Uzma – a potential fundamental investment.

Uzma is a Bursa energy services company whose ROE over the past decade is about the same as that for my Bursa reference company – Dayang. https://ujianehc.blogspot.com/2023/12/dayang.html

The unusual thing is that I could not find any meaningful correlation between its revenue and the Brent crude oil prices. This is from both a one to two years lagging and leading perspectives. I interpret this to mean that its performance is not so linked to crude oil prices.

When you compare its ROE trend with its share price trend, you can see that the share price has yet to catch up with the improved performance. This is a counter worth digging deeper into.
https://i.postimg.cc/GmLV5mG8/Uzma.png

Since its listed on Bursa Malaysia in Nov 2017, its revenue grew at 24 % CAGR (2018 to Sep LTM 2023). Over the same period net income grew at 56 % CAGR. But its total assets only grew at less than 3 % CAGR.
So, is this a growth company? What do you look at when assessing whether a company is a growth one? Professor Damodaran opined that we should link growth to the business fundamentals. Growth needs to be funded and can be estimated from the fundamental equation of growth = Return X Reinvestment rate.
I estimated that over the past 5 years, its Return as measured by the NOPAT/Capital averaged 6%. Its Reinvestment rate average 12%. Growth was less than 1 %. So is this a growth company?
Why is growth important from an fundamental investor perspective? This is because the intrinsic value depends on what you estimate as the growth rate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KhboTCMdEg

This is a Bursa energy services company. My analysis shows that over the past decade, there was a 0.72 correlation between the Brent crude oil prices and T7 Global revenue for the next year. This meant that Brent crude prices for the year can explain for about half of T7 Global revenue for the coming year. https://i.postimg.cc/tTYc8nHx/T7-Global.png
For the short term fundamental investor, this is must be a useful forward indicator. Unfortunately the average Brent crude oil prices in 2023 is about 25 % lower than that for 2022. Based on this simple indicator, we would expect T7 Global 2024 revenue to be lower than that for 2023.
This is not exactly good news. Its Sep LTM 2023 ROE was about 10%. Over the past 5 years before this, they were at best about 7%. The market reacts to short term news. Does it mean that the current prices are expected to decline?
If so why look at T7 Global when there are other Bursa companies while having an oil & gas arm is not totally dependent on it? An example is Naim which owns Dayang. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quk378SFfCg

SHChan is a Bursa Malaysia plantation company. But when you look at the profit contribution over the past 5 years, the majority came from non-palm oil activies such as from the energy and facilities management segment.
From a fundamental perspective, over the past decade, half the time it lost money. At when it was profitable (excluding 2021 with a one-off recognition of negative goodwill) its ROE was less than 6%.
It is ironic when you have non palm oil companies such as MKH and KFIMA diversifying into plantations while SHChan seemed to be growing its non-palm oil segment.
When benchmarking performance, comparing it with the Bursa plantation sector may not make sense. I guess until it articulate a clear business direction, there are better plantation companies to look at.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m31TkvDgthc

As a long-term value investor, the advice I have received is not to listen to the news or watch market prices daily. However, I have learned over the years to ignore the one about watching prices. This is because a spike in share prices does not last long and you may miss an opportunity if you don’t watch prices daily.
A good example is Heitech Padu. The stock price went up by 22% yesterday compared to its Friday closing price. 22 % over 3 days is not a normal thing.
So the price spike interests me as it cannot be justified based on its historical performance. So is there going to be some announcement that provides a quantum leap in business performance, or it this some speculative play?
To be transparent I have some shares here carried forward from years ago. I have also had a detailed fundamental analysis of Heitech to justify my view.

Propel Global (Bursa Malaysia: PGB) is an energy services company. The Bursa energy sector did not do very well over the past decade as can be seen from the ROA trend of the sector. Refer to the top chart. https://i.postimg.cc/L5cJb3t3/PGB.png
When I looked at PGB performance, I found that for most of the decade, its ROA under-performed my reference Bursa energy services company – Dayang. It only did better over the past 2 years. Refer to bottom chart.
Is PRG turning around? I would not look at its 2022 results as a big part of the profits came from a one-off disposal of assets. I am a long term investor holding onto stocks for > 5 years. So I look for long term performance rather than one particular year. As such I would not look at PGB.
Sure there may be new management, but until there is a longer track record from them, I would KIV this counter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quk378SFfCg

According to the Efficient Market Hypothesis, the market price reflects the “true” value of a company as it incorporates all known information. Behind this is the “wisdom of the crowd” concept. This is the idea that large groups of people are collectively smarter than individual experts when it comes to problem-solving and predicting.

