Cory Diary : Investment Evolutions

Coming from below average income family of sandwiched class, foraying into investments is an evolution process. Basically I can't see it till it happens naturally "A common sense approach". It may not be the best but is suitable for me so far for a self learning investor who basic core believes is we must understand investment ourselves.

Started with years of education like all locals, and then started saving and basic life insurance. Thanks to my parents I am able to study in local University. When we save enough, start to play in stock markets. After a few years as the investment grow into sizeable amount, our bets get bigger and bigger. This after, we have our first HDB apartment.

As career progress, we have more saving for investment and it becomes a portfolio. To build up a sustainable second income stream, Dividend Investment becomes the plan of the day.  After few years, the amount is enough to sustain a reasonable annual income. This is when we explore property investment into Condo.

Money continues to roll in with continue salary income, dividend income and property income. By then I am already in my 50. Retirement clock starts clicking and started exploring funding sufficiency to support lifestyle retirement and this is when CPF kicks in as basic net investment returns while bonds are slowly kicked out.

This CPF investment phase is pretty quick because we will be at our peak earning capability phase. And then we can do the next leapt into growth stocks to maximize returns in a way after having the experience in investment knowledge, building sustainable earning and achieving asset net worth.

I stop here. This is where I am now.

So far, what I could do better ? Some people say I could do much better while others think I am lucky. Other than roll of luck jumbling up on which to go first, I am grateful of what I have so far. Life is not Bed and Roses, let's not make it Tougher. 

Ah Yes. I have two toddlers. God Grace to manage to have them in my 50s. What's my priority, them lah other than Health. Be Safe. I wish those who want to be wished.

Cory

2021-0530

Articles in this Blog is personal take and educational purposes only. Reader should seek their own professional help when making financial decision and be responsible for their decision.

Cory Diary : Recent Trades - Portfolio

There are quite a few Re-balancing going on  before Indian Variant Covid wave hits our shores.

1. Moving some shares from CICT to FCT. My Rationale is that Suburb will do much better in the long run to ride over Mall impact with recent outbreak. This is the second time I reduced my stake in CICT but for different reason. The result did not meet my expectation when price level was at 2.27. FCT stake is already much larger than CICT today but it can be more. Another reason is I want to reduce my dependency on Capitaland considering I have exposure to Ascendas Reit who they are also the sponsor. At current price, Ascendas is attractive but I would want to time my DCA for YTD Cost. With Covid in play more again, Industrial Reits are preferred.

2. Cleared my Cromwell Reit Position as they still have significant amount of office spaces. Their recent 5 to 1 share reduction leaves room for desire on not focusing on the business. The sale of asset also keeps me thinking why it was included into the IPO. This reflect badly on the sponsor. Since I am in profit year to date on this counter, gives bigger push for me to move on.  There is a small hit on my dividend as it gives more than 7%.  So why not iReit. Simply key tenants are much more sticky so their office will be hardly impacted in term of occupancy.

3. Started my process on averaging down Tesla by a few shares at a time. Even though is quite costly to use Poems for a few K value at at time as I want to do this over long period.  A very slow process after clearing off my HP Inc and APPL shares. With that I consolidate my positions to just Alibaba (HK), Microsoft, AMD and Tesla for Foreign Shares. Managing their returns due to rate changes can be quite interesting.

4. Increased Sheng Siong shares recently before the run-up due to Indian Variant. Still not significant position to benefit much in absolute amount even though percentage return wise looks nice. Still monitoring but considering position is not large I will be holding it long term for this amount as this will allow them more time to expand their stores and therefore chance are will be near to maintain high level of Covid returns.

5.  Managed to increase my Vicom holding to 4.5% of my equity portfolio. This is more a bang for the buck to worth my time to follow up on this counter. Long term wise I still find it relatively attractive as a defensive counter. Regardless gas or electric car, testing is still needed. So my thought process is this will be needed long term. The catalyst is other testing expanded which so far needs more focus.

6. Average down on Mapletree Commercial Trust. Surprising this counter is not performing well in price Year to Date compared to other reits despite it's strong fundamental. This gives me opportunity to average down at lower price. I think this stock will help drives future earning of the portfolio as I think Business Park is more robust and that Vivo City despite impact from Pandemic, will still do ok. 

7. After hearing DBS CEO sold some of his shares, I realized the price is quite good for me to offload a little as well. I think at this current price, it can go further but there is also a good chance it will fluctuates or even go lower with market condition. However DBS I am still hoping MAS will lift the cap on dividends. To be fair, there is many reason why one sells and to him is just a tiny portion of his DBS shares. Nevertheless the price must be quite good even though not representative of the future of DBS. Considering we are in good profits, is good to take some away from the table to build up cash. Still have to be careful not to offload too fast despite Fed repeated reminders that they won't raise rate near or mid term if I interpret they language correctly.

