[Crap Post] 2 Investing Thoughts i have recently

 

To start off, the post will be offensive to certain people who are reading it. Hence if you cannot afford to be offended then please refrain from reading further.

However, if you feel that you might have been offended after reading then i truly apologize.

1st Investing Thought (Least Provoking)

Pacific Basin 3rd Quarter Trading Update (Hkex 2343)

Pacific Basin released its 3rd Quarter Update on 13 October 2021. Details can be found here

Just in case you have forgotten, Pacific Basin is a company that operates dry bulk, mainly in the Handysize and Supramax segment. It is the largest listed company for Handysize.

The rates for 3rd quarter results came in to be widely in-line with my own expectations. The rates have always been lagging the spot market this year due to lag time. This is not an issue as in the event a down market happens, the rates would have reversed.

(Handysize coming in at 29k for October but Spot is around 30k)

(All in all still the best quarter seen in last 13 years)

How about earnings? In one of the slides Pacific Basin has shown how to model their earnings and used an example of September 2021. The underlying earnings came out to around 90 million USD for September 2021. Based on my estimations, the earnings should be around 235 million USD for Q3. To put into retrospective, earnings in June 2021 came in at 53 million USD. Hence it is an improvement of 69%.

This means that assuming such numbers hold and do not improve, full year earnings should come in at 1.04 HKD. With 0.78 HKD of earnings coming in 2H. Do note that this is a very conservative estimate.

As as result the current price will indicate a PE of around 3.4. If the 2nd half earnings PE are used then it would be less than 2.3. Of course this would be a rather bullish estimate because usually the 1st half of the year is a traditionally weaker part of year for dry bulk.

Random Person might ask: So u talk so much cock liao. Can buy or not?

Broken Answer: Yea can buy, but can make money? i think chance of making money is there but risk is high lor where got so simple make money.

A more proper Answer: 2023 will be a new ball game for dry bulk with rules of lower emissions which means that speed of vessels will be slower. This will benefit newer vessels that emit lesser. There will also be a need to customize older ships or to replace them all together. 

The supply of new-built dry bulk remains low when compared to the previous such peak of 2008. The covid problem and supply chain disruption remains strong. Winter is coming there will be increased usage of energy. 

I believe rates of 2022 will be lower than 2021 but not much lower. Then in 2023, rates would likely sustain compared to 2022 due to the rules. If such theory applies then the PE is probably too cheap especially when considering that the average age of its fleets are 12 and 10. Which means that they can run for more years as average fleet duration is 20-25 years. Even if they are not being run, they have a resale value which has been increasing this year.

(Black Line refers to 10 years Handysize.)

(Price increased from around 7.63 at January 2021 to 15.43 in October 2021)

2nd Investing Thought (More Provoking)

Sir, are you a troller, investor or an opportunist?

Recently someone sent me a link to attend a Uni-Asia Presentation held by Maybank on 4 October 2021. 

(Ok sounds interesting, lets register and see what they say)

Unsurprisingly that Maybank had such connection as they were the ones who did the private placement back then in 2019 for Uni-Asia.

(Fun Fact: Investment is spelt as Investmet)

I chanced upon a question asked by one of the participants. I did not manage to capture all questions asked by this person but he probably asked closed to 10 or even more questions.

From the way of the writings, he/her is probably from a group or a company or some clandestine alliance. As anyone know from zoom, you can register any name u would like from Donkey Kong to Mario Kart to Andy Lau hence the name does not really matter.

I took offense to the suggestion of share buy back up to 3% every 6 months. Well it is not a bad suggestion when first looked as it increases the share price due to the increased demand. However, i am unsure if you are a troller/investor or an opportunist.

As a troller you would probably want to troll the management whenever u have the opportunity to interact with them. Hence you would throw such a curve ball suggestion. However, such suggestions should be tabled during board meetings or during agms. I believe an info session is not the best way to show such question. What would other attendees think? Idk. It would be better if you have emailed the investor relations or the company this suggestion even if it is correct.

