Keppel Land - Purchased Tianjin Eco-City residential site at a "reasonable" S$49.1m
Based on psm computation by OCBC.
Keppel Land (KPLD) announced that it has purchased a 10.37-ha residential site in the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City for RMB241.1m or S$49.1m.
This gives the land site, which is located along the Ji Canal and is near the commercial sub-centre of the Eco-City, a purchase price of RMB2.3k psm land area which OCBC views as "a reasonable price though limited impact to RNAV is expected."
The research firm further noted that it would develop roughly 350 landed homes, targeted at upper/middle-income homebuyers, and would launch the development progressively starting from 2H14.
Supermarket chain owner Sheng Siong (SGX: OV8) announced its third quarter results yesterday evening.
Some basic numbers
For the three months ended 30 Sep 2013, revenue grew 4.8% year-on-year to S$178m while profits increased by 7.8% to S$10.6m.
Earnings per share also grew 7.8% to 0.765 Singapore cents.
The supermarket-chain’s revenue for the quarter had increased mainly due to additional sales of S$12.6m coming from new stores. That helped offset a decline in comparable same store sales (comps) – sales from stores open more than 12 months – of S$4.5m.
Sheng Siong’s lower comps were due to a number of factors. Matured stores in older housing estates have been seeing declining sales (an issue that was also highlighted in the company’s second quarter earnings release) while construction activity in the vicinity of the company’s Bedok Central and The Verge stores had negatively affected their business.
In addition, the company had faced stiffer competition, likely from rivals such as NTUC or Dairy Farm Holdings (SGX: D01). The latter owns the Cold Storage and Giant brand of supermarkets, among others.
The company had managed to slash some costs which accounted for the higher growth rate in profit as compared to revenue. In particular, cost of sales – the cost of the goods that Sheng Siong stocks its shelves with – and distribution expenses had shown improvement.
For some operational highlights, Sheng Siong’s total retail area is now 400,000 square feet, an increase of 2.3% compared to a year ago. The company currently has 33 stores, up from 31 in the previous year.
What’s next for Sheng Siong
Staff and food costs are on the forefront of the company’s thoughts as they expect to see a rise in them in the future.
Keen competition among industry-peers has also led to Sheng Siong considering buying up retail space as renting new outlets “could be challenging going forward”.
A key component of the company’s growth strategy is to expand retail space in Singapore, especially in areas where it does not have a presence. In addition, Sheng Siong’s looking at sprucing up its older stores in a bid to drive up comps.
The company’s also actively pursuing initiatives to widen its profit margins and they include the increase of direct sourcing and bulk handling; improvement in sales mix of higher margin products; and an increase in the selection and types of housebrand products.
There have been year-on-year improvements in profit margins at the company since at least the second quarter of 2013, so it seems they are working.
Lastly, Sheng SIong’s pilot e-commerce project is pencilled to start in the fourth quarter of the year.
Valuation
Sheng Siong last closed at S$0.625 per share. This values the company at 23 times trailing earnings with a dividend yield of 2.8% based on its pay-out last year.
Cache Logistics' net property income surged 8.5% to $19.6m
But DPU dipped by 0.8% YoY.
According to OCBC Investment Research, Cache Logistics Trust (CACHE) reported 3Q13 NPI of S$19.6m and distributable income of S$16.5m, up 8.5% and 9.6% YoY respectively.
Here's more:
DPU for the quarter came in at 2.126 S cents, down marginally by 0.8% YoY. For 9M13, DPU amounted to 6.507 S cents, up 4.8%.
This forms 76.2% of our FY13 DPU projection. Management noted that the portfolio assets remains fully leased with only 3% of the leases due to expire in 2014, and that it will continue its pursuit of yieldaccretive acquisitions as well as organic growth opportunities in both asset enhancement initiatives and built-to-suit projects.
As at 30 Sep, aggregate leverage stood at a comfortable 29.2%, with 70% of the total borrowings hedged into fixed interest rates. We will speak to management later to get more details on its outlook.
Ezra - EOC SAILS INTO THE BLACK IN FY13, MARKS ITS EFFORTS TO SHARPEN BUSINESS STRATEGY
Newsroom
23/10/2013
· US$43.1m revenue supported by long term charters of its construction fleet and the provision of project management, engineering and construction services
· Part sale of FPSO in 4QFY13 strengthens balance sheet and opens door to high growth Malaysian offshore market
· Plans to grow construction fleet and re-align services in Floating production sector allow EOC to gain from Asia's robust E&P spending
EOC Limited (EOC or the Group), one of Asia's leading providers of offshore production services to the oil and gas (O&G) sector, has returned to the black with a net attributable profit of US$11.1 million for the financial year ended 31 August 2013 (FY13), compared to a net loss of US$12.4 million in the previous corresponding period.
The Group's solid turnaround was achieved despite revenue dipping to US$43.1 million from US$132.9 million in FY12, as EOC moved decisively away from construction projects to focus on growing recurrent income from the long-term charters of its construction and production assets coupled with the provision of more rationalised floating production related services.
EOC's Acting Chief Executive Officer, Mr Jon Dunstan, stated: "The turnaround is the result of our concerted efforts to sharpen our business strategy to quickly arrest the losses seen in FY12. We tapped into our wide network to successfully redeploy a major production vessel into the high growth Malaysian market under a fast track programme. We also realised first revenue from our suite of rationalised production service offerings."
The Group's three accommodation and construction barges are currently on charters to international oil majors as end clients for the execution of various offshore projects in Brunei, Republic of Congo and the Gulf of Thailand. In addition, Lewek EMAS, its floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel, recently completed its second year of operations under a six-year firm charter in Vietnam's Chim Sao Field having produced over 16 million barrels of oil for its client coupled with an excellent safety track record whilst doing so.
With the completion of the sale-and purchase agreement (SPA) to sell 51% of entities owning and operating the FPSO Perisai Kamelia (formerly known as Lewek Arunothai) and acquisition of 49% stake in Enterprise 3, an offshore construction barge, the Group has carefully positioned this vessel into the growing offshore sector in Malaysia and seized the opportunity to establish a major presence there.
This deal with Perisai Petroleum Teknologi Bhd has allowed the Group to de-risk its FPSO business model and de-gear its balance sheet, where the net debt to equity ratio has fallen to 1.0 times as at end August 2013 from 2.0 times a year ago.
Mr Dunstan added: "The Group is firmly on the path to sustainable earnings and we are confident of repeating our performance in this current year FY14. With improved financial strength, we are on the lookout to grow our asset base again and expand our stream of long term recurrent income, which will be further supplemented by new fee-based income from engineering, procurement and construction projects in the offshore production sector ."
