A company can do a few things with the free cash flow it churns out every year. It can reinvest the money into its business, use it to pare down debt, pay dividends to shareholders, or buy back its shares. There are a few reasons why companies want to buy back their shares. Some companies might do so to support their share price. By reducing the number of shares outstanding, the earnings per share will increase. This, in turn, causes the price-to-earnings ratio to fall due to a larger denominator. The share price should then rise as the market perceives the share price to be cheaper than before the repurchase. In June this year, 74.6 million shares were repurchased by 33 companies for a total amount of S$174 million, according to a recent report by Singapore Exchange Limited (SGX: S68). Th

The Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI), which tracks the performance of the top 30 largest and most liquid companies listed in Singapore, was in the red for June. For the month, the local stock market bellwether tumbled 4.7% to 3,268.7. Of the 30 index components, four were in the green; one was flat while the remaining 25 were in the red. The top three winners of the Straits Times Index were Jardine Strategic Holdings Limited (SGX: J37), Hutchison Port Hldg Trust (SGX: NS8U) and Jardine Matheson Holdings Limited (SGX: J36).Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence (stock prices for the above stocks have been converted to Singapore dollars from US dollars) Jardine Strategic is a holding company with long-term strategic investments in multinational businesses. Jardine Strategic owns 58% of J

There are many ways to find investment ideas. Some useful ways are to screen for stocks or to look at a list of stocks near their 52-week lows to sieve out potential bargains. Studying what institutional investors have been buying or selling is another avenue. Institutional investors are typically large investment organisations, such as hedge funds, mutual funds, unit trust companies, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies and so on. These investors tend to possess vastly greater resources than individual investors like you and me when researching stocks. Hence, it may be useful to keep a close eye on what they are doing, as a way to generate ideas. In this article, I will look at three Singapore stocks (among the top ten stocks) that have seen the highest net disposal in dollar value

Performance of Straits Times Index (STI) Constituents in June 2018 The Straits Times Index (STI) ended 159.48 points or 4.65% lower to 3268.70 in June 2018.(compared to 3428.18 on 31-May-2018) Top Performers: Jardine Strategic, Hutchison Port Holdings Trust, Jardine Matheson, CapitaLand Mall Trust. Least Performers: Venture Corp, StarHub, CapitaLand, Jardine Cycle & Carriage, Keppel Corp. Most Volatile: Venture Corp, StarHub, Hutchison Port Holdings Trust, Yangzijiang Shipbuilding, Thai Beverage. Advertisement Continue Reading »

There are many ways to find investment ideas. Some useful methods are to screen for stocks or to look at a list of stocks near their 52-week lows to sieve out potential bargains. Studying what institutional investors have been buying or selling is another avenue. Institutional investors are typically large investment organisations, such as hedge funds, mutual funds, unit trust companies, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies and so on. These investors tend to possess vastly greater resources than individual investors like you and me when researching stocks. Hence, it may be useful to keep a close eye on what they are doing, as a way to generate ideas. In this article, I will look at three Singapore stocks that were in the list of the top 10 stocks that saw the highest net sales in do

On Wednesday, the tech-centric NASDAQ composite index in the United States closed at a record high of 7781.51 points. While some market experts warned about similarities to the 1990s dot-com bubble, investors have continued to pile into tech stocks. The NASDAQ has increased 11.4% year-to-date, with tech giants like Amazon, Facebook and Cisco seeing double-digit gains so far this year. Investors have many reasons to be optimistic about the future of tech stocks, as the US continues to strive towards becoming the global leader in 5G technology. In 2017, an Accenture report projected that 5G could add 3 million new jobs and increase the US GDP by US$500 billion. On 20 June, Education Minister Ong Ye Kung, who is a board member of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, announced the governmentâ€

Warren Buffett is someone who actively encourages companies to buy back their shares if the conditions are right. He once said that when the shares of outstanding companies with strong financial positions are selling below their intrinsic value, no other action can benefit shareholders as share repurchases can. On that note, let’s look at three Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI) components picked at random that have repurchased their shares thus far during the week. SATS Ltd (SGX: S58) SATS provides food solutions and gateway services solutions, mainly to the aviation industry. On 11, 12, 13 and 14 June 2018, the firm bought back a total of 1,413,400 shares at a price range of between S$4.97 and S$5.07 per share. The total cost came up to around S$7.1 million. SATS closed at S$5.02 per shar

