StarHub Ltd (SGX: CC3) is a company that probably needs no introduction, given that it is one of Singapore’s main operational telcos. At the current price of S$2.30, the company’s stock is just 1.8% higher than a 52-week low of S$2.26. This raises a question: Is the company a bargain now? Unfortunately, there is no easy answer. But, we can still get some insight by comparing StarHub’s current valuations with the market’s. The three valuation metrics I will focus on are the price-to-book (PB) ratio, price-to-earnings (PE) ratio, and dividend yield. I will be using the SPDR STI ETF (SGX: ES3) as a proxy for the market; the SPDR STI ETF is an exchange-traded fund that tracks the fundamentals of Singapore’s stock market benchmark, the Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI). StarHub cur

1.  SPH Reit  --  6th Apr 20182.  SPH  --  10th Apr 20183.  M1  --  16th Apr 20184.  Soilbuild REIT  --  16th Apr 20185.  Kep DC Reit  --  16th Apr 20186.  Kep Inf Trust  --  16th Apr 20187.  Kep T&T  --  17th Apr 20188.  Kep-KBS US Reit  --  17th Apr 20189.  First REIT  --  17th Apr 201810.  Kep Reit  --  18th Apr 201811.  Ascott Reit  --  18th Apr 201812.  Kep Corp  --  19th Apr 201813.  FrasersCom Trust  --  20th Apr 201814.  SGX  --  20th Apr 201815.  CapitaMall Trust  --  20th Apr 201816.  MapletreeInd Trust  --  23rd Apr 201817.  Ascendas

Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) are the people that run companies, make critical operational decisions that impact everything from employee morale to balance sheet health to futures business direction. This job usually comes with immense pressure to perform and long-hours to get the work done. Obviously, this job is not for the faint-hearted. This also often means that they are the most handsomely paid employee in the company. In this article, we look at how much the biggest listed companies in Singapore, those on the Straits Times Index (STI), paid their CEOs in FY2017. CEO Salary In FY2017 Three companies did not divulge the remuneration of their chief executive – Jardine Matheson Holdings; Jardine Strategic Holdings; and Hongkong Land. Also Read: How Much Money Do You Actually Take

I’m a value investor. So, I like to search for companies that are trading at good value. A list of stocks that are near their respective 52-week lows is a good place to start my search for a good reason. These are the stocks that are either neglected or beaten down by investors. And, some of these stocks can be bargains in relation to their actual economic worth because market participants can at times react too negatively to certain companies that have sound long-term prospects but have experienced some short-term stumbles. As such, I will screen for stocks that are trading near 52-week lows nearly once every week. There are many stocks that pop up on my screen each time I run it. In here, let’s look at two such stocks: StarHub Ltd  (SGX: CC3) and Jardine Strategic Holdings Limited

Today I went over to Starhub to re-contract my mobile phone into a SIM only contract. By doing that I resolve a painful problem I have been facing since I started work in a law firm - I have two devices that employ mobile data that I bring to work, a mobile phone and a tablet. For months, I have been exceeding my data usage by 4Gb and have been spending $200+ on telco expenses every month. So today was the expiration of my contract so I rushed over to switch to a SIM only plan with 16Gb of data allowance.The conversation was amusing. The sales executive tried to bait me by telling me that I am losing a $100 phone voucher when I refused to get a new phone. I told him that because I used so many extra Gigs of data, I am a good customer of Starhub and I need to stop being a good customer star

StarHub Ltd (SGX: CC3) is an easily recognisable company in Singapore, given that it’s our island nation’s second largest operational telco. Over the last 12 months, StarHub’s stock price has fallen by 20% to S$2.30 currently. What may have caused this? Reasons for a decline There can be many reasons behind a stock’s price decline. But, the reasons can generally be classified as business-performance-related, or investor-sentiment-related. The former deals with how a stock’s business has performed or is expected to perform. And in terms of business performance, one of the really important numbers would be the stock’s profits. Meanwhile, the latter is about the overall mood of market participants – are investors more greedy than fearful, more pessimistic than optimistic et cet

M1 Ltd  (SGX: B2F) is an easily recognisable company in Singapore, given that it’s our island nation’s third largest operational telco. In mid-March, M1 published its annual report for the year ending 31 December 2017. Given that reading an annual report is one of the best ways to keep up with a company’s developments, I decided to go through M1’s latest annual report to understand the company’s prospects, and how it had performed in 2017. Generally, when reading an annual report, I will pay close attention to the letter to shareholders that the company’s chairman and/or CEO writes. In this article, I will look at an area that I found to be interesting while reading the latest shareholders’ letter: Management’s thoughts on the outlook of the company’s business. To begin

