Caveat Emptor

Questions to be raised at AGM 1) Is there any actions / engagement from Singtel with companies to grow the iot business, apart from the public sector? Since you are one of the primary providers? How will you compete with m1? 2) There is a large increase in Sales and general expenses as well as capex. Is there any measures in place to control them as the businesses grow? 3) What will the future of digital marketing be like (Amoebee)?  Will it be part of the core business or will you be spinning it off?  How do you compete with major players facebook / google?  4) Operating cash flow has been declining. Free cash flow has improved due to netlink iPo.  Can the company support the dividend in the next 3-5 years?  Apart from bank lending, will there be a need to issue preference share / debt instruments? Will it be issued to the retail sector?  5) For the cybersecurity business, will you all be targeting the retail or the corporate sector? How will y...

Every day, a small Ant arrives at work very early and starts work immediately.  She produces a lot and she was happy. The Chief, a Tiger, was surprised to see that the Ant was working without supervision. He thought if the Ant can produce so much without supervision, wouldn’t she produce even more if she had a supervisor! So he recruited a Bee who had extensive experience as supervisor and who was famous for writing excellent reports. The Bee’s first decision was to set up a clocking in attendance system. He also needed a secretary to help him write and type his reports and he recruited a Rabbit , who managed the archives and monitored all phone calls.   The Tiger was delighted with the Bee's reports and asked him to produce graphs to describe production rates and to analyse trends, so that he could use them for presentations at Board‘s meetings. So the Bee had to buy a new computer and a Laser printer and recruited a Cat to manage the IT department. The An...

Why am I averaging down on SLA 1) There is continual share buyback from company. Not merely GPO is doing so, the various incoming directors as well as the new CEO is loading up on it.  People sell shares for many reasons. People buy shares because they believe it is going up. This is especially true for insiders whom have an superior insights in the industry and the company. Effectively, if SLA buyback the shares as treasury shares and proceed to cancel them, it will directly boost the ROE and EPS of the company. 2) OCBC and UOB annual report confirmed on the trend of banking sector incurring additional capex investment into their IT systems. Per my personal observations in the banking sector, with the recovery of interest rates (and earnings), banks have been investing substantial sums into upgrading their IT infrastructure,  automation of manual processes. The cyclical earnings of SLA should be on the uptrend which is reflected by the sharp increase in book orders...