What a year 2017 was for manufacturing companies in Singapore. Strong demand for electronic exports was the main catalyst that led to double-digit or even triple-digit growth in revenues and earnings for many electronics manufacturers. Consequently, many of these companies saw their share prices surge during the year. AEM Holdings Ltd (SGX: AWX) and Venture Corporation Ltd (SGX: V03) for instance, enjoyed a 484% and 107% increase in their share prices, respectively. Another electronics manufacturer that experienced a spectacular spike in its share price in 2017 was UMS Holdings Limited (SGX: 558); its stock climbed by 109%. The core business of UMS is to provide precision machining components for the manufacturing of semiconductors. As it was with many other manufacturing companies, UMS h

There are many ways to find investment ideas. Some useful methods are to screen for stocks or to look at a list of stocks near their 52-week lows to sieve out potential bargains. Studying what institutional investors have been buying or selling is another avenue. Institutional investors are typically large investment organisations, such as hedge funds, mutual funds, unit trust companies, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies and so on. These investors tend to possess vastly greater resources than individual investors like you and me when researching stocks. Hence, it may be useful to keep a close eye on what they are doing, as a way to generate ideas. In this article, I will look at three Singapore stocks that were in the last of the top 10 stocks that saw the highest net sales in do

Over the past three months, electronics services provider Venture Corporation Ltd  (SGX: V03) has seen its stock price fall by a sharp 21.9% to S$21.02 currently. This is a significantly steeper decline than the Straits Times Index’s (SGX: ^STI) fall of just 2.4% in the same time frame. Investors may thus wonder if Venture’s a bargain right now. Unfortunately, there is no easy answer, but we may still be able to get some insight into the question from an investing checklist that Peter Lynch shared in his classic investment text One Up On Wall Street. Lynch is a great investor who ran the US-based Fidelity Magellan fund from 1977 to 1990 and racked up an incredible annualised return of 29% in that period. In One Up On Wall Street, Lynch wrote about a general checklist he had used wh

Performance of Straits Times Index (STI) Constituents in May 2018 The Straits Times Index (STI) ended 185.75 points or 5.14% lower to 3428.18 in May 2018.(compared to 3613.93 on 30-Apr-2018)Top Performers: ComfortDelGro, Genting Singapore, Singapore Airlines, Jardine Matheson, Venture Corp. Least Performers: Hutchison Port Holdings Trust, Yangzijiang Shipbuilding, StarHub, City Developments, Thai Beverage. Most Volatile: Yangzijiang Shipbuilding, Hutchison Port Holdings Trust, Golden Agri Resources, StarHub, Genting Singapore. Advertisement Continue Reading »

Hello, everyone. Here are three things about the local stock market and investing in general that you might be interested in today. 1. The Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI) ended Tuesday at 3,543.2, inching down 0.1% or 5.1 points. Venture Corporation Ltd (SGX: V03) lost the most ground in the 30-stock index as its shares tumbled 2.7% to S$21.17. On the other hand, the biggest winner of the lot was Jardine Matheson Holdings Limited (SGX: J36); the conglomerate’s shares increased 3.1% to US$64.87. 2. The National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) has made an application in the Bombay High Court for an interim injunction on Singapore Exchange Limited’s (SGX: S68) new India equity derivative products. This was announced slightly after the stock market opened today. The local bourse operator h

There are many ways to find investment ideas. Some useful methods are to screen for stocks or to look at a list of stocks near their 52-week lows to sieve out potential bargains. Studying what institutional investors have been buying or selling is another avenue. Institutional investors are typically large investment organisations, such as hedge funds, mutual funds, unit trust companies, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies and so on. These investors tend to possess vastly greater resources than individual investors like you and me when researching stocks. Hence, it may be useful to keep a close eye on what they are doing, as a way to generate ideas. In this article, I will look at three Singapore stocks that were in the list of the top 10 stocks that have seen the highest net sales

We are reaching the tail-end of the earnings season. Given that many companies have already reported their results, it might be useful to categorise them into three buckets of positive, negative and mixed. In this article, I will look at two companies that have recently reported positive results. Venture Corporation Ltd (SGX: V03) is the first company that we will look at in this article. As a quick introduction, Venture Corporation is an electronics manufacturing services provider with expertise in a wide range of activities. Overall, quarterly revenue was up by 1.5% year-on-year to S$856.0 million. Profit attributable to shareholders was up by 72.2% year-on-year to S$83.7 million. As a result, Venture’s diluted earnings per share (EPS) was up by 67.4% year-on-year to 28.8 cents. As at

