Friday, August 31, 2007

End-August 2007 Portfolio Review

The recent market volatility has allowed me to finally add to my portfolio (my second purchase in 2007 so far), and this was a purchase of 4,000 shares of Pacific Andes at a price of S$0.615 on August 17, 2007 (Friday). On this day itself, the Straits Times Index fell more than 190 points during intra-day trading, and a marvelous window of opportunity opened up for me to buy more of a good company cheaply. In fact, many good companies were showing value that day, with Swiber touching S$1.99 and Ezra touching S$4.42. These are all good prices for value investors to accumulate as these depressed prices offer a good margin of safety as compared to the intrinsic value of the company. My only regret was not queueing to buy more of Swiber at S$2.00 as I had to attend to work matters.

Anyhow, below is the usual summary of my investments and related news as at August 31, 2007 (STI at 3,392.91 points). At the request of some of the readers, I have also included my purchase date as well (note: all dividends received are included under my realized gains and NOT used to offset against my purchase price):-

1) Ezra (Vested since October 6, 2005) - Buy Price $1.30 (bonus adjusted), Market Price $5.90, gain 354%. Besides the details of the EGM which I put together in a post two days ago, Ezra has also announced today that their EOC listing has been granted in-principle approval from Oslo Bors subject to certain conditions being met. However, my personal view is that this is a very complex deal and it will still take more due diligence and time before it can be 100% complete. I trust that the company will be transparent enough to keep shareholders updated from time to time on the progress of the listing.

2) Boustead (Vested since September 13, 2006; averaged down November 13, 2006) - Buy Price $1.295 (average), Market Price $2.39, gain 84.6%. Boustead are on a roll as they announced, on August 22, 2007, that they had clinched their largest contract to date of S$300 million to build a township in Libya. Details are as stated in one of my blog posts. The company is expected to clinch more projects in the upcoming months due to their strong competitive advantage in engineering solutions as well as industrial real estate solutions. The net dividend of 3.69 cents per share was received on August 22, 2007.

3) Swiber (Vested since February 14, 2007) - Buy Price $1.01, Market Price $2.84, gain 181.2%. It is obvious that Swiber is growing very rapidly and that the company is engaging in many activities to expand their fleet and raise funds in order to fuel further contract wins. On August 22, Swiber announced the appointment of the VP of FSO operations to spearhead this division’s growth. Subsequently, on August 24, they announced the successful bond issue of S$108.5 million to fund their fleet expansion and for working capital. Further on August 30, they announced a purchase of 4 vessels (3 accommodation barges and one submersible barge) to be added to their fleet from 4Q 2007 to 1Q 2009. The total cost of the vessel acquisitions came up to US$70.6 million, which will be funded from the proceeds of their equity fund raising plus sale-and-leaseback.

4) Global Voice (Vested since November 23, 2005; averaged down January 25, 2006) - Buy Price $0.1775 (average), Market Price $0.175, loss 1.4%. GV snared one more contract on August 21, deploying PrivaNex for Global Connect in Hamburg. For more details on the announcement, please visit SGXNet or Global Voice’s website.

5) Suntec REIT (Vested since December 9, 2004) - Buy Price $1.11, Market Price $1.77, gain 59.5%. There was no news for Suntec REIT except for some changes in substantial shareholding involving Temasek Holdings. There have been no further updates so far on the acquisition of One Raffles Quay. I received my dividend of 2.1 cents per share on August 28, 2007.

6) Pacific Andes (Vested since March 29, 2006; Rights Issue July 11, 207 at S$0.52 per share; averaged down August 17, 2007) - Buy Price $0.665 (rights-adjusted), Market Price $0.77, gain 17.6%. As mentioned, I added to my position on August 17 and reduced my average cost by 1 cent from 66.5 cents to 65.5 cents; thus increasing my margin of safety for this investment. With the growth of the business intact and the 63.9% recognition of CFG to come in 2Q 2008, I see a good chance of high earnings increase potential for the company moving forward. The dividend of 0.54 cents per share was received on August 24, 2007.

Overall Portfolio

My overall portfolio has increased by 104.1% from a new cost of S$46.8K as at August 31, 2007. The market value of my portfolio is around S$95.6K and unrealized gains total S$48.8K. Realized gains from previous share transactions including all dividends received since I started investing come up to about S$4.2K. Most of the gains can be attributed to the strong performances of Ezra due to news of the EOC listing, Swiber’s expansion plans and Boustead’s clinching of the S$300 million Libya township deal. The strong fundamentals in these 3 companies ensured that my portfolio was protected from the sub-prime “storm” (at least for now !).

My next portfolio review will be on Friday, September 14, 2007 after market close.

Note: I will do only one posting this weekend as I will take some time off my investments to spend with my family.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, is it possible for you to categorize your blog according to different topic i.e. portfolio, research series, personal finance and general. Like what Kleer did in his blog

As a reader of your blog, i feel that it will be easier if the reader wants to look at a particular topic.

Anyway, i enjoy reading your blog

All the best in your investment!!

beatnik=)

Musicwhiz said...

Hi beatnik,

Yeah, was actually thinking of doing that too, but I am still discovering the features of blogger ! Was never too good with IT stuff or HTML admittedly, so give me some time to learn and I will dot he categorization accordingly...:)

Anonymous said...

Hi musicwhiz,
Great buys! Your timing is impeccable.
One Question:
There's fears of a slowdown or maybe even a recession of the American economy.
How may this impact the stocks that you own? Is their business dependant on the American economy?

Musicwhiz said...

Hi Anonymous,

So far, I do not see much direct impact on the companies I own. Their business is not directly dependent on the USA economy but a slowdown or recession will definitely have ripple effects.