As an investor, i would want to see the company grow. Of course, share buyback is good, but for a company that has made only profit in 3 of its past 5 full FY, are we jumping the gun too quick with a buyback on the back of a decent 1st half result?

I would be more happy if the returns are in the form of dividends and the profits can be used to generate future growth as an investor. After all, if the company is really worth what it is worth, the value will be reflected in long term whether via capital gains or dividend distributions

(Company actually lost more money than made money in last 5 Full FY)

As an opportunist, you would usually want to seek for a catalyst. Unfortunately there has been no catalyst so far apart from a rosy business outlook for the company which is not a catalyst. 

Therefore we need to create a catalyst so share price rise and a lot of people wanna rush in to buy then we can happily dump to the kumgongs as we have loaded plenty previously at lower prices. 

All in all, i just feel that the suggestion has been tabled at the wrong place.

Lastly to end of on a more serious note, the average age of Uni-Asia Dry Bulks are 8.6 years. 

Albeit a lesser operating scale compared to Pacific Basin, Pacific Basin with 13% Handysize ships in 20+ years and an average age of 12 managed an average of 24,350 charter rate in 3Q 2021. Hence as mentioned in 1 of my previous post, i would be disappointed if Uni-Asia did not hit at least 20k in 3Q 21.

Relating Squid Game to Lessons in Investing

 Without a doubt, squid game has become the most talked about show in recent weeks. With everyone getting into such genre again. The previous time where there was a hype was when Alice in Borderlands was released but it did not generate this level of hype. 

While watching the show, i saw some relation to investing that i would like to share about

1) Joining the game because simply there is no choice

Pretty self explanatory as the contestants joined due to various financial debts they have and needed the money to solve their problems. 

This is somewhat similar to investing as people who do investing are those that need the money to help them in their mid term to long term aims. If one is simply rich enough such that investing does not matter then they would probably not do any investing and instead focus on living their lives.

1 thing i have always like to tell my peers is cause i got no choice thats why i have to invest...its not like i was blessed with high pay or anything near that.

2) Game 1 relating to Markets and Fluctuations

Those who have watched will know the rules hence i will not bother explaining further. As i watched the show i am reminded of how it is associated with shares.

(Crashed but it recovered eventually)

In the initial stages there is rush of excitement. Shares go up. Then something scary happens and a lot of people panic and get shot. Similarly in the stock market, the share price goes down as everyone panics. However like in the game itself, those who calm themselves and complete the game will benefit as those who can hold out, buy more and stay in the markets will be rewarded.

The old man being the first person to continue the progress after the wave of deaths did not hit me as any stock reference when  i watched the show. However in recent days , i have found a reference to this.

Perhaps now that someone has took the courage to run up, it could be a time for people to follow.

(Could this be the start of the comeback? Or could we be walking into a trap?)

3) Glass Bridge Game

In this game, everyone wants to be in the behind numbers and not the front numbers. This is quite similar in investing when you see people asking xxx can buy? xxx can sell? xxx got what catalyst? 

Then when you give an answer people be like you buy liao? your entry price is what? sure can buy bo? buy liao will up or not scared drop.

Well everyone just waits for someone to lead and see if they survive before following. 

But truth be told, in investing, everyone is crossing a different bridge and how well each person crosses the bridge is based on the expertise that each person have.

Of course, if you fully copy the steps in time, you will be able to cross that bridge. But you would never know if that person will be with you when you need to cross another bridge. In an investment journey, there will be a lot of stock decisions needed to be made and it is like crossing many different bridges

A Profitable SG Tech Firm : Anacle Systems Limited (HKEX:8353)

(Its Office)

Perhaps not known to many people, a tech firm has been listed on the Gem Board of Hong Kong Stock Exchange since December 2016

Anacle Systems Limited is a company that has business in 4 segments

1) Providing Real Estate Solutions

-This is in the form of its Simplicity software that has well established clients such as Capitaland and SPH Reit

-It is a real estate / facilities management platform that is available in traditional software sales and Software as a Service (SaaS)

-It allows for monitoring of various factors such as workflow automation, gross turn-over, rental billing etc. 