Here are three things about the local stock market that you might be interested in today. 1. The Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI) ended Friday down 0.2%, or 7.5 points, to 3,529.27. The biggest loser in the index was Yangzijiang Shipbuilding Holdings Ltd (SGX: BS6), falling 4.5% to S$1.06. On the other hand, the STI component that gained the most was Singapore Airlines Ltd (SGX: C6L). The firm’s shares rose 3.8% to S$11.56. Other big gainers in the index were Venture Corporation Ltd (SGX: V03), Jardine Matheson Holdings Limited (SGX: J36) and Wilmar International Limited (SGX: F34). In all, seven stocks ended the day in the green, 17 were in the red while the remaining six finished unchanged. 2. Singapore Airlines Ltd is looking to merge SilkAir, its regional wing, into Singapore’s flag

The last two weeks was a period pervaded with a series of disturbing unrests as news of conflicts around the world broke out one after another. Over the course of the past fortnight, deadly clashes from Israeli fire left 52 Palestinians dead and more than 2,400 wounded. Closer to home, Indonesia saw a series of suicide bombing in Surabaya while North Korea also threatened to cancel the Trump-Kim summit in Singapore. In face of all the geopolitical tensions, Dow Jones Industrial Average halted its 8-days advance but the US bellwether still managed to post a 3.3 percent gain to end at 24,713.98 on 17 May 2018. Over in Asia, China’s manufacturing activity grew more-than-expected in April as industrial output rose 7 percent from a year earlier. However, retail figures missed projections, gro

Warren Buffett is a huge advocate of businesses buying back their shares. He believes that share buybacks can reveal a thing or two about the company’s management. He once opined: “What you’d like to do as an investor is hook them up to a machine and run a polygraph to see whether it’s true. Short of a polygraph the best sign of a shareholder-oriented management — assuming its stock is undervalued — is repurchases. A polygraph proxy, that’s what it is.” On that note, let’s check out three companies picked at random that have repurchased their shares thus far during the week, as of market open today. HRnetGroup Ltd (SGX: CHZ) HRnetGroup, which debuted on our stock exchange in June 2017, is the biggest Asia-based recruitment agency in the Asia

Here are three things about the local stock market that you might be interested in today. 1. The Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI) ended the day up 0.1%, or 3.7 points, to 3,536.8. The best performer of the 30-stock index was Hutchison Port Hldg Trust (SGX: NS8U); its units rose 1.5% to US$0.335. Meanwhile, Venture Corporation Ltd (SGX: V03) was once again the biggest loser of the index after slipping 2.3% to S$20.74. Yesterday, the shares fell 4.3% to S$21.22. 2. Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SGX: Z74) announced its earnings for the full year ended 31 March 2018 before the market opened today. For the year, revenue rose 4.9% year-on-year to S$17.5 billion while net profit grew 41.5% to S$5.5 billion. The board is recommending a final dividend of 10.7 cents per share. This brings

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 Wednesday at 3,533.1 points, inching down 0.2% or 7.2 points. Of the 30 index components, Venture Corporation Ltd (SGX: V03) lost the most ground as its shares slumped 4.3% to S$21.22. On the other hand, the biggest winner of the index was Singapore Technologies Engineering Ltd (SGX: S63) after putting on 2.1% to S$3.46. 2. The earnings season is here so do check out the latest earnings coverage below: a) SIA Engineering Company Ltd (SGX: S59) – head here b) Straits Trading Co Ltd (SGX: S20) – head here SIA Engineering ended the day at S$3.31 per share, down 0.6%, while Straits Trading’s shares rose 0.5% to S$2.19. 3. Frasers P

Warren Buffett is someone who actively encourages companies to buy back their shares if the conditions are right. He once said that when the shares of outstanding companies with strong financial positions are selling below their intrinsic value, no other action can benefit shareholders as share repurchases can. On that note, let’s look at three Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI) components that have repurchased their shares thus far during the week, as of market open today. United Overseas Bank Ltd (SGX: U11) With more than 500 branches in 19 countries, United Overseas Bank, more commonly known as UOB, is one of the largest banks in Southeast Asia. On 7, 8 and 9 May 2018, UOB bought back 123,786 shares ranging from S$28.88 to S$29.940 per share, translating to a total cost of around S$3.6 m