Take the example of Sg Bagan Rubber, a Bursa plantation company. When you look at the ROE and share price trend, you can see the share price spiking currently. The last time it occurred was in mid 2021 when the ROE peak. https://i.postimg.cc/Xvqx0kJ4/Sg-Bagan.png
I suspect that it is because of the proposed takeover of Kuchai Dev. Is the market predicting that the coming ROE will be higher than 7.5 % because of the Kuchai Dev?
I think that the wisdom of the crowd does not apply to projecting business performance. If any, it probably applies to market price.

But then the wisdom of the crowd only works if every individual in the crowd thinks independently. I am have my doubts about this independent thoughts when it comes to the stock market. I think herd and lemming behaviour are more likely.

So what can you make about the Sg Bagan market price? I am more inclined to see it as herd behaviour rather than the wisdom of the crowd.

When it comes to is business performance, I rather trust a fundamental analysis rather than the wisdom of the crowd. While I have yet to do a fundamental analysis of Sg Bagan I think that its current business underperformed KLK, my reference Bursa Plantation sector. Secondly, as my analysis of the property sector has shown, it is not an automatic ticket to making money. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn4p31y0CUQ

Ever since coming across an article suggesting that the packaging sector would benefit from the growth of online retailing, I have been hunting for packing companies. My search went beyond Bursa and included US.
Why the US? In 2023, the total return (dividend + capital gain) for the Bursa KLCI was about 3%. The S&P 500 achieved 26%. Even accounting for forex losses, you can see why the US is better. But this does not mean buying blindly. You still need to do fundamental analysis. Take the example of Avery.
This is NYSE a global materials science and digital identification solutions company. Despite its acquisitions, its revenue only grew at 4.4% CAGR over the past 10 years. While ROE and net margins have been trending up, there were no improvements in other operating parameters, I think that the stock is fully priced. https://i.postimg.cc/C1cQgNs2/Avery-Dennison.png
On the other hand, Bursa Asia File has diversified into food packaging. Not exactly sexy, but it has a margin of safety. The only concern is how long it will take for the market to re-rate. If I can find an equivalent US packaging company, that would be priority. In the absence, Asia File is there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPtsfLAnaEc

I have a simple framework to classify each stocks. After I have done a fundamental analysis and valuation, I see which cell it falls into based on the matrix shown below. The cells are formed by the combination of margin of safety on the horizontal axis and business fundamentals on the verticle axis. https://i.postimg.cc/pT31q7pR/Co-rating-framework.png
Conceptually

• Cell A – best investment opportunity

• Cell B – this could be Warren Buffet “wonderful company at fair price”

• Cell C – Ben Graham “cigar-butt” investment

• Cell D – avoid

In this context, I would say that Scomi Energy, a Bursa oil & gas company, falls into cell D. If you want to see a cell A company, have a look at Petron Malaysia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrMdgjFHHaU

Many investors like to use relative valuations to compare the “worth” of a company. Yet when it comes to fundamentals they don’t follow through by using relative fundamentals.
I illustrate this with the example of Riverview Rubber, a Bursa Malaysia plantation company. My reference company is KLK – this is partly because I have a detailed fundamental analysis and partly because I happen to know some of the senior managers there.
On a PE basis, Riverview is relatively expensive while it is cheap from a PBV basis
Riverview KLK
PE 38 18
PBV 0.6 1.7

When you compare their respective ROE treads as per the chart, you can see that Riverview under performed KLK over the past decade. It is not just the numbers. Because I have a reasonably good picture of how KLK numbers came about, I can have a “qualitative picture” how Riverview under performed. https://i.postimg.cc/MZNbTDq1/Riverview-vs-KLK.png
If you expect Riverview to be taken over like Boustead Plantation, you would look at the PBV. But if there is no sale, the market is likely to rate it based on its earnings.
On a PE basis, Riverview is more expensive yet on a ROE basis it is worse. This is not Buffett wonderful company at fair price. Neither is this a Graham cigar-butt.
If you want to look at some other Bursa companies with some plantation activities, have a look at KFIMA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m31TkvDgthc

Bursa listed Perdana Petroluem is 64% own Bursa listed Dayang. Dayang is basically an oilfield services company with a small marine charter segment. However in 2015 it acquired Perdana which is mainly in the marine charger business.
When you look at the ROE for these 2 companies over the past decade, you can see Dayang outperforming Perdana. From a fundamental perspective, why would you want to own Perdana? From a risk mitigation perspective, Dayang is more diversified.
Of course the elephant in the room is whether Dayang made a mistake in acquiring Perdana. With hindsight it was better not to do so.
Moral of the story? Many companies have both organic and acquisition growth. But not all acquisitions added value to the shareholders. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quk378SFfCg

