AIO Finance Analysis

Biosensors

Singapore's Biosensors International said on Friday it has received regulatory approval to sell its heart stents in Europe, and expects a return to profitability in the second half of its 2009 financial year.
The loss-making medical equipment maker has been waiting for its CE Mark since April 2005. The mark will enable Biosensors to sell its BioMatrix drug-eluting heart stent in Europe. A heart stent is an expandable mesh-like medical device that is inserted into a clogged artery and used as a scaffold to keep it open.

"With this approval we received, BioMatrix will be available in Europe and parts of Asia," said chief executive Lu Yoh-Chie in a conference call with reporters.

The firm, which in November posted a net loss of $3 million for its half year fiscal 2008, expects higher revenue from the heart stents to return it to profitability in fiscal year 2009.

"We believe in the first half we would continue to make losses, but in the fourth quarter or second half we will be in a position to break-even or even turn a profit," Lu said.

Kevin Sayer, the firm's chief financial officer, said total revenue for 2009 is expected to come in at around $100 million to $115 million, with revenue from heart stents contributing almost half.

The firm, which has been expanding in Asia, will start marketing its BioMatrix heart stent in China in 2010.

Chua Kee Lock, the company's president, told Reuters in an interview in September that Biosensors was looking to penetrate India, Taiwan and South Korea within the next 12 months. The firm bought over a Chinese medical company earlier this month.

Biosensors, with a market cap of $765 million, competes with healthcare giants such as Johnson & Johnson and Abbott Laboratories Inc .

Lu said he was not ruling out a takeover.

"Everything is possible, we do not rule out any possibilities going forward," Lu said.

Shares in Biosensors were suspended from trade on Friday. The stock has outperformed a weaker Singapore benchmark index to gain 15 percent so far this year, after it underperformed and ended 2007 little changed.

Source: Reuters

Apple Macbook Air








Just to side track a bit, it such a beauty not to be shared. Saw this Mac laptop. It's amazing that how thin it was design. Great Job to Apple.

The laptop is powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo chip running at 1.6GHz, with 1.8GHz available as an option. Jobs noted that Intel was willing to engineer a new version of the Core 2 Duo specifically to Apple's specifications -- it's 60 percent smaller than others. The chip operates with 4MB of on-chip shared L2 cache running at full processor speed, and uses an 800MHz frontside bus. 2GB of 667MH DDR2 SDRAM is also included.

Like the MacBook and the MacBook Pro, the MacBook Air features a slimmed down MagSafe connector for power. It comes with a 45 watt power adapter. A flip-down door on one side reveals USB 2.0, Micro-DVI (to connect an external display) and a headphone jack. The MacBook Air also includes 802.11n-based wireless networking support and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR.

Apple estimates that with wireless networking turned on, the MacBook Air can get about 5 hours of battery life.

Top Performing Unit Trust in 2007

Above is a chart by Fundsupermart.

It seems like India and China are still the top performers in the Unit Trust market. You can see from the chart that they are infested with both India and China funds. The question is that will they maintain their drive?

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Source: Fundsupermart

Wilmar falls on China price intervention

Shares of Wilmar International tumbled as much as 8.4 percent to S$4.45 with 5.9 million shares traded on news that Chinese regulators would limit the plantation firm's ability to raise prices on their edible oil products.

"There is increasing pressure on Wilmar to subsidise the Chinese consumers and absorb part of the higher raw material cost," Merrill Lynch analyst Han Lim Chong said.

Merrill Lynch said in a client note that while there was continuing upside potential to the stock given high crude palm oil prices, the risks to the firm's downstream margins have "risen significantly".

China on Wednesday issued a list of producers of daily necessities that must apply for government permission to raise prices, fleshing out a cabinet decision last week to begin direct market intervention to curb inflation.

Source: Reuters

Afor Limited

(IPO booth at Raffles Place. It was unusually crowded due to freebies offered by the launch of My Paper).

Afor Limited is a one-stop premium retailer specialising in the sale of Apple brand products and its complementary products.

1m public shares at $0.33 each
22.5m placement shares.
Issue Manager: DMG & Partners and Primepartners Corporate Finance
Closing date: 16 January 2008

FY2007 ended 30 June 2007

Revenue - S$60m
Net profit - S$3.47m
EPS based on post share cap of 93.5m = 3.71 cents
PE based on IPO price - 8.9x

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Source: Singapore IPO

Phillip Research
Seen this report from Phillip Research among those was Cacola. The stock was flying high at $0.47 just on Friday (11 Jan) and now at a low of $0.355. Anyone care to share what happen?

Source: Phillip Research

ASIAN MARKETS

Asian markets, with the exception of Taiwan, will likely have a rough start following Wall Street’s sharp fall last Friday as a result of warning by American Express of rising credit card defaults, confirming fears of the spread of the credit market contagion. Dow was down nearly 250 points or 1.9%. (KMT, the opposition party in Taiwan, scored a landslide victory at the legislative elections on Saturday, representing a repudiation of incumbent President Chen’s call for a referendum on Taiwan’s UN application. Taiwan’s presidential election will be held on Mar 22nd.

