There are many financial metrics that matter when investors assess companies for potential investment. Some of these include revenue and profit growth, margins, free cash flow, and dividend yield. I can safely say one of the more important metrics is free cash flow (FCF), as cold, hard cash is the lifeblood of a business. Having more cash is almost always a good thing as it allows companies to have more flexibility in how they operate, and it can also serve as a buffer when tough times arrive. The emphasis on consistent FCF allows investors to sleep well at night and offers companies many options for how to deploy that cash to generate better returns for their investors. Here are four things to like about companies that generate strong FCF. 1. Increasing dividends Companies with a strong

At any point in time, there will be certain companies whose share prices have fallen due to various reasons. For instance, company-specific events or macroeconomic headwinds could have affected sentiment surrounding the company, hitting the stock price hard in the short term. However, those firms could also have the potential to recover and return to growth over the long run. Here, let’s take a look at three such Singapore-listed companies that have been beaten down recently but have the ability to do well in the long term. Company #1: Dairy Farm International Holdings Ltd Dairy Farm International Holdings Ltd (SGX: D01) is a pan-Asian retail group with operations across many Asian countries and territories. It manages supermarkets, hypermarkets, convenience stores, health and beaut

Passion is such a great thing to experience. There is nothing more uplifting than watching actors perform passionately, even if you have no idea what they are saying…. …. Listening to a speaker talk passionately about a subject can be quite a motivating experience, too. But there is a fine line between being passionate and being unreasonable. Leaders of countries that can’t distinguish between the two can quickly lose popular support for what they passionately believe in. Donald Trump was passionate about making America great again. But his passion, which now borders on obsession, seems to have damaged his ability to tell the difference between right and wrong. He has dismissed numerous people from his team who offer a different point of view. That is beyond the pale.

HRnetGroup Ltd (SGX: CHZ) is the largest recruitment firm in Asia, excluding Japan. It was listed two years ago on the Singapore stock exchange. The company appeared on my radar lately as it was trading close to its 52-week low price. Hence, I decided to do a quick overview of the company’s fundamentals. Here are two charts that I found useful during my research. Revenue Source: HRnet Investor Presentation There are a few interesting things to note here. At a glance, there have been only three times when HRnet reported lower revenue on a year-on-year basis. Those years were 1999, 2002, and 2009. In the last decade, revenue has grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9%. Such a growth rate may not be exciting, but the growth translates to a doubling of HRnet&rsquo

HRnetGroup Ltd (SGX: CHZ) is the largest recruitment firm in Asia outside of Japan. Last week, the group announced that it had bought back close to S$100,000 worth of shares. Could this be an indication that management believes its shares are cheap?  A challenging period HRnetGroup has suffered from a harsh operating environment in the last two quarters. Muted hiring due to companies holding off on their expansion plans, along with unrealised investment losses, has put pressure on its bottom line. This resulted in net profit attributable to shareholders falling 11.5% in the last reporting quarter. Unsurprisingly, market participants have turned cautious on the stock, selling down HRnetGroup’s shares to around S$0.57, some 40% below their peak. However, concerns about the compan

Dividend investors like to invest in companies that are well-positioned to sustain their dividend payments over the long term. Generally, this trait can be found in blue-chip companies that have established long-term track records of paying dividends such as Singapore Exchange Limited (SGX: S68) or DBS Group Holdings Ltd (SGX: D05). However, there are also other less well-known companies that have the potential to grow into solid dividend stocks over the long term. Let’s look at one such stock that’s strongly positioned to deliver positive returns to dividend investors in 2020 and beyond. The company I’m talking about is HRnetGroup Ltd (SGX: CHZ), the largest recruitment firm in Asia excluding Japan. It was listed two years ago on the Singapore stock exchange. High divid

Stocks can generally be classified into two categories – value and growth. Growth stocks refer to companies that can increase their revenue and earnings over time, while value stocks are stocks that are undervalued based on their current share price. In this article, I’ll highlight two deep value stocks in Singapore that I believe are underappreciated by market participants now. Haw Par Corporation Ltd (SGX: H02) Known for its Tiger Balm brand, Haw Par Corporation is perhaps one of the most under-appreciated stocks in the market. The group’s healthcare division, which consists of a range of products under its Tiger Balm brand has seen its profit grow from S$14.4 million in 2007 to S$77.3 million in 2018. Tiger Balm is now sold in over 100 countries worldwide. Yet its hea

The Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI) is up just 1.2% so far for the year. With the US-China trade war, Hong Kong protests, Brexit, and general economic slowdown worrying investors, it’s not surprising to see the Singapore stock market languishing. If you are looking for stock ideas amid all the macro fears, you have come to the right place. Using our data provider, S&P Global Market Intelligence, and a Magic Formula methodology popularised by Joel Greenblatt, we found some of the best stocks for the month that could go on to perform well. The basic premise of the Magic Formula is to find the 30 best shares in the market as ranked by their cheapness and their quality and to hold on to that basket of shares for a year before repeating the ranking process. For a deeper underst

HRnetGroup Ltd (SGX: CHZ) is the largest recruitment firm in Asia ex Japan. It was listed two years ago on the Singapore stock exchange. HRnet recently caught my attention as it share price is trading at 52-week low of S$0.56 (as of writing). What’s more, it has plunged by 38% from its 52-week high price of S$0.90. Personally, the very first question that I have in my mind now is whether the stock is cheap. This question is important because if the firm’s shares are cheap, I might take some time to learn more about the company’s future prospects. Clearly, there is no easy answer. However, we can still get some insight by comparing HRnet’s current valuations with the market’s valuations. The three valuation metrics I will focus on are the price-to-book (PB) ra

Share buybacks can be an effective method to screen for cheap and undervalued companies. Companies conduct share buybacks when they feel their shares may be undervalued. Here are five Singapore-listed companies that recently bought back shares. 1. Singapore Press Holdings Limited Singapore Press Holdings Limited (SGX: T39) is a leading media organisation. Its core business includes the publishing of newspapers, magazines, and books in both print and digital editions. The group also owns a 70% stake in a real estate investment trust called SPH REIT (SGX: SK6U) that owns a total of four properties in Singapore and Australia. On 26 August, SPH bought back 576,300 shares at a price of between S$1.99 and S$2.00. Note that SPH had reported a weak set of results in its recent Q3 2019 earnings re

In my previous post on "How Do You Prepare A Growing Warchest", I mentioned about how we can accumulate our warchest through a variety of ways.One of the ways to do them is through the accumulation of defensive stocks which tend to be more resilient during period of uncertainties.I was fortunate to have a few of these defensive resilient companies in my portfolio, which include the likes of Vicom, Starhill Reit and Netlink Trust when I started the year, each of them taking up a very large position in the portfolio.I began to unwind each of them slowly, as I look to build up more warchest in anticipation of events like what we have today, with the divestment of Starhill Reit back in May at a (relatively so-so on hindsight) price of 75 cents and divestment of Netlink Trust back in Jun a