Bursa listed Perdana Petroluem is 64% own Bursa listed Dayang. Dayang is basically an oilfield services company with a small marine charter segment. However in 2015 it acquired Perdana which is mainly in the marine charger business.
When you look at the ROE for these 2 companies over the past decade, you can see Dayang outperforming Perdana. From a fundamental perspective, why would you want to own Perdana? From a risk mitigation perspective, Dayang is more diversified.
Of course the elephant in the room is whether Dayang made a mistake in acquiring Perdana. With hindsight it was better not to do so.
Moral of the story? Many companies have both organic and acquisition growth. But not all acquisitions added value to the shareholders. https://ujianehc.blogspot.com/2023/12/dayang.html

I am a fundamental investor that relies on historical information to analyse and value companies. Whenever I tell this to investors, they will often cite the well known disclaimer used by all financial advisers – past results does not equal future performance.
When I look at a company’s performance, I know that it is due to the “economic and other resources set-up (strategies, management, funding, etc).” that the company has. So if these result in a good performance in the past, there is a good chance that it will continue to do so in the near future.
Don’t think in terms of a continuation of the past numbers. Think in terms of the continuation of the past set-up That is the reason why track record is important in my analysis. It gives me confidence that the company has the set-up in place to deliver good performance.
Take the example of Rimbunan Sawit which had negative ROE yearly for the past 8 years. In contrast, here are many plantation companies (eg KFIMA) that had delivered positive ROE yearly for the past 8 years. So it cannot just be an external problem. I would think that unless there is some major change in the setup, the past = the future.

I am a fundamental investor that relies on historical information to analyse and value companies. Whenever I tell this to investors, they will often cite the well known disclaimer used by all financial advisers – past results does not equal future performance.
When I look at a company’s performance, I know that it is due to the “economic and other resources set-up (strategies, management, funding, etc).” that the company has. So if these result in a good performance in the past, there is a good chance that it will continue to do so in the near future.
Don’t think in terms of a continuation of the past numbers. Think in terms of the continuation of the past set-up That is the reason why track record is important in my analysis. It gives me confidence that the company has the set-up in place to deliver good performance.
Take the example of Rimbunan Sawit which had negative ROE yearly for the past 8 years. In contrast, here are many plantation companies (eg KFIMA) that had delivered positive ROE yearly for the past 8 years. So it cannot just be an external problem. I would think that unless there is some major change in the setup, the past = the future. https://ujianehc.blogspot.com/2023/11/bursa-plantation-sector.html

The top 3 countries in terms of population are China, India and USA. But when it comes to the stock market performance, the number of people doesn’t count.
From the end of 2010 to 2023, the CAGR for their stock market indices were
• S&P 500 (US) – 10.8 %
• Nifty 50 (India) – 10.2 %
• SSE (China) – 0.4 %
• KLCI (Malaysia) – negative 0.3 %

You can see that the US stock market had one of the better growth rates. The common cited reasons for this are because it has better
• Global market intergration
• Liquidity
• Political Stability and Regulatory Environment
• Market Maturity and Investor Sophistication.
• Financial Infrastructure

Moral of the story? If you are a fundamental investor and you want the market to re-rate your stocks faster, shouldn’t you focus on stock in those countries with better track record of returns.
So why look at Petronas when you have the likes of Shell, ExxonMobil, BP? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrMdgjFHHaU

Crude oil prices are cyclical and if the revenue oil & gas companies are closely linked to crude oil prices, we can use crude oil prices as an indicator of its performance.

Take the example of Sapura Energy. When I looked at the past 10 years correlation between its revenue and Brent oil price for the same year, I found that there was a negative 0.31 correlation. Refer to the top chart.
https://i.postimg.cc/L60Y83Pj/Sapura-correlation.png
But when I offset the revenue (eg by comparing the 2015 revenue with the 2013 Brent oil price and so on), the correlation was 0.85. This meant that changes in Brent oil prices explained almost ¾ of Sapura Energy revenue 2 years later. Refer to the bottom chart.

In other words, Sapura Energy 2023 performance was linked to the 2021 Brent oil prices and so on.
We know that Brent prices in 2022 and 2023 were higher than that for 2021. Does the correlation meant that in 2024 and 2025, we will see higher revenue for Sapura Energy?
If so, will this mean that we will see a turnaround for the company? Can we use the same analysis for other Bursa energy companies? https://ujianehc.blogspot.com/2023/12/dayang.html

The Malaysian property sector had been soft for many years. This slowdown long before Covid-19. A few years back I wrote an article about whether the Bursa property sector will recover by 2024. My idea of recovery is to get back to the 2016/17 performance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn4p31y0CUQ
I think the sector is going to do well in 2024. If you look at the housing starts data you can see an uptrend since 2020. It normally takes about 3 to 5 years for property projects to be completed from the start of construction. As such housing starts can be a forward indicator. A continuous uptrend will mean that performance of property companies in the coming years will be better.
The chart below “synchronized” the housing starts with the revenue for the large Bursa property companies (those with equity > RM 1 b) You can see that although the housing starts peaked in 2014 the sector revenue peaked a few years later in 2016/17. https://i.postimg.cc/x87BTw7n/Housing-starts-vs-Revenue.png
While we have yet to see the data for the housing starts for 2023 or even the large companies revenue for 2023, I am confident that they will be higher than those for 2022. The questions are whether the 2024 revenue will be at the same level as that for 2016/17. And if so, will the stock price respond accordingly.

