My Investment Portfolio (Jan 2008)

It had been a volatile month. The way the market moves this month can be summarized in one word - Noise. Imagine STI moving up and down 100 points every day. Those traders must have been having heart attack by just looking at intra-day charts of their stock holdings.

For long term investors like me, this month had been a good opportunity to pick up some bargains. In fact, the dividend collected for this month is not very high for me, due to most companies having December year end reporting results in January and Feburary. Therefore, I missed the chance to pick up more bargains by staying fully invested at all times. But diversification helps me to limit my downside risk this month and I certainly appreciate the merits of having a diversified portfolio during these volatile times.

The highlight of this month had to be the takeover offers for Straits Trading, Ascott and Robinsons. Interesting bidding war is going on at Straits Trading and maybe even Robinsons. I will hold my shares in these companies tightly and see how it goes. I have also received takeover offers for Frontline, Vantage and International Capital Limited. But these companies are not my major holdings and so I will not elaborate them here.

Going forward, the market is expected to remain volatile. I will still stick to value investing in these kind of market, while waiting to collect more dividends in Feburary from companies having September year-end and holding their AGMs this month. Dividends from names like Cerebos Pacific, F&N and most REITs etc will provide the much-needed funds for me to continue to bottom-pick in the market during Feburary.

My S'pore Stock Portfolio - Top Holdings, cash investment only (correct as at 31 January 2008)

Top 30 Holdings (Sing$ Denominated shares)
1. Raffles Education Corp
2. Cosco Corp
3. SGX
4. Noble Group
5. Jaya Holdings
6. A-REIT
7. SembCorp Marine
8. Jardine C&C
9. Sincere Watch
10. KS Energy
11. CapitaMall Trust
12. Keppel Corp
13. Straits Trading
14. F&N
15. Guocoland
16. SPC
17. ComfortDelgro
18. Keppel Land
19. CapitaLand
20. Bukit Sembawang Estates
21. Hersing
22. Tat Hong
23. Wheelock Properties
24. Parkway Holdings
25. Unisteel Technology
26. Food Empire
27. Inter-Roller Engineering
28. SembCorp Industries
29. Cerebos Pacific
30. CapitaCommercial Trust

Top 5 Holdings (US$ Denominated shares)
1. Jardine Strategic
2. Hong Kong Land
3. Dairy Farm
4. Mandarin Oriental
5. Pacific Shipping Trust

Top Holdings (HK$ Denominated shares)
1. Tan Chong International
2. Fortune REIT

Top Holding (Aust$ Denominated shares)
1. AV Jennings

Top 5 Holdings (CPF OA investment)
1. Keppel Corp
2. STI ETF
3. CapitaMall Trust
4. A-REIT
5. SBS Transit

My Unit Trust Portfolio:
http://www.fundsupermart.com/main/community/Portfolio_View.svdo?id=P199

Voluntary Conditional Cash Offer By ALF Global Private Ltd for Shares In Robinson And Company Limited

Singapore, 20 January 2008 – ALF Global Private Ltd. (“ALF Global” or the “Offeror”) has announced that it intends to make a voluntary conditional cash offer (the “Offer”) for all the shares in Robinson and Company Limited (“RCL” or the “Company”). ALF Global is incorporated for the purpose of making the Offer and is ultimately held by the Al-Futtaim Group (as defined below).

KEY HIGHLIGHTS
-Offer Price of S$6.25 per share
-Premium of 40.1% to last transacted price
-Irrevocable undertakings to accept the Offer received from institutional shareholders in respect of 23.18% stake
http://info.sgx.com/webcoranncatth.nsf/VwAttachments/Att_4450AA03D2B088EE482573D6002C67EA/$file/PressRelease_20Jan08_Final.pdf?openelement

My comments:

Interesting stuff. We have the 3rd offer since the start of the year! It just shows how smart institution investors are gearing up to take companies private in poor market conditions.

Back to Robinsons, well, I do have a small stake in this company and I had been a shareholder for around 5 years. Value investors who had been holding onto this company will be quite disappointed with their performance lately and their dividend cut during last financial year. The board changes since OCBC reduced their stake in this company also unsettle the company a bit.

Aberdeen Asset Management is among the institutions giving irrevocable undertakings for this offer. Interestingly, Aberdeen also holds Ascott and Straits Trading which are targets for takeover offers currently. It just shows us how value investing had been fruitful in current market situations.

Another obervation from me is that OCBC and Auric Pacific(controlled by Lippo Group) had been slient on this offer thus far. The offer can't go through if both rejects it. As I am also a shareholder of Auric Pacific and OCBC, it will be interesting for me to see what are their response on this offer.

The price, at 40% premiums looks ok to me. At least much better than Straits Trading, which is obviously a bad offer. But I will not sell if OCBC and Auric stays put since the offeror will not be able to take the company private. I will wait and see what happens before deciding.