(Monitoring Revenue and Rental)

2) Providing Smart Utilities Management Soluitions

-This is in the form of Starlight, its water and energy management solution.

-It is available in traditional hardware and software sales, and via SaaS as well.

-Its customers include Jewel and Electricity Retailers in Singapore's Open Electricity Market

(Monitoring Consumption)

3) myBill Utilities Revenue Assurance

-This is its 'utilities revenue assurance SaaS Platform, which is the 2nd largest in Singapore. The market leader being Singapore Power, a brand Singaporeans will not be unfamiliar with.

-Its client in this field is I-Switch and the revenue model currently serves more than 100,000 consumers

(Example of myBill)

4) Online Venue Booking Portal

-This is in the form of its largest venue sharing portal(http://www.bigspacemonster.com)

-It has both a mix of venues provided by private sector as well as public sector.

-Whether u would want to find a place to stay, a place to have a birthday party, a place to have a team bonding session, a place to exercise or a place to have a meeting, a place to conduct your classes or simply a place to practice presentation skills. You could look up the site and find a place to rent.

(The website itself)

What I like about the Company

1) Growth Opportunities

-The amount of growth opportunities presented to the company are plenty. It has a good orderbook(over 40 million with over 20 million near term) for its Simplicity Platform and its presence of usage by major operators are a show of its quality.

-Its Smart meter the Tesseract has been shortlisted for the smart meter project which enables it to tender for the roll out in 2023 and beyond. With 200 000 in 2023 and an estimated 1.4m between 2024 to 2026, there is a market for its product should it be successful in its tender.

-Singapore Power contract ending with PUB and City Gas which gives gives a chance to Anacle to compete for the billing segment using mybill

From my point of view, i could at least see where the growth could come from.

(Its growth drivers from its webinar slides)

2) Increasing Revenue over the years

-Across a longer term horizon, the company has shown growth even though the growth is not consistent across years.

(Its profitability trend)

What I dislike about the Company

1) Valuations

It is currently trading at about 11 to 12 PE, a company that is trading at this valuation is very cheap considering that SaaS companies are trading at negative PE.

When looking at the Price to Sales, Anacle has a sales of 22.1 million SGD and a market cap of 141.39 million HKD. This gives a price to sales of 1.11 which is fair cheaper than companies like Weimob(around 9) and China Youzan (around 9)

However considering that it made only 2.1m in the latest FY 2020 and around 0.9m is from government grant, it all adds up to a company that has very low bottom-line and has a record of very volatile earnings.

2) Competition

The competitors in the market are huge competitors such as Singapore Power which are well established and well backed. While the opening up of the market will provide opportunities, it remains to be seen if these opportunities are 'opened' for show or if they are really awarded to smaller players.

Conclusion

This company is an interesting company that i will keep an eye on. However, it is a company that at the current moment i will not consider to invest into. 

While i do not deny that it is a company that could be a multi bag should it be able to scale up and increase its revenue tremendously due to the ease of SaaS model as well as the potential customer gains and market share it can achieve, it is a company that has yet to pay any dividends (due to its stage where it is trying to grow).

Lastly, from its ipo price of $0.81, it has fallen to $0.35 today and it is probably justified as its unprofitability in FY 2019 due to its china expansion has erased the small profits made in the previous FYs and recent FYs.

When its profitability is stable is probably when it will fit my appetite. Till then, it will only be a company to keep tabs on.

(September Results) How i would invest in the singapore stock market if i had 100k of spare money

 

September 2021 Returns: -2.55%

Year to Date Returns: 53.57%

Since Inception (9 Sept 2020) Returns: 69.51%

A negative performance is recorded in September. Thankfully it is a negative performance as i believe it has been rising way too much in the previous months.

Quick Thoughts about the major detractors of the portfolio

1) Yanlord Land - Showed slowing sales and with the Evergrande fears this has resulted in a sell down in china property counters.

Personally i have spoken about my dim prospects of China Property Development. 

However, the current exposure in the portfolio is around 10% which is acceptable and Yanlord has property management arm that is growing as well as investment properties on its balance sheet. 

