or Spain, you see how bad that can be.

SPH

SPH just released their Q1FY11 results. Net profit attributable to shareholders was at $102M (about 29.3% less than the corresponding period last year). This is expected because there is no more contribution from SKY@eleven.

However, I made some quick calculation that noticed that Net profit attributable to shareholders in Q4FY10 was only 75M. ( I believe there is no contribution from SKY@eleven for this period also).

So, things are not so bad as it may seems.

Net earnings per diluted share is 6 cents. Doing a linear projection for the whole year, it would be 24 cents per diluted share per year.

With rental income from Clementi Mall coming in at the later stage of the year, this may trend up a little. SPH probably have overpaid for Clementi Mall, but with interest rate at a record low and will stay low for a while, it will mitigate some of the mistakes.