Inphyy Corner

Sysma - PROPOSED PLACEMENT OF 19,500,000 NEW ORDINARY SHARES - Receipt of Listing Approval

Unless otherwise defined, capitalised terms herein shall bear the same meaning ascribed to them under the Company’s announcement dated 17 October 2013.

Further to the announcements of the Company dated 17 and 22 October 2013, the Board of Directors of the Company is pleased to announce that the Company has on 23 October 2013 received the listing and quotation notice from the SGX-ST for the listing and quotation of the 19,500,000 Placement Shares to be allotted and issued pursuant to the Proposed Placement, subject to compliance with the SGX-ST’s listing requirements.

The listing and quotation notice from the SGX-ST is not to be taken as an indication of the merits of the Proposed Placement, the Placement Shares, the Company, its subsidiaries and their securities.

A separate announcement will be made by the Company upon the allotment and issuance of the Placement Shares to the Lender.

BY ORDER OF THE BOARD

Sin Soon Teng
Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

23 October 2013

Mermaid Maritime - INITIATES EARLY ADOPTION OF FUNCTIONAL CURRENCY REPORTING IN UNITED STATES DOLLAR

Mermaid Maritime Public Company Limited (“Mermaid” or the “Company”) wishes to announce that its Board of Directors has approved the early adoption of functional currency reporting in United States Dollar (“USD”) that will apply commencing from the Company’s financial statements for the year ended 30 September 2013(“FY2013”).

The Company’s functional currency, being the currency of the primary economic environment in which the Company operates, is USD. However, the Company’s presentation currency in its financial statements has been in limited to Thai Baht (“THB”). This resulted in reporting of unrealized translation-related foreign exchange gains or losses given that the functional currency and the presentation currency are different.

Pursuant to an amendment to Thai Accounting Standard 21 (The Effect of Changes in Foreign Exchange Rates), the Company can now present its financial statements in its functional currency, which is USD. Although the implementation of this new reporting requirement is to be
effective commencing from Mermaid’s 2014 financial year ending 30 September 2014 (“FY2014”), early adoption of functional currency reporting is permitted.

This early adoption of functional currency reporting in USD will allow the Company to promptly eliminate the aforesaid unrealized translation-related foreign exchange gains or losses in the financial statements and also allow the Company to present its financial statements in a
currency that is more understandable to its international base of shareholders and investors.

Please be informed accordingly.

Ms. Phimolwan Phromchanya
Senior Manager, Legal & Corporate Affairs
23 October 2013

Mapletree Industrial Trust - Delivers Higher Distributions

By Sudhan P - October 23, 2013

Mapletree Industrial Trust (SGX: ME8U), or MIT, which has 83 properties located all across Singapore, saw its gross revenue for the first half of 2013 (1H 2013) go up by 9.9% to S$148.5 million over 1H 2012. The net property income rose 10% to S$106.5 million, the distributable income went up by 9.4% to S$81.3 million and the distribution per unit rose 7.7% to 4.90 Singapore cents. MIT said that the year-on-year increase was mainly due to “higher rental rates secured across all property segments and higher occupancies in the Flatted Factories and Stack-up/Ramp-up Buildings.”

As of 30 September 2013, the interest cover ratio was at 7.0 times and the gearing ratio was at 36.2%. The weighted average all-in funding cost turned out to be 2.3%. The average portfolio occupancy decreased to 93.9% from 95.5% mainly because of an “exit of a major tenant at one of the Business Park Buildings.” The net asset value is at $1.11.

Mr Tham Kuo Wei, Chief Executive Officer of Mapletree Industrial Trust Management Limited, the Mananger, said, “The portfolio demonstrated resilience with continued quarter-on-quarter DPU growth of 1.6% despite the exit of a major tenant in 2QFY13/14. During the quarter, MIT refinanced all borrowings due in Financial Year 2013/2014 extending the weighted average tenor of debt from 2.5 years to 3.2 years. With a strong balance sheet and improved financial flexibility, MIT continues to pursue development and acquisition opportunities to grow the portfolio.”