These would serve as sufficient buffer for the company in the event of any firesale needed. The balance sheet is still  very healthy and they have also tendered for land in the 1st half of 2021 which signals they are not in distress.

This is supported by its 2026 bond trading at a steady price and at a relatively low coupon rate considered to the industry.

(Yanlord 2026 Bond Price)

2) Powermatic Data - All eyes on the results release in November. 

With record inventory as of previous financial results, will be interesting to see if it converts into revenue and profit. A delay in the distribution of the shares has affected its valuation a little in recent weeks. 

However, company still trades at a good valuation if the growth of 10-20% in the wireless business segment can be sustained and continued. The main risk will be the price increase of  Qualcomm products from 26 September 2021 and whether the price increase will affect demand for Powermatic moving forward.

(Announcement from Powermatic's Subsidiary Compex)

1 Counter on the list I expect to have a strong finish to the year

Uni-Asia Grp - Being a laggard in dry bulk rates, some relief can be seen that dry bulk rates have continued to be strong from July to September. As such it should finally be able to catch up to a higher rate with its renewals. With the 3Q update to be released in November, a 3Q rate that is below 20k will be considered as unacceptable.

The key risk will be any investment losses it might incur from Hong Kong Property not selling as well and any possible dark holes like ship fair value losses from demand shocks that can drive rates down towards the end of the year.

Barring that, management should have a healthy problem of what to do with the profit and cash flow from the segment.

Other than that, i am currently quite bearish with service sector of Singapore in general. The frequent switching of phrases would definitely put them on the front foot and it is 1 sector that i would not be looking to invest in based on a covid view on Singapore.

Close to full divestment of Wai Kee Holdings (Hkex: 610)

 

Followers of my portfolio that is mostly Hong Kong focused will know that i have held onto Wai Kee Holdings for quite a duration

Having been to its AGM back in 2019, i was pretty confident of the company's execution and plans. As they mentioned culture tourism, hong kong development projects as well as diversifying out of China for its expressway and toll operations.

(Slip of voting paper used for AGM Voting back in 2019)

However, in spite of the recent market developments in the property market, i realized that i have about 20% of exposure to the China Property Market in my portfolio. 10% being the light assets (Central China Duos which have been the delinquent duo year to date and Yuexiu Prop Service)

The other 10% has been in Wai Kee Holdings (A holding company for Road King and Build King)

Road King being its property development arm which derives a large bulk of its revenue Mainland China

Build King being a construction company which derives almost all its revenue in Hong Kong

As such, i have made the very tough decision to divest most of Wai Kee Holdings away, holding a token sum now.

Divestment Rationale

1) Property Development will only get tougher. As seen in the margins, it has been coming down for Road King even before the property saga has begun. Its cultural ventures that it has talked about when i was at the AGM back in 2019 has turned out to a huge impairment loss as the impact of Covid and low prices has took its toll. Moving forward, i believe low margins will be an increasing trend and expansion of volume will be limited by the gearing of the company.

2) Better chance of getting a higher return elsewhere. In lieu of a weakening property development results, one wound wonder where the returns will be for the company. While Build King has been doing well in 2020, it is also susceptible to lowering of margins in a competitive construction industry in Hong Kong even though it has been very good in maintaining margins. As such i do not see any growth in profits this year nor the next for Wai Kee which may have drove returns.

3) Dividend Cut. 0.3 price to book, 3.23 PE, not significant amount from revaluation of investment properties, this does not signify a dividend cut when payout ratio is less than 25%. However that is what Wai Kee has done this year. To put things in perspective, when it earned lesser in 2020 1H (after excluding one-offs) it kept its dividend at the same amount as 2019 1H.

4) Valuation Mispricing. The company has fallen by around 4% in the last 4 trading days. Compared to Road King (7%) , Sunac (30%), Logan Group (15%), KWG Group (14%), Central China (9%). I believe it has not been priced in that there could be a larger fall ahead.

 

Why i might be wrong to divest

1) Relative Resilience of Road King Bonds

Compared to Central China Bonds, Road King Bonds have been very resilient which currently indicates market's. In fact its 2024 bonds are trading at a premium.