The Malaysian property sector had been soft for many years. This slowdown long before Covid-19. A few years back I wrote an article about whether the Bursa property sector will recover by 2024. My idea of recovery is to get back to the 2016/17 performance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn4p31y0CUQ
I think the sector is going to do well in 2024. If you look at the housing starts data you can see an uptrend since 2020. It normally takes about 3 to 5 years for property projects to be completed from the start of construction. As such housing starts can be a forward indicator. A continuous uptrend will mean that performance of property companies in the coming years will be better.
The chart below “synchronized” the housing starts with the revenue for the large Bursa property companies (those with equity > RM 1 b) You can see that although the housing starts peaked in 2014 the sector revenue peaked a few years later in 2016/17. https://i.postimg.cc/x87BTw7n/Housing-starts-vs-Revenue.png
While we have yet to see the data for the housing starts for 2023 or even the large companies revenue for 2023, I am confident that they will be higher than those for 2022. The questions are whether the 2024 revenue will be at the same level as that for 2016/17. And if so, will the stock price respond accordingly.

Aptar is a US packaging company that is global leader in drug delivery, consumer product dispensing, and active material science solutions. It achieved revenue and profit growth over the past 11 years, but its ROE in 2022 was what it was in 2012. This was because its operating efficiencies have been declining.

You may think that this is a bad performance until you look at SGX’s New Toyo (the holding company for Bursa’s Tien Wah Press). The ROE of both of them in 2022 were much lower than those in 2012.

Moral of the story? Maybe the packaging sector is a tough one. But then I came across a report stating that the packing sector is expected to boom following the growth on online sales. Online sales are boosting the demand for packaging. So maybe the Bursa packaging companies should relook at their strategies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuL2PB7Kwkg

Over the past decade, there were only 2 years with positive ROE for PLS Plantation. This is not a Bursa plantation company with strong fundamentals. Yet the share price ranged from RM 0.55 per share to RM 1.55 per share.

Moral of the story? You can make money as a trader or invest based on fundamentals. But you need the skills to be successful in either one.

Me? I have not been successful in trading so I stick to being a long-term fundamental investor. In this context, PLS is a counter that I will pass. There are other Bursa plantation companies with stronger fundamentals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KhboTCMdEg

Petra Energy is a Bursa oil & gas company providing a range of integrated brownfield services and products for the upstream oil and gas industry in Malaysia. As such you should expect its performance to be link to crude oil prices.

From 2013 to 2022 there is a 72 % correlation between Petra Energy revenue for the year with the crude oil price of the preceding year. This meant that crude oil prices explained about half of the changes in revenue.

Crude oil prices this year is much higher than those in 2019. If you look at Petra Energy ROE trend for the past decade, you can see that it peaked in 2019. Does this mean that the ROE in 2024 would be better than that in 2019? If so, then the share price of the company has yet to reflect this.
https://i.postimg.cc/PJmGZ92C/Petra-Energy.png

Is this a price mismatch? For more insights into the Bursa oil and gas sector, see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quk378SFfCg

According to Professor Damodaran, when you analyse cyclical companies, you have to look at the performance over the cycle. This is because the performance at any one time depends on where they in the cycle. Extrapolating from the current performance will lead to a misleading picture.

The palm oil sector is cyclical. As such when I look at the performance of plantation companies, I look at the past decade or more results to get the cyclical picture.
A good example is Pinehill Pacific, a Bursa plantation company. You can see from the chart that over the past 2 decades there was only one year with positive ROE. https://i.postimg.cc/0NgdV3YN/Pinehill.png

This is a terrible cyclical performance from a fundamental perspective. Why invest when there are better Bursa plantation companies? https://www.malaysiastock.biz/Blog/BlogArticle.aspx?tid=27266