Singapore's CapitaLand buys rest of Ascott unit

SINGAPORE, Jan 8 - Singapore's CapitaLand , Southeast Asia's largest property firm by market value, said on Tuesday that it will pay S$1.73 per share to fully take over and privatise Ascott Group, its 67-percent owned service residence unit.

The property developer, which is making the voluntary unconditional cash offer through wholly-owned subsidiary Somerset Capital, said the offer is at a 43 percent premium to Ascott's last traded share price and values the company at S$2.8 billion. - Reuters
http://malaysia.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20080107/tap-singapore-capitaland-ascott-c3bb44c.html

My comments:

Another day. Another company being taken over. I see no reason why CapitaLand would want to take Ascott private. Having previously said that they would want to employ an "asset light" strategy, they are actually spending money to acquire assets in this case. And if they wanted to acquire assets and spin them off into a REIT, it also doesn't look right to me as they already have Ascott REIT currently listed and they could have thrown in more assets from Ascott into Ascott REIT.

Obviously, Ascott is undervalued by the market and the way to go is to take it private. As a Ascott shareholder, I will not accept this offer. I believe the company is worth more than what CapitaLand have to offer since its exposure to Service Residences across Europe and Asia is one of the gem in the company.

OCBC-linked Tecity offers to buy S'pore's Straits Trading

SINGAPORE, Jan 6 - Tecity Group, a Singapore-based investment firm, said on Sunday it has offered to buy commodities and property firm Straits Trading Co for S$5.70 a share, valuing the firm at S$1.86 billion ($1.3 billion) - SINGAPORE, Jan 6 - Tecity Group, a Singapore-based investment firm, said on Sunday it has offered to buy commodities and property firm Straits Trading Co for S$5.70 a share, valuing the firm at S$1.86 billion ($1.3 billion). - Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20080106/tbs-straits-trading-takeover-7318940.html

My comments:

Frankly speaking, I am not surprised that Straits Trading had been a target of a takeover offer. Its business spans from properties to commodities to investment etc. Its sum-of-parts is worth much m0re than its current share price. Being one of my top 30 holdings currently, I will not surrender it so easily. Anyway, I don't think they can take the company private by paying only 15% premium from the last traded price. My views are in:
http://forums.sgfunds.com/viewtopic.php?t=6246&start=150

My Investment Portfolio (Dec 2007)

All in all, a good way to end this year with STI having a good comeback in the last trading session of the year. This had been a quiet month, with most people going for holidays I guess. But being a value investor at heart, I make use of this quiet month to accumulate some stocks that had been badly sold down. Some stocks in the oil/gas sector and technology sector had been added into my portfolio during this month.

I have also invested almost all of my CPF-OA and CPF-SA funds, in preparation of the compulsory lock-in for CPF funds coming in 1 April 2008. For CPF-OA, I have added into UOB International Growth Fund and for CPF-SA, I have added into one of my all-time favourite, Prudential Asia Balanced Fund.

I have also accepted the take-over offer from Dubai Drydocks for all my Labory Marine shares. I have lost the battle since they already got more than 90% of the shares. However, I will re-invest the proceeds into more promising companies in order to make up for this.

2007 had been a good year for my investment portfolio. I hope that 2008 will be better. I will continue my strategy to invest prudently every month, with focus on technology sector since they had been sold down quite drastically, with some even trading below NTA. The rights issue strategy will continue to be in play, but expected to be reduced since section 44 tax credits had already expired. Therefore, the rights issue will not be my main strategy in 2008. My main strategy for 2008 will be value investing.

My S'pore Stock Portfolio - Top Holdings, cash investment only (correct as at 31 December 2007)

Top 30 Holdings (Sing$ Denominated shares)
1. Raffles Education Corp
2. SGX
3. Cosco Corp
4. Noble Group
5. Jaya Holdings
6. SembCorp Marine
7. KS Energy
8. A-REIT
9. Jardine C&C
10. Guocoland
11. Sincere Watch
12. F&N
13. CapitaMall Trust
14. Keppel Corp
15. SPC
16. ComfortDelgro
17. Keppel Land
18. Bukit Sembawang Estates
19. Tat Hong
20. Unisteel Technology
21. Wheelock Properties
22. CapitaLand
23. Tiong Woon Corp
24. Parkway Holdings
25. Pacific Andes
26. SembCorp Industries
27. Inter-Roller Engineering
28. Food Empire
29. Straits Trading
30. SC Global

Top 5 Holdings (US$ Denominated shares)
1. Jardine Strategic
2. Hong Kong Land
3. Dairy Farm
4. Mandarin Oriental
5. Pacific Shipping Trust

Top Holdings (HK$ Denominated shares)
1. Tan Chong International
2. Fortune REIT

Top Holding (Aust$ Denominated shares)
1. AV Jennings

Top 5 Holdings (CPF OA investment)
1. Keppel Corp
2. STI ETF
3. CapitaMall Trust
4. A-REIT
5. SBS Transit

My Unit Trust Portfolio:
http://www.fundsupermart.com/main/community/Portfolio_View.svdo?id=P199