Finally, what I like to see my Radar chart coming to be. If there is opportunity, more Sheng Siong, Elite, Tesla and Alibaba. I also plan to acquire more MIT through Rights. Theoretical Annual Dividend Max 57k allows me to focus more on growth stocks which has been going through correction phase.

thanks

Dennis W.

Articles in this Blog is personal take and educational purposes only. Reader should seek their own professional help when making financial decision and be responsible for their decision.

Cory Diary : Netlink NBN Trust : Bao Jiak Business ?

Half Yearly Report just out. 5.1 cent dividend. Respectable returns. Far from Tech and Crypto and slightly lower than average reits returns iirc of different level risk. With a yield of 5.2% annualized, this is 1.2% higher than government guaranteed CPF SA account.

Netlink NBN Tr is a regulated business on how much they can profit. At current rate, is not significantly overvalued and I would think regulatory will continue to let it move along current direction for the foreseeable future.

Residential growth slowed to a crawl in this Q4FY21 but filled by NBAP/Segments during this Covid period. This mean leaving rooms for future residential opportunities. People who want stable income with some level of capital protection, this maybe good stock to be in considering most of it businesses are sole managed for practicality.

The current risk is 5G technology which may derailed their consumer side on last mile profits if they are not going to tap on their home fibre network. Nevertheless this tech is still far from many homes which has denser connect points, immediate needs for the next few years at current media download, normal use and gaming are quite sufficient for majority of people.

There is mention about more debt head room and new investment opportunities. This sounds interesting.

Note from report

"NetLink Group’s distribution policy is to distribute 100% of its cash available for distribution (“CAFD”), which includes distributions received from its wholly-owned subsidiary NetLink Trust (“NLT”). NLT’s distribution policy is to distribute at least 90% of its distributable income to the Trust after setting aside reserves and provisions 

for, amongst others, future capital expenditure (including the funding of a capital expenditure reserve fund pursuant to regulatory requirements), debt repayment and working capital as may be required. Distributions by NetLink Group will be made on a semi-annual basis, with the amount calculated as at 31 Mar and 30 Sep each year for the 6-month period ending on each of the said dates"

Cory

2021-0512

Articles in this Blog is personal take and educational purposes only. Reader should seek their own professional help when making financial decision and be responsible for their decision.

Cory Diary : Information familiarization work of SPH 2021-0510

SPH 1st Half '21

119M Operating Profit (16% Increase from last year ).

The increase is smaller if we consider more than 6M divestment gain (Buzz), and 3M lesser retrenchment cost therefore lower staff cost. There is also lesser interest cost about 1.6M, and about 700k foreign exchange gain which I am not exactly sure count towards operating profit. However there is a statement which indicate it is from "1(a)(ii) Notes: Profit after taxation is arrived at after accounting for:" which are there misc saving/cost.

SPH has net asset of 5.2B after account for 3.5B of borrowing. If we use gear standard to measure gearing, is very roughly 40%. Net Cash equivalent about 959M.

Shares Structure

As at 28 February 2021, the Company had 1,591,512,137 ordinary shares,

16,361,769 management shares

On a fully diluted basis 1st half earning is 5 cents. NTA increase significantly to $2.24 from $2.06 at group level.

Media

".. Media advertisement revenue fell by S$46.5

million (27.9%) with Newspaper print advertisement revenue declining by S$36.3 million

(28.8%), and magazine advertisement revenue declining by S$8.5 million (55.5%) partly

due to the cessation of the operations in Malaysia. ...

... accelerated by the impact from the Covid-19

pandemic. Pretax loss of 9,7M if we exclude JSS.... "

SPH to restructure media business into not-for-profit entity

Transfers all media assents including leasehold New and Print centers, Digital Investment asset and Intellectual property rights and publications. 80M cash and 30M of SPH shares/ Reits units. That's what I got from listening to Chairman from you tube.

Q&A

The two questions by CNA digital in the press conference are quite interesting.

The first is about editorial integrity. Even at today structure, the gov has close reach if they find something not ok with SPH being a profit enterprise. So this is really puzzling question as she seems to indicate today SPH put advertisers more.

The second question is on earlier retrenchment has failed and who should be accountable. In corporate management, is not unseen that poor performing unit can undergoes many rounds of cost cutting. And if still not enough, it can be closed or sold. So to mention about accountability is insinuating something else which I find not really fair and unfortunate. Even if Media finally spinoff the cut earlier is still necessary as some departments like LBY said on advertorial side will be permanent and investment can be channeled to elsewhere.