In Malaysia, the Bahasa term “jaguh kampung” (literally “village champion”) is meant to belittle a person who is so full of himself after achieving some record feat in the country. The idea is that the person should be benchmarking himself globally rather than just nationally.
I fell into this “village champion” category when I first started value investing as I had a track record of bearing the KLCI (Bursa Malaysia index) over several years. Then I started to look at investment case studies and invariably the majority of them relate to US stocks.
I am not sure whether it is the stronger economy or the size of the market, but the stock market returns of many US companies far exceed those in Malaysia. To give you a sense of this, over the past 25 years, the KCLI grew at 3.9 % CAGR compared to the S&P 500 CAGR of 5.8 %.
The chart below is another example. It compared the share price trend of Bursa Malaysia Petronas Dagangan with some of the US Oil & Gas companies with petrol stations operations. It is not exactly apple to apple but you can see the better share price performance of the others. https://i.postimg.cc/FHJ829vj/Petronas-Dagangan.png
Beating the KLCI was not so great. If I had set my sights on the US market years ago, I might have made more even if I just matched the S&P 500.
Moral of the story. To max your stock returns, you should focus on those stock exchanges with the better returns. There is no point being the village champion unless your village is the best in the world.
Nowadays I have diversified my investments to cover the US as well. For more insights from case studies to go “Can we learn anything from investment case studies?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FMpj9iVo9E

I bought TAANN in mid-2019 when it was trading around RM 2.25 per share and then sold it off in early 2020 when it went up to around RM 3.40 per share. I went in on the basis of its fundamental and sold when I thought the market had overpriced it.

The ROE over the past few years have been improving. While the share price did have an initial spike, it is currently around the 2020 peak share price level. . There seems to be a mismatch between performance and share price

https://i.postimg.cc/c1M3chpT/Taann.png

When you look at the long-term performance of TAANN as represented by the ROE, you can see that it did better than KLK – one of the reference Bursa plantation companies. This quick and dirty comparison points to TAANN being fundamentally sound.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KhboTCMdEg

Is the mismatch between the ROE and market price meant that there another round to make money from a fundamental investing perspective?

Normally traders focus on price action to gauge the direction of the market. But I think some fundamental analysis can enhance the picture.

For example, changes in economic factors such as interest rate or inflation can give insights on trading opportunities. At the company level, product announcements or beating analysts estimates can be other provide other clues.

Along this line, I would like to suggest that looking at the revenue and return trends relative to the share price can be one such fundamental analysis. An example is shown in the Malaysia Marine and Heavy Engineering Holdings (Bursa Malaysia MHB) case.
https://i.postimg.cc/cHJLHqz8/MHB.png
You can see that revenue and ROE have been improving over the past few years but the share price has not responded accordingly. Of course, when you dig deeper and find out that the LTM ROE is a loss despite higher LTM revenue compared to last year, you can understand why the market is not reacting.

My point is that the market is getting more competitive and traders who add some fundamental analysis to complement the technical analysis may have some edge. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXWCEJbzhJk

Screens are supposed to help you choose the most likely candidate to dig deeper into. Sometimes, they can be misleading. Take the example of the trend comparison of Negri Sembilan Oil Plantation (NSOP) a Bursa Malaysia plantation company. https://i.postimg.cc/j5F0fVSP/NSOP.png
At first glance you will see the ROE trending up while the share price has yet to move up. But when I dug deeper, I found that NSOP ROE was below that of even Boustead Plantation, one of my two reference Bursa plantation companies. https://ujianehc.blogspot.com/2023/11/bursa-plantation-sector.html
As such I did not bother to proceed further.
Of course if you are a stock trader, you may see the mis-match differently.

From a ROE vs share price trend perspective as per the chart below, you can see that while KMN ROE had improved recently, the share price did not have a corresponding movement. https://i.postimg.cc/m27CSYP9/KNM.png

You should not be surprised as KNM had not been profitable for many years. The current ROE is moving from a bigger loss to a lower loss ie negative 46 % ROE to a negative 14 % ROE.
There are better Bursa companies in the Bursa sector to look at. Are there opportunities in the Bursa Energy Services sector? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrMdgjFHHaU

I am a fundamental investor so I look for mismatch between market price and the intrinsic value of a company. This will require time and effort to carry out a fundamental analysis and valuation of the company.

In practice I would take about a week to carry out such an analysis for a new company. This is because I go through the past 10 years of annual reports reading the management discussions and analysis as well as look at industry reports and annual reports of its competitors

In order to ensure that my time is spent well, I will screen for potential companies. One quick and dirty screen is to compare the ROE trend with the share price trend as shown in the example below for NPC, a Bursa Plantation company.
https://i.postimg.cc/t40dysMC/NPC.png
You can see that while NPC’s ROE was volatile and had improved over the past few years, the market price was relatively stable. Better still, it did not go up over the past few years despite the better ROE.

I am not a trader but I do know that some traders combine technical analysis with fundamental analysis to get better insights. If I was trader, I would think this ROE vs share price trend can provide some food for thought. For example, does the chart mean that it time to go in and wait for the crowd to realize that there is better performance?