Hello, everyone. Here are three things about the local stock market that you might be interested in today. 1. The Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI) ended Monday at 3,449.96 points, up 0.2% or 7.46 points. Among the 30 index constituents, the blue-chip that rose the most was Jardine Cycle & Carriage Ltd (SGX: C07). The conglomerate’s shares increased 2.8% to S$35.50. On the other hand, telco StarHub Ltd (SGX: CC3) fared the worst among the 30-stock index, with its shares slumping 2.1% to S$2.28. The firm is currently trading close to its 52-week low price of S$2.26. 2. ComfortDelGro Corporation Ltd (SGX: C52), which ended the day unchanged at S$2.08 per share, announced earlier today that it is expanding into Australia’s non-emergency patient transportation space. It is doing so by a

Walter Schloss, dubbed a Superinvestor by Warren Buffett, was a deep value investor. He was very keen on stocks that were selling at 52-week low prices. In Singapore, even among the blue-chip companies of the Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI), there are a number of stocks that are near their respective 52-week low prices. Let’s look at three of them at random – Golden Agri-Resources Ltd (SGX: E5H), StarHub Ltd (SGX: CC3) and Thai Beverage Public Company Limited (SGX: Y92) – starting with the stock that is closest to its 52-week low price.Source: Google Finance Golden Agri-Resources closed at S$0.345 on Friday, just a whisker away from its 52-week low price of S$0.34. The palm oil plantation company saw its revenue rise 4.1% to US$7.5 billion for the full year ended 31 December 2017. H

You probably know that our ministers are one of the highest paid profession in Singapore.But what about the pay of S'pore top CEOs?Lucky for us we have published income report from MOM and remuneration disclosure from annual reports of SGX-listed companies to conduct our research. Since we are talking about top CEOs the easiest way to start is to look at Singapore 30 largest blue chip companies.Here is the 5 charts we have put together for you.What Is The Pay Gap Between Top CEOs & Salaried Workers?//=d.offsetWidth&&0>=d.offsetHeight)a=!1;else{c=d.getBoundingClientRect();var f=document.body;a=c.top+("pageYOffset"in window?window.pageYOffset:(document.documentElement||f.parentNode||f).scrollTop);c=c.left+("pageXOffset"in window?window.pageXOffset:(document.documentElement||f.parentNode|

This is post no. 260, which represents the 5th birthday for this weekly blog. In past years, this would have been a joyous occasion, as it means that I have blogged for another 52 continuous weeks. This year, however, there is a tinge of sadness, as there is a realisation that all things will eventually come to an end, including this blog. Regular readers of this blog would know that I like to string all posts with the same theme together, such as the telco theme of recent weeks. However, to have something useful to blog about, I need to carry out research. And research takes time. Despite this being a weekly blog, the amount of time needed to search, analyse and write useful stuffs is sometimes quite overwhelming. For example, the 4 posts on Hyflux last year were spread out over 7 weeks,

First quarter of 2018 has passed in a blink of an eye. I thought it would be interesting to look at STI and have a good sense how the STI blue chips are doing, especially when we just had some volatility in Feb and Mar this year.Source: Business Times, 31 Mar 2018Based on the table above, I noticed thatFive companies are at a price level of 75th percentile or higher based on their past one-year price range: City Developments, Venture Corp, DBS, OCBC and UOB. Among these, Venture at $28.11 is the closest to its 52 week high, owing to its recent inclusion into STI and the continued optimism on electronic manufacturing sector.Seventeen companies are now within 25% of their one-year lowest price. This is more than half of the 30 components of STI. Among them, Hutchison Port Holdings ($0.295) a

StarHub Ltd (SGX: CC3) is a company that probably needs no introduction, given that it is one of Singapore’s main operational telcos. Over the last 12 months, StarHub has seen its stock price fall by 18.0% to S$2.33 currently. At S$2.33, the telco has a trailing dividend yield of 6.9%, which is more than twice the SPDR STI ETF’s (SGX: ES3) yield of 2.9%. The SPDR STI ETF is an exchange-traded fund that tracks the fundamentals of our local stock market benchmark, the Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI). The high dividend yield of 6.9% that StarHub sports may look sweet to dividend investors. But, there are risks that investors should be aware of. In this article, I will point out three of them. The first risk: Lower profits One important criteria that dividend investors should focus o