In both questions, that Journalist imo makes two serious mistake. Did she put journalists of SPH lower and using SPH conference to judge SPH CEO that earlier retrenchment is unnecessary and he needs to bare the consequences ? Frankly she has no right. Is up to the management board.

All the others questions by other journalists are very professional. This also attest to us that SPH management board is right to spinoff Media to ensure high quality of journalism continues to remain despite business difficulty.

The CEO response was not so gentleman but he was hit below belt. Key takeaway, both the Chairman and CEO pretty aligned in the direction of where SPH should go. And I also find LBY performance impressive. I said my piece.

Investment

The spinoff is to cut losses quick as likely the advertisers won't be coming back unlike Retail Malls. One my think there is potential the stock price might reflect quick rebound like many turnaround. However this spinoff action sounds more like saving SPH rest of businesses rather than unclipping their wings since most property counters today are below NAV valuation significantly.

Cory

2021-0509

Articles in this Blog is personal take and educational purposes only. Reader should seek their own professional help when making financial decision and be responsible for their decision.

Cory Diary : When Bad News come, it Pours

The Virus finally hits the fan on the less developed countries. I was wondering why the situation so bad in America before the election. Probably the focus of the Media was on Trump to "Engineered" his down fall. Now with the Virus fanning strongly in India, Malaysia, Indonesia, .... this is indication that humanity may be reaching herd immunity while vaccinations are being deployed. There will be lots of sorrow and concern. 

Comparing to them, TTSH outbreak is really miniscule however we can't afford to let our guard down for it can also get out of control. In the past days restriction and quarantine procedures hitting the Island nation. It was dramatic change of event from Oasis of the East. With the virulent of the virus many could not afford to take it likely.

Unfortunately the contagious nature of this virus that keeps mutating, it has been a constant battle going on and on.  We can't have our life be on constant On/Off every few months even though we have basic standard to upkeep. Is like doing "Cha cha Dance" every time there is an outbreak. We probably may need to reach a point of have to hit 100% vaccination target and reach a stage where we allow virus a free pass through to return life to normal. This probably would need to take more concrete data to make sure the assumption is reliable on the safety and impact if any. Mean time my Mall Reits took some cutting .... .

While the country is trying to vaccinate the population, a smaller groups of Singapore and PR stationed oversea have been forgotten. How many will want to take the risk to fly back considering the daily infection rate from oversea coming to Singapore and the quarantine periods back and fro- in dedicated hotels. Neither do they have priority in the host countries when comes to vaccination. Maybe this is what embassy is for. They need to do something especially so for countries that are so badly affected.

Then Yellen mentioned about possible rate hikes. And the market starts showing cracks. She slips out what they all think in the bottom of their heart. However America is a nation widely dependent on the stock market for their retirement. Everyone purses will be much smaller if the market is derailed. I think rate hikes will come. .The issue is when such that the condition is right. The pivot point could be when crypto gets out of hand challenging the might of US dollar. My US stocks jitter a bit and then fall back to normal volatility routine.

Ascendas Reit was cruising well and then they do another private placement at the lower band of the offering therefore higher discount. They seem to try to exhaust their ability to raise fund till no more. I think this last round has reflected some fatigue on the market or are investors missing something of the Reit. No doubt the price will recover with the dividends however are we gone with the days with minimal or no discount placement. Savvy investors may find this great opportunity to average down. However we need to be cautious to not just look at acquisition accretion but also the dilution of share with discount, resulting lower DPU in Net is worth the effort or the whole exercise is just about fattening Capitaland pocket ? Will Ascendas Reit continue to be of high standard as before or Investor needs to start crunching their numbers to micro level.

Started exploring Dogecoin Wallet recently. Take me days to install DogeCore. After it is done, comes to a halt when I could not install XMRIG .... to start easy mining ... to get some coins to try out. Seems like Anti-Virus treats it like a plague. I have a constant fear that my PC will be compromised as well. Will probably give up trying.

Lastly, portfolio year to date hits 5% returns. That's is like more than 7% behind STI Index ( Best Regional Stock this year so far ). It has been a long time that I am beaten so soundly. Interestingly, I am still feeling upbeat about my shares. That's conviction I guess or what's left of the hope I have ... ... ...

Cheers

Cory

2021-0508

Articles in this Blog is personal take and educational purposes only. Reader should seek their own professional help when making financial decision and be responsible for their decision.