If you want to know more about whether traders can make money with fundamentals go to “Can you make money trading with fundamentals?” https://www.malaysiastock.biz/Blog/BlogArticle.aspx?tid=27297

This is a Bursa oil and gas company. You should not be surprised that in using relative valuation to determine whether the counter is cheap or expansive, many compare it with other Bursa oil and gas companies.

The irony is that the 2013 to 2022 correlation between Icon’s revenue and the median revenue of the Bursa oil and gas companies is negative 4%. It does not behave like the sector.

This is one reason why I avoid using relative valuation. The results are easily biased by the peers chosen. Ideally the peers should be the ones with similar cash flow and risk profile. But how many people check for this when selecting the peers?

Of course, in the case of Icon it is academic as it incurred losses for much of the past 9 years. Even its PAT over the past few years were due to asset sale and one-off items.

I estimate that its after-tax operating return [NOPAT / (Equity + Debt)] over the past 9 years ranged from 1.2 % to 6.4 % with an average of 3.0%. I assumed 24% nominal tax rate.

Not exactly an exciting number for shareholders since you could get better returns at lower risk by keeping your money with the EPF. There are better Bursa oil and gas companies to consider https://ujianehc.blogspot.com/2023/12/dayang.html

MHC has Book Value of RM 1.37 per share. I estimated its EPV to be RM 0.80 per share based on its past decade of EPS and a 10% discount rate.

Based on Professor Bruce Greenwald Asset Value (AV) vs Earnings Power Value (EPV) analysis, this is a company with under-utilized assets. The under-utilization is worst if you assume that its Revised Book Value would be about double the Book Value. This was based on Boustead Plantation case where a recent valuation showed that the Revised Asset Value is about double the assets in the Book.

Greenwald actually used an updated basis to determine the AV. Accordingly we should be comparing the Revised BV of about RM 2.74 with the EPV of RM 0.80.

Unfortunately, the market doesn’t really look at Book Value but focus on earnings. Book Value comes into play only if there is some takeover or asset sale.

Moral of story? There are better Bursa plantation companies in terms of earnings if you want to invest in this sector https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KhboTCMdEg

Professor Bruce Greenwald opined that you can get strategic insights by comparing the asset value (AV) with the earnings power value (EPV) of a company.
In a very competitive environment would have the AV = EPV ie the assets have been well deployed to generate profits. If a company has a strong economic moat, you would expect EPV to be much greater than the AV. If you have a case of the EPV being much smaller than the AV, you have under-utilized assets.
In the case of TDM, a Bursa Plantation company, the AV is RM 0.40 per share. But its average earnings over the past decade was negative. The EPV can be thought of as zero.
This is clearly as case of under-utilised assets. Many would hold the Board and management accountable. Maybe the company should take a leaf from the sale of Boustead Plantation. Here the Revised Asset Value is about double the Book Value. But was sold at a price that is a bit higher than the Book Value.
So isn’t it better for the shareholders of TDM if its assets were sold and monies returned to shareholders. Why work hard for 10 years to have negative average earnings? Maybe then the shareholders could reinvest in other better plantation companies.
Of course, you could argue that looking at historical earnings is not a good reflection of the future. And it is not the full story and TDM has a healthcare arm in addition to its plantation arm. https://ujianehc.blogspot.com/2023/11/bursa-plantation-sector.html

The challenge of using relative valuation is choosing the peers. Many compare them with companies in the same sector. But companies have different strategies and different business models even if they are in the same sector. Is there an alternative way to choose?
Damodaran opined that it may be better to compare with companies with same cash flow patterns and risk profile rather than just those in the same sector. This is because these factors determine the value of a company.
One way to put Damodaran idea into practice is to check for the correlations. If say the revenue is not correlated, you should question why select them as peers.
Take the example of Handal. Over the past 13 years, there is a 0.71 correlation between Handal revenue that the median revenue of the Bursa oil & gas companies. In this case comparing its PE or PV with the sector may make sense.
Except that in Handal case, I would not bother as it was only profitable half of the time over the past decade. Its average ROE was a negative 15%. Why spent time analysing Handal when there are better performing Bursa oil & gas companies? https://focusmalaysia.my/the-benefits-of-high-oil-prices-have-not-trickled-down-to-bursas-og-services-sector/

Its returns have been hovering around the 1 % to 2% over the past decade. If you want to look at plantation stocks, there are better performers. https://focusmalaysia.my/malaysian-plantation-stocks-a-cyclical-sector-but-not-cyclical-profits/

