The weekly 4 Stocks This Week column on DollarsAndSense was started in 2017 with a simple objective was simple: to provide a convenient read each week for busy investors to stay updated with what is happening on the Singapore Exchange. 4 Stock This Week is not a recommendation from us to buy or sell any of the stocks that wke feature. Its purpose is to highlight interesting stocks that investors should be aware of, rather than to analyse these stocks. For this week’s edition, instead of the usual coverage of four stocks, we’ll do a year in review of the other 51 instalments of 4 Stocks This Week that our team has written in 2019. Over the past year (51 weeks), we’ve covered 123 SGX-listed stocks, 4 ETFs and 8 Daily Leverage Certificates. The most covered stock was Sas

On 2 September 2019, BreadTalk announced its acquisition of Food Junction for $80 million to become the third largest food court or coffeeshop player in Singapore with 26 outlets, behind NTUC Foodfare/Kopitiam (10+52 outlets) and Koufu (47 outlets). Currently, Food Junction has 12 food courts in Singapore and three in Malaysia, with an additional one expected to open in 2020 at The Mall, Mid Valley Southkey. Unlike BreadTalk’s Food Republic which targets the premium segment, Food Junction has more of a mass-market appeal with a 10 to 15 percent lower average ticket size. As such, management believes that the location of Food Junction food courts would fit into the existing portfolio of BreadTalk which will allow the group to cater to a different market segment and expand into non-traditi

Last week BreadTalk Group Limited (SGX: CTN) announced it would open its wallet to shell out S$80 million for Food Junction. My colleague Royston described some of the salient points of the acquisition in an earlier article. In this article, I’ll take a deeper look at whether BreadTalk is overpaying for the food court operator.  Compared with previous transactions In 2013, Auric Group successfully privatised Food Junction (which was a listed company back then) by buying the remaining 39% stake in Food Junction that it did not already own. At that time Auric Group made an offer valuing Food Junction at S$30 million. In 2017, Lippo’s Riady family successfully privatised Auric Pacific Group, valuing the company at S$48.3 million. Auric Pacific Group, besides owning Food