The financial reporting period for REITs has almost come to a close. One of my biggest worries in the COVID-19 fallout is the devaluation of assets held by REITs, which could lead to their aggregate leverage ratios rising above the regulatory limit and needing to carry out massive rights issues. So far, this worry has not materialised. The 2 REITs that had to carry out massive rights issues are Lippo Malls and First Reit, both of which are related to financial difficulties at their sponsors, Lippo Karawaci.  Among the various REIT asset classes, hospitality trusts (HTs) are at most risks ..read more

First Reit had been a good investment for me over the years. It had provided good distributions regularly and also some capital gains. The reason I sold it away was because its Debt-to-Equity ratio had exceeded my comfort zone of 50% or less. For investments that I do not have time to monitor regularly, it is best that their debts are low in the first place. Last year, First Reit's share price had been dropping since the COVID-19 outbreak and the announcement by its sponsor, Lippo Karawaci (LPKR), to restructure the master leases of the hospitals that it lease from First Reit. The low share p ..read more

On 28 Dec 2020, First Reit dropped a bombshell by announcing a major rights issue at a heavily discounted price. This caused the share price to dropped significantly. The main reason is the proposed restructuring of master leases that First Reit have with Lippo Karawaci (LPKR) and Metropolis Propertindo Utama (MPU). First Reit leases hospitals to LPKR and MPU which in turn lease them to Siloam International Hospitals. The proposed lease restructuring would reduce the Base Rent of LPKR-leased hospitals from SGD80.9 mil to SGD50.9 mil and that of MPU-leased hospitals from SGD11.3 mil to SGD5.8 m ..read more

It is the new year already, and in another 3 weeks' time, REITs will start to report their financial performance. For REITs with December as their Financial Year-end, they will also have to update their property valuations. With COVID-19 having caused significant changes to the way people live, work and shop, one of the key risks to REITs during this period is whether property values will decline significantly. This could lead to breaches in Aggregate Leverage limits, leading to rights issues at unfavourable prices. One of the REITs that caught my attention is Suntec Reit. It owns offices, ret ..read more

This year's blog post on the same series comes out later than usual, as I wanted to see how the rest of 2020 would pan out for my passive portfolios. In fact, my plain vanilla passive portfolio has just past the 7-year mark while my spicy passive portfolio is 5.5 years old.  You can read more about them in The Passive Portfolio and The Anti-Fragile Portfolios. In Mar this year, the unrealised profits of my 2 passive portfolios dropped by nearly half. Prior to Mar, my plain vanilla portfolio had an unrealised profit of 57.7% since inception while my spicy portfolio had unrealised prof ..read more

Recently, the 3 local banks reported a better set of results than expected. Banks have a unique set of operating and financial metrics that are different from other industries and their financial statements cannot be analysed based on the usual metrics. This blog post attempts to explain the various metrics used in banks' financial statements. I will use DBS' financial statements as examples for the metrics, but they are applicable to the other 2 banks. Net Interest Income At the core of a bank's operations is its business of taking short-term deposits and making long-term loans. Banks charge ..read more

The massive sell-down in Mar brought many REITs to rare, multi-year lows. This re-ignited my interest in REITs, as I have been out of them for many years due to their increasing debt levels and decreasing yields. However, I passed up the opportunity while I analysed what could be the impact of COVID-19 on REITs. Despite the massive government interventions, things do not look good for retail and F&B companies. And when tenants struggle, their landlords will also suffer. In this blog post, I will examine the potential impact of COVID-19 on 2 retail companies and 2 F&B companies. Before ..read more

In the past 2 months, investors have been selling off Hospitality Trusts (HTs) listed on SGX due to travel restrictions imposed by governments around the world to stem the spread of COVID-19. There are 6 HTs listed on SGX, namely: ARA US HT Ascott Residence Trust CDL HT Eagle HT Far East HT Frasers HT While all hotels will suffer revenue decline due to the travel restrictions, not all HTs will be impacted by the same extent. One important factor affecting the impact on HTs is their operating models. Traditionally, hotels have been owned and operated by the same party, but there are increasin ..read more

How time flies. It has been exactly 7 years since I started this blog. It has not been a continuous process, though, as I stopped blogging for exactly a year from Jun last year to Jun this year. The cause? Burnout. For 5 over years, I have tried to blog at least once a week. It gives readers continuity, as they know that I am always around. This is especially important during times of market stress, as readers know that I do not talk about investments only during good times and leave them in the lurch during bad times. Also, they only need to check my blog once and only once a week. The inspi ..read more

US-China trade wars, Hong Kong protests, US yield curve inversion, etc. You probably would be thinking now is a bad time to invest. I had the same feelings 5.5 years ago in Dec 2013, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was then near an all-time high and interest rates near an all-time low. You can read more about it in Possibly The Worst Time to Invest. Nevertheless, I still went ahead to initiate a plain vanilla passive portfolio comprising 70% in global equities and 30% in global bonds. In 2015, I also added a more spicy passive portfolio comprising 70% in US equities and 30% in Asian bond ..read more