Some times companies look for new ventures because the existing ones are not able to scale up. But new venture use up funds.

Take the case of Protasco. The company has reported 11 business segments even though the revenue for 2023 was only about 1 RM billion.

You may be forgiven for wondering whether management is just trying many things to see what works. When you look at the chart, you can see that only one segment is driving revenue and earnings. https://i.postimg.cc/3wXQxfYW/Protasco.png

It suggests that management is trying luck to see what else they can do. The worse part is that several of its historical ventures have lost money. And there are some which have ended up as legal cases as the company tried to recover what was paid.

I would think that it may be better for the company to return the excess funds to shareholders than try luck. Protasco is a cash cow. But the cash is not well deployed.

For more insights refer to https://www.i4value.asia/2024/04/is-protasco-investment-opportunity.html#more

Bursa Malaysia Eksons used to have 2 business segments – timber (mfg of veneer and plywood) and property development. But in early 2023, it closed down the timber business. At the same time, there is no new property development projects. The company is merely selling off its stocks of plywood and unsold properties.

But the company is cash rich due to the closing down of the timber business. It has RM274 million in cash or cash equivalent (investment securities) as of Dec 2023. But cash can also be a value trap as explained in page 21 of INVEST
https://notice.shareinvestor.com/email/newsletter/invest/pdf/Vol201-Invest-29Mar.pdf

Before becoming an Islamic banking group in 2017, MBSB was mainly a property financier. This changed with the acquisition of Asian Finance Bank in 2017 as this propelled MBSB into Malaysia’s second-largest standalone Islamic Bank.

But as can be seen from the return charts, this also resulted in reducing its returns from both the ROE and ROA perspective. https://i.postimg.cc/7PJKkHq1/Chart-2.png

Of course this was the combination of lower bottom line with more assets and equity. The point is that if you were a shareholder prior to the transformation, you got lower returns. This is not exactly exciting news. https://www.i4value.asia/2024/03/is-mbsb-investment-opportunity.html#more

Crescendo’s performance over the past 12 years has been impacted by the soft property market. Despite this environment, the Group managed to be profitable every year. But the property sector is cyclical and with the post-Covid-19 opening of the economy, the bottom of the cycle has been reached.

Crescendo's outlook is optimistic. Positioned near vital projects like Iskandar Malaysia and Pengerang Integrated Petroleum Complex, it is poised for growth in demand for
both residential and industrial units.

Crescendo is currently trading below its Asset Value with more than a 30% margin of safety. As a property company, the Asset Value is a good reflection of its intrinsic value. Have a look at my updated valuation at page 20 in INVEST https://notice.shareinvestor.com/email/newsletter/invest/pdf/Vol199-Invest-15Mar.pdf

You may think that being a privatized port operator for the whole of Sabah would make Suria Capital a company with good returns. Unfortunately over the past 12 years, the company only achieved an average ROE of 6%. https://i.postimg.cc/4NqfFSsN/Suria-Cap-returns.png

In fact quite a substantial part of its profits came from non-port operations such as property and investments.

I think this is because the economic activities in Sabah is not as developed as those in Peninsular Malaysia. While it is a growing economy and it may some time before we see Suria Capital benefiting from this.

Moral of the story? This is really a stock for the very long-term investor at the current market price. https://www.i4value.asia/2024/03/is-suria-capital-value-trap.html#more

MyEG has now emerged as a new substantial shareholder of Heitech Padu. According to the news, MyEG acquired Heitech for about RM 2.21 per share.

Now that we know why there was a run up in the share price for the past few weeks. But from a fundamental perspective, is the current price at RM 3.05 per share justified?

This will depend on whether there are projects that MyEG can help to secure for Heitech that would boost Heitech earnings.

I last blog about Heitech in 2022 where I compared the performance of a number of ICT companies. The average ROE achieved by Heitech was negative 5 % compared to MyEG average of 31%.
https://i.postimg.cc/cJgzhp5C/HT-peer-results.png
Based on the 2021 book value and assuming that Heitech can match the 31% ROE, we will have an EPS of RM 0.33 per share. So for those excited about Heitech Padu, you can imagine a PE valuation based on this earnings?

Are we going into the realm of speculation? The best I can say at this stage is that MyEG price would probably be a floor price but the ceiling would depend on the new business of Heitech.

Its historical businesses is not going to give it the earnings multiplier to justify even the floor price. And to achieve the 31% ROE, Heitech has to take care of its historical businesses to ensure that there are not loss making. https://www.i4value.asia/2022/05/heitech-padu-my-investment-dilemma.html#more

OSK Holdings carried out a corporate exercise in 2014, to merge PJ Development Holdings Berhad and OSK Property Holdings Berhad into the group. Effectively OSK Holdings is now a property counter with property development & construction, investment properties and some manufacturing as it main operations.

But is this really the case? When you look at its profit profile as shown in the chart, you will find that the bigger contributor over the past 9 years was not from its operations. The non-operating segment - its investments in RHB bank - accounted for a bigger part of its profits. https://i.postimg.cc/RhS06qnH/OSK-profit-profile.png

So, is this a property company or something else? If you are thinking of investing in OSK, shouldn’t you be looking at the performance of the Malaysian banking sector rather than the property sector? https://www.i4value.asia/2024/03/is-osk-value-trap.html#more

According to Damodaran, projecting the performance of cyclical companies based on the current performance can lead to mis-valuations. He opined that for such companies we should look at the performance over the cycle – the normalized performance

When I carried out such an analysis of CSC Steel, I found that there is still a margin of safety based on its current price. Refer to page 20 of the article https://notice.shareinvestor.com/email/newsletter/invest/pdf/Vol197_Invest-01Mar.pdf

You may think that a company with lots of cash can be a good thing. Afterall many would not challenge the mantra that “cash is king”

But in the case of Eksons, you may have to think differently. As of the end of 2023, Eksons had about 2/3 of its total assets held in cash and short term securities. The huge cash position is because the company had scaled down its plywood business and its property development business had yet to scale up.

So it ended with tons of cash where a significant amount is now invested in securities. Unless they have a Warren Buffett in the company, you should worry about whether this is an effective deployment of cash.

My point is that the large cash holding is because of the lack of operations. This large cash holding has been there for many years. I used to think it was a good thing. But if a company is holding onto cash for years, it may not be a good thing. In this case, cash is actually a value trap. https://www.i4value.asia/2023/10/eksons-is-now-value-trap-oct-2023.html#more

A month ago, I wrote about the price spike in Heitech Padu and wondered whether it was going to be some news that would provide a quantum leap in business. https://www.i4value.asia/2022/05/heitech-padu-my-investment-dilemma.html#more

The price had jumped from about RM 1.00 per share to RM 1.15 per share. I had some Heitech shares that I bought sometime back at about RM 1.04 per share and I told myself to exit when the price went up to RM 1.30 per share.

Unfortunately, the high price did not sustain fell to below RM 1.00 per share a week later. I figured that the price spike was just some speculative play. Then just before the Lunar New Year it spiked again to RM 1.20.

This time instead of listening to myself to hold until the price went up to RM 1.30, I thought that I better not miss this round of speculative play. So last Fri I sold it at RM 1.20 per share.

You can imagine my disappointment when the price went as high at RM 1.56 yesterday. I left RM 0.36 per share on the table. What a idiot. Can anyone offer an advise on what to do the next time?