The shares closed on $1.365 on Tuesday. The price-to-book ratio is at 1.23 and the distribution yield is at 7.04%, taking into account the distributions for the past four quarters.


Courtesy of The Motley Fool

5 Things You Should Know About Dairy Farm

By Alison Hunt - October 23, 2013

Though you may not know the name of retail behemoth Dairy Farm International Holdings (SGX: D01) you will undoubtedly know its Singaporean brands – Cold Storage, Giant, Guardian, Jason’s Marketplace and 7-Eleven, to name but a few.

Dairy Farm also operates supermarkets and health & beauty stores throughout the rest of Asia such as Wellcome, Mannings and Health and Glow and Ikea in Hong Kong and Taiwan. It also has a 50% stake in Maxim’s – Hong Kong’s leading restaurant chain.

Whilst it’s now part of the sprawling conglomerate that is Jardine Matheson (SGX: J36) Dairy Farm had some pretty interesting beginnings.

Cows from Scotland

Dairy Farm, founded in 1886, was the brainchild of a Scottish surgeon, Dr Patrick Manson and five well-known Hong Kong businessmen. They wanted to improve the health of Hong Kong’s people by providing them with their own, clean, non-contaminated cows’ milk – with the crazy plan to import the required dairy cattle all the way from Manson’s native Scotland. This would theoretically allow them to halve the price of milk, and realise a profit for their shareholders.

Unsurprisingly it wasn’t easy. The cows that survived the arduous journey had to contend with an unfamiliar climate as well as disease in the herd.

A’ milking we will go…

But with the help of their staff of British livestock experts, succeed they did and by 1892, the Pokfulam farm had become a thriving enterprise. With over 15,000 Europeans in Hong Kong, demand became such that the company built a cold storage warehouse known as the Old Dairy Farm Depot to allow them to store their milk.

Dairy Farm was soon importing butter and frozen meat from Australia, opened its first retail store in 1904 and by the First World War was supplying Hong Kong’s fishing boats with ice. By 1928, the company had six retail stores, and through its subsidiaries was supplying Macau and even some Chinese cities.

By 1946, post-war Hong Kong saw its people starting to enjoy normal essentials again. Dairy Farm’s future looked bright and it managed to make a record net profit of HK$1,519,292. The company acquired the grocery chain Wellcome in 1964, and expanded its retailing business.

Hongkong Land

In 1972, Dairy Farm was acquired by Jardine subsidiary, the Singapore-listed Hongkong Land (SGX: H78) in a deal that allowed it to retain its independence and personality – and continued to expand its retail operations. However, it was re-listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 1986, after being demerged from Hongkong Land.

But did you know…
1.Dairy Farm’s Old Dairy Farm Depot, in Central, Hong Kong, is today a listed building, and currently houses the Foreign Correspondents Club.

2.Dairy Farm marked its 120th anniversary by sponsoring the conversion of the last two remaining Dairy Farm cowsheds in Pokfulam into a performance venue for the Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts – The Wellcome Theatre.

3.Dairy Farm was the first company to form a joint venture with the Chinese Government for the operation of a flight kitchen at Beijing International Airport.

4.Dr Patrick Manson was not just a pioneer of Scottish milk in Hong Kong. His undoubted greatest achievement was scientific – he was the first person to realise that mosquitoes spread disease. It was by following his, and French physician Charles Laveran’s research that another doctor, Ronald Ross was able to demonstrate the life cycle of the malaria parasites in mosquitoes – one of the most important medical breakthroughs of all time, which earned Ross the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1902.

5.Patrick Manson was instrumental in the founding of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, as well as the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese (now, the University of Hong Kong). One of his first pupils there was Sun Yat Sen, the first President of the Republic of China.

Today, Dairy Farm has changed from a humble milk producer into one of Singapore’s largest listed companies. A leading pan-Asian retailer with over 5,700 outlets and 97,000 employees, it is also, interestingly, one of the world’s largest listed grocers in terms of market capitalisation.