ELLIPSIZ

Ellipsiz warned that profit for H1 ended Dec ’07 will be “significantly lower” than a year ago, when the profit was a robust $10.89 mln. (Profit in H2 ended Jun ’07 had already slipped to $4.14 mln.) Ellipsiz has also appointed Melvin Chan as the new CEO, as Xavier Chong gives up the role to remain as Executive Chairman. Ellipsiz’s share price has dropped 70% since the prospective buyer terminated talks with the company in June; at 30.5 cents, Ellipsiz is at its lowest since 2003.

STATS

Even though the Temasek name would help STATS borrow cheaply, investors were certainly not impressed with its plan to distribute US$813 mln to shareholders, which works out to 37 US cents / Singapore cents per share by taking on more borrowings: the stock rose by “only” 4 cents on Friday before closing 2 cents higher at $1.52.

Assuming the plan goes ahead, STATS’ borrowings will rise to US$1.41 bln from US$683 mln and gross gearing to 2.2x from 0.5x. (As at end Sept ’07, STATS had cash of US$260 mln.) Those hoping to see Temasek take STATS private will just have to wait till the scheme is completed, a process that is likely to take months. (Temasek owns, at the close of its S$1.75 cash offer on May 18 ’07, 1,693,700,099

shares or 83.1% of STATS’ issued capital.)

CHEMOIL ENERGY

Chemoil has appointed Clyde Michael Bandy as Chairman / CEO with immediate effect. Bandy, Lead Independent Director of Chemoil since Aug ’06, has >35 years of experience in the energy industry, mainly with the Texaco / Chevron group. This is positive for Chemoil after the tragic demise of founder Chairman / CEO R Chandran last week, except that investors are likely more interested in the possibility of Chemoil becoming a takeover candidate. As we had commented last week, it may be premature to speculate on this, given the legal

implications arising from Mr Chandran’s demise - bulk of Chemoil Chandran owned are held in a trust.

SIA

Reflecting the first official response to the SIA / Temasek / China Eastern saga, the Xinhua News Agency said on Saturday that China “needs to urgently unify its civil aviation market and create a national network of aviation routes that can act as runway for the country to soar globally”. This is taken to signal the central government’s change of mind, now wanting to consolidate the key domestic players (Air China, China Eastern and China Southern) to create a super-carrier”. An official was also quoted as saying the lack of competition resulting from such a consolidation would not be an issue. This is obviously negative news for SIA as far as its China aspirations go.

Source: Lim & Tan Securities

First Ship Lease Trust - Purchase and Analysis of Purchase

I purchased some FSL Trust today at a market price of S$1.17 to add to my portfolio. After doing some research on the Internet and on forums for high-yielding stocks, I chanced upon shipping trusts. There are 3 of them currently listed on SGX, namely Rickmers Maritime Trust, First Ship Lease Trust (FSL Trust) and Pacific Shipping Trust (PST). Since this was a relatively new asset class and promised high yield, I decided to do my research to see what I could sniff out in terms of yield and returns.

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Source: SG Music Whiz

DBS Vickers Report

Stay cautious this week, as the market is likely to continue its downward bias. The play on recent IPO listings has waned while S-chips could suffer more downside amid concerns about margin pressures as investors unwind.

The impact of the credit crisis on the corporate earnings of US financial companies will be accessed. Expect financial companies to announce more losses stemming from their exposure to mortgage-related investments.

Citigroup releases results on Tuesday, JP Morgan Wednesday and Merrill Lynch on Thursday. The releases of December US PPI and CPI will also shed more light on inflationary pressures given the weakening USD.

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Source: Extraordinary Profits

Commercial REITs

I got interested in Commercial REITs after reading in The Edge and learnt that Allco Commercial REIT was selling at a discount. If we agree with the concept of buying at discount, then AllcoComReit would have been a bargain! Wanting to find out more, I began what was to become a study into the financials of the various Commercial REITs listed in SGX.

Commercial REITs or Office REITs are essentially business vehicles deriving income from operation of office spaces. In my opinion, REITs are useful for being able to deliver stable income returns to investors, with potential to deliver on valuations upside, and commercial REITs are no exception.

My search reveal that there are altogether five Commercial/Commercial-retail REITs listed locally.

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Source: Million Dollars Dream

STATS ChipPAC to distribute US$813m by capital reduction
STATS ChipPAC, South-east Asia's largest provider of chip testing and packaging services, plans to return up to US$813 million to shareholders through a proposed capital reduction.

Old Chang Kee's success: it's no puff
UNDAUNTED by failed attempts to enter Japan, Myanmar, China, New Zealand and South Africa in the early 1990s, F&B group Old Chang Kee is now launching a second wave of overseas expansion - this time with a firmer hand.

Second A380 jet joins SIA fleet
SINGAPORE Airlines' second Airbus A380, which was handed over to the company in Toulouse, France, yesterday, will join the first one on the Singapore-Sydney route.

One-time gain lifts Ezra Q1 net profit to $188.4m
A HUGE one-time gain lifted offshore support and marine services company Ezra Holdings to a net profit of $188.4 million for its first quarter ended Nov 30, 2007.

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Source: Economics, Investing & Personal Finance Zone