Dialog is a Bursa Malaysia oil and gas company
I would have thought that a company performance in a sector would be strongly correlated with some key metric in the sector.
In the case of property developers, you would expect their revenue to correlate with housing starts.
But when it comes to Dialog, I found that from 2013 to 2022 there was a negative 0.23 correlation between its revenue and Brent crude oil prices. https://i.postimg.cc/kGCcqR85/Dialog-revenue-vs-Brent.png
Is Dialog actually in the oil & gas sector?
For more insights into the sector refer to https://focusmalaysia.my/the-benefits-of-high-oil-prices-have-not-trickled-down-to-bursas-og-services-sector/

I just received my Independent Advice Circular on the mandatory takeover offer for Boustead Plantation.
The thing that stood out was that the Revised Asset Value of Boustead Plantation was estimated at RM 2.60 per share. Contrast this with its Book Value of RM 1.29 per share. You can see that the Revised Asset Value is double the Book Value
Going by this metric, can you take the Book Value of all the Bursa Plantation companies as the floor value? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KhboTCMdEg Or at least this applies only to those with large plantation land in Malaysia rather than in other countries.
By this measure would Hap Seng Plantations with its share price of RM 1.75 per share be cheap given its Book Value of RM 2.41 per share?
Having said that, Asset Value provides psychological comfort as companies are not going to sell their assets and return the monies to shareholders. Instead, even the ones with incompetent management will try to run the business (and of course in the process destroy shareholders value).
Furthermore, shareholders cannot depend on luck by hoping that the company will be acquired by another.
Moral of story? I still prefer to rely on Earnings base valuation

A decade ago, Kretam ROE underperformed those of my 2 reference Bursa plantation companies – Bplant and KLK. But over the past 2 years, Kretam had caught up with them and even surpassed that of BPlant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KhboTCMdEg
But I was dissuaded from digging further into Kretam when I found the following ROE vs price trend. https://i.postimg.cc/DyWybKnR/Kretam.png
I think that the market had priced in the improvements. What do you think?

I bought Coastal a year before Covid-19 and sold it early last year. I have 2 Bursa energy services companies that I use as references when hunting for companies in this sector – Deleum and Dayang. https://ujianehc.blogspot.com/2023/12/dayang.html
I the past these 2 companies ROE outperformed that of Coastal but over the past 2 to 3 years, Coastal ROE have overtaken them.
When I look at the ROE vs share price trend, I found that currently they are diverging – the ROE is going up while prices are declining. https://i.postimg.cc/JhVF7spg/Coastal.png
Is this another opportunity to go in?

When you compare Carimin ROE over the past decade with my 2 reference Bursa energy services companies – Deluem and Dayang you will find the picture as shown in the chart.
https://i.postimg.cc/J4K9HKq5/Carimin-vs-Deluem-Dayang.png

In the first half of the decade, Carimin ROE was not the best. But in the second half, it had improved and is comparable if not better than the reference companies.
https://i.postimg.cc/Vk62qMZQ/Carimin.png

When you look at Carimin REO vs its share price trend, you may have to think twice before going in. But this is just a quick-and-dirty look. The only way to resolve this is for a detailed fundamental analysis of Carimin and then compare the intrinsic value with the market price.

From a ROE perspective, except for 2023, Barakah ROE was lower than those for my 2 reference Bursa energy services companies – Dayang and Deleum.
The only except was for 2023 where Barakah posted a 40% ROE. This seemed like a turnaround after the negative ROE of 177 % in 2022. https://i.postimg.cc/FzgHw3Jz/Barakah.png

But when I dug deeper, this positive 40% was because it had an after-tax loss of RM 4 million divided by a negative equity. It was a positive 40% due to arithmetic.
Moral of story – when numbers look funny, you better dig deeper

“It’s built into the system that stocks get mispriced,” Warren Buffett said at the 2012 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting.

There are several reasons why mispricing can occur from market inefficiencies to behavioural factors. I don’t really try to analyse the reasons for the mispricing, but rather look for opportunities for this.

I think Armada is a potential mispricing. https://i.postimg.cc/6pdGnTsq/Armada.png

Armada ROE had been trailing those of my 2 reference Bursa energy services companies – Dayang and Deleum for many years since 2012. But over the past 2 years, Armada ROE had overtaken those of Dayang and Deleum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quk378SFfCg

At the same time when you look at the trends of the ROE and market price for Armada, you can see that while the ROE has shown improvements over the past 4 years, there has hardly been any improvement in the market price.

I would consider this a mispricing opportunity that warrants a deeper look.

Alam share price has been declining from its 2014 high. You should not be surprised since the last time its ROE was positive was in 2015. If you were hunting for Bursa energy services companies, there are companies with better fundamentals such as Dayang and Deleum.

