ANALYSTS SAY: Buy, Sell, Hold (15 Mar 2017)

Yangzijiang Shipbuilding

At a discount to peers

■ Despite a stronger balance sheet and better profits, YZJ is trading at 0.9x CY17 P/BV, a significant discount to Cosco Corp at 2.5x P/BV and SMM at 1.5x P/BV.

■ Pan Ocean Korea has recently ordered five 63,000dwt bulk carriers (US$146m in total) from YZJ, firming our view that orders should improve by 42% yoy in 2017F.

■ Positive industry data indicators - higher BDI, stronger secondhand market and narrowing orderbook to fleet to 11% - spur hopes of better order momentum.

■ As order outlook improves, we think its shipbuilding business should be traded at 1x CY17 P/BV while HTM business be valued at 0.85x P/BV, in line with c.8.5% ROE.

Read More ...

Triyards Holdings:

Awaiting more clarity

Triyards Holdings recently announced that it has won contracts worth US$20.64m for the fabrication of two passenger ferries. They were secured by Strategic Marine, a wholly owned subsidiary, from two ferry operators. The group has been diversifying its order mix, but the stock is still trading at close to 0.3x book, as investors may be awaiting further clarity on the impact that Triyards may face from an Ezra default (e.g. corporate guarantees). As there could be further potential impact beyond what we know and estimate, we lower our fair value estimate to S$0.345 (based on 0.4x FY17F book), and downgrade our rating to HOLD, pending more clarity relating to Ezra.

Scoop of the Day k1 Ventures (KONE SP, Not-Rated)

Time to take some money off the table

k1 Ventures recently announced plans to divest its interests in Knowledge Universe Education (KUE), an US based education company and Guggenheim Capital, a privately held global financial services firm. In 2011, k1 had invested USD100m in Guggenheim Capital through a combination of preferred shares, common shares and warrants. If the proposed sales are successful, k1 intends to distribute proceeds back to shareholders and will effectively become a shell company.

Read More ...