2) Too Cheap to fall more

As the PE is already low enough, the only reason if it falls more will likely be liquidity at Road King. However, road king runs a hybrid highway and prop development structure, which means that they do have enough divestment strategies should the prop development arm run into problems. Also, they have not known to be overly aggressive in their strategy and have been diversifying by looking at south east asia highways (as evidenced by the Indonesian acquisition) 

3) Repeated purchase of shares

The owners have purchased 11.49% of shares of Wai Kee from NWS Holdings at a price of $4.64 on 3 April 2021. As such, it can be seen that there has been faith in the company's business from the owners themselves. Also, with around 11.49% stake left in Wai Kee for NWS Holdings, this could pave itself for a Wai Kee takeover in future.

In conclusion, I believe the company will be able to hold its ground in the recent rout, however it will probably be a couple of years of falling profitability in the propery development arm before there is an improvement in the latter years. 

I have not devised a concrete plan on what to do with the divestment proceeds yet although there are a couple of ideas floating around. However, the cash position following the divestment is around 20-25% which isn't a great deal to be frank. Therefore, in such periods, careful averaging vs new position adding would serve to be a big problem a relatively low cash position investor like me would have to ponder.

However, i have decided to add Johnson Holdings (4000 shares at $1.28 HKD) into the moomoo portfolio.

The 10% profit and run game on moomoo (Updated 14 September 2021)

 Disclaimer: Post is not sponsored by moomoo, its just me trying to grow my money after the initial deposit to get the free apple share.

Firstly, i apologize for not updating much these days on the progress as i have decided to leave the stocks in the portfolio running even if it ran up 10%.

(5000 Pacific Basin Shares still holding)

(Added 2000 shares on 17 August 2021 and have divested them all on 14 September 2021)
Did not talked about this as it was adding for fun as i realize i had a few hundred leftover after the adding of Pacific Basin which is the core.

(Current Progress, hoping to be able to keep up the good work with the next pick)

3 Picks on the radar currently

1) Johnson Holdings - Mentioned in previous post .

2) Karrie Intl (1050 HK) - Reasonable decent company but exposure to property could be a right stock in the wrong sector at this point of time.

3) Hyfusin (8512 HK) - Good Growth across quarters. However this is dependent on scented candle demand in Europe and US.

Another consideration

Take profit and spend on a new earbud.

   

Battle of the Cleaners (Hkex 1397 vs 1955)

Recently have been looking at a couple of small caps. 2 Small caps that I have glanced through would be Johnson Holdings (Hkex: 1955) and Baguio Green (Hkex: 1397).

(Jonhnson Holdings on the left and Baguio Green on the right)

Both companies operate in the same industry in Hong Kong, the cleaning and waste management industry. The main customers of the industry would be the government and customers with large facilities such as power stations and offices.

(Just in case you do not know what cleaners i am talking about)

Why the sudden interest? They just appeared on screeners hence took a glance at it.

Ratios Comparison

Year	2018		2019		2020
Company	Baguio Green	Johnson Holdings	Baguio Green	Johnson Holdings	Baguio Green	Johnson Holdings
Revenue	1429.5 m	1433.3m	1397.5 m	1784.9 m	1131.8 m	2767.4 m
Gross Profit	92.9 m	103.5m	70.5 m	121.1 m	63.5 m	283.8 m
Gross Profit Margin	6.49%	7.2%	5.0%	6.7%	5.6%	10.2%
Net Profit	16.4 m	21.8 m	-11.0 m	28.4m	51.4 m	188.5m
Net Profit Margin	1.1%	1.5%	-0.7%	1.5%	4.5%	6.8%
Liability to Asset Percentage	63.9%	64.6%	66.6%	56.2%	52.1%	49.1%
Return on Equity	6.5%	13.5%	-4.7%	9.47%	17.7%	38.5%
Return on Asset	2.35%	4.78%	-1.5%	4.15%	8.5%	19.6%

From a Financials Comparison, Johnson Holdings seem to have been able to increase their scale via their increase in revenue and maintain profitability compared to Baguio Green.