To call StarHub Ltd (SGX: CC3) a hated stock by the market is not an exaggeration. Over the last 12 months, Singapore’s second largest operational telco has seen its stock price fall by 18.6% to S$2.28 currently. In the same period, Singapore’s stock market benchmark, the Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI), has increased by 6.6%. But, there are still reasons for investors to actually like the company. The decline It’s understandable that the market has punished StarHub’s stock. In 2017, the telco’s net profit fell by 27% to S$249 million, while its dividend was cut by 20% to S$0.16 per share. Moreover, there are structural changes happening in Singapore’s telco market, such as the award of a fourth telco license by the authorities to the Australia-based TPG Telecom in late 201

Earlier in March, US president announced that US will impose additional tax on goods from China and some other countries. China's retaliated with with additional tax on US import, should US goes ahead with the planned action. A trade war between the two economic Giants is looming. So when two elephants fight, the ants suffer. Global stock market, led by US stock market sent the signal of discomfort- drops!STI lost 89.97 points in the month of March, or 2.56%. My portfolio suffers losses too but to a lesser extend. Its value dropped 1.59% in the same month, without taking the dividend received into account. No trade was done in March.Total passive income received in March was S$6,482, half from shares and half from UT.  This month, my dividend income (passive income) hits an important

The Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI), which tracks the performance of the 30 largest and most liquid companies listed in Singapore, declined in March. For the month, the local stock market benchmark slumped by 2.6% to 3,428 points. Of the 30 index components, seven were in the green while 23 were in the red. The top three winners within the STI in March were CapitaLand Commercial Trust (SGX: C61U), Singapore Technologies Engineering Ltd (SGX: S63), and CapitaLand Mall Trust (SGX: C38U).Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence In the middle of March, the trustee-manager of RCS Trust, an unlisted special purpose sub-trust that is 60%-owned by CapitaLand Commercial Trust and 40%-owned by CapitaLand Mall Trust, had issued S$275 million worth of fixed rate notes to investors under a US$2 bill

How many telcos are there in Singapore currently? If you answered 3, that is incorrect. There are currently 6 telcos -- 3 traditional telcos that operate their own telco networks, namely, Singtel, Starhub and M1, and 3 Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) that buy network capacity from the traditional telcos and resell to retail customers. Ever since the first MVNO, Circles.Life, set up shop in May 2016, things have accelerated in the MVNO space. In a short span of 3 months, we have had another 2 MVNOs springing up, namely, Zero Mobile and Zero1. You probably have heard of their promotions, like Circles.Life's 20GB of data for $20, Zero Mobile's Unlimited calls, SMS and data plan, or Zero1's unlimited data plan for $29.99. Since MVNOs compete for the same group of retail customers as t

A few bloggers have written about whether Starhub's dividend of 16 cents per year is sustainable when Starhub released its results in Feb. This time last year, I reviewed the prospects of its various business segments and concluded that challenging times were ahead for Starhub's dividends. See Challenging Times Ahead for Starhub's Dividends for more info. In today's blog post, I will update the review and discuss whether Starhub's dividend of 16 cents is sustainable. Although mobile services is the largest business segment, I will discuss it last, for reasons explained later.Pay TVIf you read Is Pay TV Still A Reliable Cash Cow?, you would know that the traditional advantage of Starhub over the other telcos is its cable TV network infrastructure, which is used to provide not only

Top 30 in my portfolio: No. STOCK NAME No.of SHARES PORTFOLIO% MARKET $ 1SGX4,30010.137.372SATS4,0006.565.133OCBC Bank1,4385.8912.824UOB6335.5727.505CapitaLand Mall Tr7,8005.192.086Starhub7,0005.052.307SPH6,0004.832.528AIMSAMPI Cap Ind R10,0004.351.369Keppel Corp1,6003.977.7710CDL HTrust6,8003.671.6911Suntec Reit5,8003.501.8912SingTel3,1903.443.3713Keppel DC Reit7,4003.411.4414FCT4,7003.292.1915ParkwayLife Reit3,6003.222.8016Starhill Global Reit12,0002.800.7317SPH Reit8,5002.700.99518Mapletree Com Tr4,8002.411.5719CapitaLand2,0002.283.5720Frasers Com Tr4,8492.221.4321Bukit Sembawang1,0001.956.1122Sembcorp Indust1,8001.793.1123Ascendas Reit2,0001.682.6324Keppel InfraTr9,0001.540.53525SIA Engg1,5001.533.1826Frasers Property1,8001.152.0027Cache Log Tr4,0001.070.83528Frasers L&I

End of month and end of quarter performance by Straits Times Index and its 30 index constituent stocks. For the quarter, STI is up slightly but only 13 stocks posted gains while 17 losses. Gain leaders are Venture Corp and DBS, loss leaders are Starhub and Hutchison Port Holdings. The post Singapore stocks and index month and quarter performance end Q1 2018 appeared first on TerraSeeds Forex Blog, Gold, Oil, Stocks, Indices.