The marine charter business has caused a lot of headaches for the Bursa oilfield services companies. This is best illustrated by the ROE of Dayang and Deleum. https://i.postimg.cc/Z5kNLQT1/Dayang-vs-Deleum.png

Both are in the topside maintenance services business. The different between them was that Dayang ventured into the marine charter business in the early part of the last decade

You can see that the returns for Dayang were badly affected in 2017 and 2021 by impairments due to poor vessel utilization. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quk378SFfCg

Moral of the story? The wrong strategic choice can cause great problems

Dayang is an oilfield services company operating mainly in Malaysia. It initially focussed on topside maintenance services where it is one of the big boys in the offshore hook-up and commissioning business.

The company did very well in the topside maintenance services segment and got into trouble when it expanded its marine charter business in the early part of the last decade with the acquisition of Perdana Petroleum.

Business was good for the Malaysian marine charter scene until crude oil prices dropped to about USD 60 per barrel in 2016/17. The demand for marine charter services declined tremendously and many of the Bursa marine charter companies got into trouble. Dayang faced similar problem with its marine charter segment.

While crude oil prices today are 1/3 higher than the lows in 2016/17, the marine charter business has yet to fully recover. While Dayang topside services business is doing very well, its performance has been pulled down by the marine charter segment. The table below shows the relative performance of the 2 segments for Dayang.


https://i.postimg.cc/8c3fJS0f/Dayang-segment-performance.png

Dayang spent tons of money on the marine charter business. With hindsight shareholders would have been better off if this was paid out as dividends rather than spent it on Perdana Petroleum. Did management do a good job in allocating capital?

For more insights into Dayang, go to Is Dayang one of the better Bursa stocks? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quk378SFfCg

Dayang is an oilfield services company operating mainly in Malaysia. It initially focussed on topside maintenance services where it is one of the big boys in the offshore hook-up and commissioning business.

The company did very well in the topside maintenance services segment and got into trouble when it expanded its marine charter business in the early part of the last decade with the acquisition of Perdana Petroleum.

Business was good for the Malaysian marine charter scene until crude oil prices dropped to about USD 60 per barrel in 2016/17. The demand for marine charter services declined tremendously and many of the Bursa marine charter companies got into trouble. Dayang faced similar problem with its marine charter segment.

While crude oil prices today are 1/3 higher than the lows in 2016/17, the marine charter business has yet to fully recover. While Dayang topside services business is doing very well, its performance has been pulled down by the marine charter segment. The table below shows the relative performance of the 2 segments for Dayang.


https://i.postimg.cc/8c3fJS0f/Dayang-segment-performance.png

Dayang spent tons of money on the marine charter business. With hindsight shareholders would have been better off if this was paid out as dividends rather than spent it on Perdana Petroleum. Did management do a good job in allocating capital?

For more insights into Dayang, go to Is Dayang one of the better Bursa stocks? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quk378SFfCg

The company has yet to generate any positive annual return. From a fundamental perspective, I am sure that there are better hospitality counters

From a ROE perspective, Kim Loong had achieved better returns than my 2 reference Bursa Plantation companies – KLK and BPlant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KhboTCMdEg
But when you look at the price trend, the current price is about the past decade high. You might have missed the boat.

One of the metrics I used to screen for companies is the ROE. I then compared the ROE trends for the target company with the ROE of one or two reference companies where I have detailed fundamental analysis. If the ROE is better, then I will dig further into the fundamentals. When I did this comparison for Kluang with my 2 Bursa Plantation companies – Bplant and KLK, I did not find it to be good enough to dig further https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KhboTCMdEg

The Malaysian oil and gas services companies have had a challenging time over the past few years. They have not benefitted from the high crude prices. The last time Velesto had a positive ROE was in 2014, about 10 years ago

Whenever I hunt for Bursa Plantation companies to invest in, I screen them by comparing their performance with my 2 reference companies – KLK and BPlant. https://ujianehc.blogspot.com/2023/11/bursa-plantation-sector.html
These are companies where I have detailed fundamental analysis. The relative performance will give me a good sense on whether to dig deeper into them.

While often used interchangeably, there are differences between trading and investing. Firstly, they have different goals.
• Traders focus on generating short-term profits by taking advantage of price fluctuations
• Investors aim to build wealth over the long term by investing in fundamentally sound assets.
But there have been successful traders who incorporate fundamentals into their trading analysis
I would like to offer the ROE trend vs the share price trend as one toolkit for the traders.
The example for JTiasa below is one example. https://i.postimg.cc/pdcWr2fH/JTiasa.png

While this is classified as under the Bursa Plantation sector, its ROE is worst than my 2 reference companies – BPlant and KLK. So I would not hunt here to look for long-term investment opportunity from a fundamental perspective. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KhboTCMdEg
But if you are a stock trader, wouldn’t you consider a rising ROE without a corresponding uptrend in price yet a trading opportunity?