Dairy Farm is 78% owned by Jardine Matheson with retail outlets throughout Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Vietnam, China, Brunei, Indonesia, Taiwan and India.

Looking forward, Dairy Farm has recently entered the Cambodian market by the acquisition of a 70% interest in the company that operates Lucky supermarkets, and the Philippines through a 50% stake in Rustan’s Supercenters, which operates Shopwise supermarkets and hypermarkets.


Courtesy of The Motley Fool

AIMS AMP Capital Industrial REIT Sees 10% Growth In Distributions

By Ser Jing Chong - October 23, 2013

Real estate investment trusts with property portfolios that consist of industrial properties based in Singapore have been seeing improving results in their quarterly releases so far.

We have had Sabana Shari’ah REIT (SGX: M1GU) and Mapletree Industrial Trust (SGX: ME8U) both report year-on-year increases in distributions and earlier today, AIMS AMP Capital Industrial REIT (SGX: O5RU) joined in the fray.

AACIR’s has 25 industrial properties under its belt “strategically located in Singapore serving as infrastructure to the port and airport facilities”. They are valued collectively at around S$1.09b as of 30 Sep 2013.

The REIT’s second quarter earnings saw gross revenue for the quarter increase 24.8% year-on-year to S$24.5m. Net property income followed suite with an increase of similar magnitude at 23.6% to S$15.7m.

Distributable income at AACIR had jumped a stunning 29.2% to S$14.5m compared to a year ago. Unfortunately, distributions per unit (DPU) only managed a comparatively meagre 10% increase to 2.75 Singapore cents – that’s what happens when REITs undergo private placements to dilute existing unit holders.

In AAIR’s case, the bulk of the dilution occurred on 2 May 2013 when it issued 68.75m new units in a private placement back when it had 449m units outstanding. The REIT now has a total of 526.6m units in existence as of 30 Sep 2013.

The growth in gross revenue was mainly due to contributions from the new development at 20 Gul Way (Phase One and Two of the development had become income-producing in Dec 2012 and July 2013 respectively) and higher rental rates from the 27 Penjuru Lane property.

Property expenses increased mostly in-line with the growth in gross revenue, which accounted for the gains in net property income.

Other expenses, such as borrowing costs in particular, were slashed. This allowed distributions to grow even faster than gross revenue and net property income.

For some operational highlights, the REIT had achieved 98% occupancy-rates in its portfolio and saw rents increase by a weighted-average of 20.7%.

Turning to AACIR’s balance sheet, unitholders will be pleased to know that have been improvements across the board compared to a year ago.

The REIT’s gearing has decreased from 31.5% to 25.2%; total debt has dropped from S$308m to S$279m; and, interest cover has gone up from 4.8 times to 6.3 times.

For some outlook for the financial year ending 31 March 2014, the REIT has an eye out for rising interest rates which can affect funding costs. In preparation, it has positioned its capital structure such that there’s “no debt due for refinancing until Oct 2015, with 100% of its debt fixed for an average of 2.7 years.”

The REIT also saw the industrial property market in Singapore enter “a relatively steady state in 2Q 2013 with stable rents and marginal growth in capital values.” That could mean flat performance for AACIR on a quarter-on-quarter basis for the next few quarterly earnings releases, but no one really has a working crystal ball.

The REIT’s results were pretty well-received by the market as its units have gone up 2.7% to S$1.525 at the time of writing (12 noon, 23 Oct 2013) even as the Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI) only managed a 0.3% increase.

At that price, units of AACIR are valued at 1 times book value, and carry a distribution yield of 6.9% based on annualising its half-year pay-out of 5.25 Singapore cents for the current financial year.


Courtesy of The Motley Fool

Ezra - EOC's Fourth Quarter Financial Year 2013 Results Announcement

EOC Announcements 4Q FY2013
feed.ne.cision.com/client/eoclimited//Co...File.aspx?id=2231627

EOCL FY13 results presentation
feed.ne.cision.com/client/eoclimited//Co...File.aspx?id=2231626

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