In 2020, both companies received employment support scheme which resulted in a much better result.

Baguio Green received 80 million while Johnson Holdings received 51.5 million. I find this surprising as Baguio Green has only 5255 employees and spends 890m on staff cost while Johnson Holdings has 13000 employees and spends 2252.3 million on staff cost.

On average, Johnson Holdings spends much on employee salary per staff, and the staff per revenue is lesser than Baguio Green. However, the gross profit margin of Johnson Holdings is much better.

Without the employment support scheme, profit before tax for Johnson Holdings will have improved by 2.6 times while for Baguio Green the losses will have deepen by 9.1 times

As such, Johnson Holdings would be a better company as it has showed the ability to improve its revenue over the past years and deliver a better gross profit. According to the group, this improvement in gross profit margin from 2019 to 2020 is due to successful cost control and changing its tendering approach to focus on more profitable contracts.

Whereas for Baguio Green, it has improved its gross margins as well and has attributed it to decrement in cost of services which was relatively higher than that in revenue especially to the cleaning segment.

As such, Johnson Holdings is currently trading at an adjusted PE of 6 while Baguio Green is trading at an adjusted PE of negative.

Number of Employees

Another way to assess the company's business scale will be the amount of employees. As it is a labour intensive industry, it can be assumed that the more people hired, the more projects will be undertaken. 

Company	Baguio Green	Johnson Holdings
Staff Count FY 2018	8715	8000
Staff Count FY 2019	7457	10000
Staff Count FY 2020	5255	13000

It can be seen that this staff count has been in line with an expanding revenue at Johnson while a falling revenue trend at Baguio.

As such, Johnson Holdings can be seen as the company with more potential for growth.

Key Risk (Johnson Holdings)

1) Ability to continue maintaining its margins.

2) Lack of disclosure of orderbook.  While disclosure is provided for transaction price allocated to remaining performance obligation for contracts with customers, expected orderbook to be fulfilled in the year ahead is not provided.

3) Breach of Occpuational Safety and Health Ordinance. Similar to construction industry, safety of workers is at the utmost importance and this can be seen in its competitor which is banned from tendering for 5 years due to a safety breach resulting in injury of employee.

(Losing of tender to another company, hey look its Johnson Holdings getting it)

This in particular can be a concern to Johnson Holdings as it has on-going litigations.

Baguio Green Opportunities

All is not doomed for Baguio Green as well, they have some positive rental reversions themselves.

(Reversions of 11 and 9 mil to 18 and 12 mil)

Their revenue in 1H 2021 is flat compared to 1H 2020.

Their numbers of employees have grown to 6084 as of June 2021 from 5255 at end 2020. 

Along with an expected orderbook of 620 million contract to fufill for the rest of this year, it is estimated that the revenue for this year will be higher than 2020 by around 10%

Lastly, with the passing of the waste charging bill on 26 August 2021 by the Hong Kong Government, a bill that has been debated for years and dragged on for a period of times. This gives Baguio Green some hope as it has been a player in the recycling industry for a while.

(Ready for the MSW Charging Bill Changes)

Conclusion

To conclude, Johnson Holdings is the better company but it comes with many inherent risk.

What is interesting is that in May 2021, both companies were awarded the same project, but Johnson Holdings had a way higher tender price that was accepted.

1 would probably ask if its even possible that the revenue has increased so much. Well interestingly I believed it was a joke as well and after looking up, I realize it is possible.

 

(Same contract but it has increased by around 50% in value)

(Another example of an increase in contract value, 63m in 2017, 118m in 2019, 284m in 2021)

However, as there has not been as much government tender renewals in 2021 due to a huge amount being awarded in 2020 already, the company’s new order book victory will rely on the semi government and private sectors.

Most government renewals would happen at 2H 2022 and in 2023.

Ultimately, the ability to control gross margins would be of the utmost importance as labor cost will only increase.

Is Johnson Holdings a company to add into one's portfolio? Well, it depends on whether one is ok with the risk involved.