Ezra...Makes Ezlink cards???????

We went to a beefy barber today and he asked about Ezra Holdings. He said that he is bullish on it and guess what...he thinks Ezra makes the EzLink cards used on buses. Cool...? So for the benefit of our beefcake barber, we decided to write something about Ezra.....anyway its financial statements are relatively recent too (announced in Oct) so why not?

OK....we noted that Ezra issued some notes, so we immediately looked at the interest they have to pay with it ( after the saga of ferrochina's 13% interest!) to check for sanity. 5.285%...Ok pretty reasonable and since its payable on 2011....pretty decent!

Income Statement (ABOVE)

Gross Profit Margin: 29.6%. ( pretty decent baby...muaks)

Net Profit Margin: 12.4% ( OK...so so...ma ma hu hu in our opinion) Take note that we deducted "Other operating income, net" as we deem it as a one off thingy, not really happening in the normal course of business. See below footnotes about this line item. If we had not deducted this one off thing, it would have skewed this analysis, we think.....

Footnotes (ABOVE)

Balance Sheet ( ABOVE)

Debt Repayment muscle ( like our barber with his rimpling,sexy, hot, veiny, shiny muscle) : CA greater than CL. Current ratio ( Jargon Alert! It just means CA/CL lah)=1.46. ( Sounds pretty good...Mr Beefy Barber you may not know what you invested in but you sure punted right man...)

Cash Flow (ABOVE)

Footnotes(ABOVE)

Money in Money out: Cash Flow from operation is positive BUT after deducting purchase of fixed assets, its negative. The Free Cash Flow is negative. We deduct this as based on the footnotes above, it is part of maintaining the normal business of Ezra.

Worth of the Company per share (ABOVE)
Worth of company per share: 63.81 US cents. Last done price on 22 Oct = S$0.6. (Ok cheap......)

Ezra's business is affected by the above factors. (This is taken from the prospectus). So see for yourself how the prospects of this industry is gonna be! Just use some common sense....

And for the sake of our punter barber, Ezra provides offshore support vessels and services for the offshore oil and gas industry, NOT EzLINK cards! ( Damn Citigroup's commercial is really effective....we can't sleep now!)

Important: The objective of the articles in this blog is to set you thinking about the company before you invest your hard-earned money. Do not invest solely based on this article. Unlike House or Instituitional Analysts who have to maintain relations with corporations due to investment banking relations, generating commissions,e.t.c, SGDividends say things as it is, factually. Unlike Analyst who have to be "uptight" and "cheem", we make it simplified and cheapskate. -The Vigilante Investor, SGDividends Team

ST Engineering...Is Engineering a lousy choice in Uni?

As of half time 21/10/2008 , ST Engineering is in the top 20 loser counters. Is it because engineering is dead?(go to salary.sg to read more, we are refering to a career in engineering, just to clarify)!

Since the last financial statements, they have been winning:
ST ENGINEERING WINS US$58M MSD-V2 ORDERS FROM US ARMY
ST ENGINEERING’S US SHIPYARD SIGNS PHASE II OF FAST MISSILE CRAFT PROJECT ADDS A FURTHER US$406.5M TO TOTAL CONTRACT VALUE
ST ENGINEERING’S AEROSPACE ARM PROVIDES RSAF TRAINING WORTH S$105M
ST ENGINEERING’S ELECTRONICS ARM WINS S$112M CONTRACT FROM LAND TRANSPORT AUTHORITY .......E.T.C
PLUS.....

Sounds good to look at....but is it good to eat? Let's us investigate.

Gross Profit Margin: 22.6%
Net Profit Margin: 9.39% ( Do you think its high?)

Debt repayment muscle: CA more than CL @ 1.09

Cheapskateness:NAV at 47cents . Last done price now is: $2.34. ( wah still quite glam sia)

Money in Money out: Cash flow from Operation is positive but Free cash flow is negative. (Net cash from operating activities - purchase of property, plant and equipment)

No wonder Engineers are paid so low...relatively..

Important: The objective of the articles in this blog is to set you thinking about the company before you invest your hard-earned money. Do not invest solely based on this article. Unlike House or Instituitional Analysts who have to maintain relations with corporations due to investment banking relations, generating commissions,e.t.c, SGDividends say things as it is, factually. Unlike Analyst who have to be "uptight" and "cheem", we make it simplified and cheapskate. -The Vigilante Investor, SGDividends Team

SembCorp Marine ..Ho Hum..ZZzzzzzz

Was searching for the latest statements for SembMarine and spotted the error in their investor relations page. 2007 instead of 2008. But we digress..this is not impt

See below: Net Profit Margin at 9.6% ( Compare with Cosco's 18%!)
See below: Current Asset(CA) greater then Current Liabilities(CL)! (while Cosco's CA is lower than CL)

See Below: Since Sembmarine's bulk of its business comes from Rigbuilding, we decided to look at the utilization rates (2nd light blue table below) of rigs world wide to try to infer activity which is related with the demand for rigs. Well Well Well..so far so good, no dip in utilization rates (in fact it has increased, slightly, now at 89% vs 87.5% a month ago, hmm even though the price of oil has gone down!).(Actually we are watching CNBC now seeing the price of oil dipping like a dipstick to 76! Cheap Petrol..Yahoo!)

Really, SembMarine to SGDividends is So So..not good not bad..not here not there...but it will definitely be out of our watchlist. Its average fundamentally, we think!

Important: The objective of the articles in this blog is to set you thinking about the company before you invest your hard-earned money. Do not invest solely based on this article. Unlike House or Instituitional Analysts who have to maintain relations with corporations due to investment banking relations, generating commissions,e.t.c, SGDividends say things as it is, factually. Unlike Analyst who have to be "uptight" and "cheem", we make it simplified and cheapskate. -The Vigilante Investor, SGDividends Team