I was informed by a friend to write in detail about rights issues, as there seems to be a trend of companies and business trusts/REITs raising capital recently. This is my interpretation of rights issues, and you might think differently, like what others have done so. Note that this guide requires a little bit of understanding beforehand, and thus I won’t handhold you. Applying for Too Much Excess Rights One can always certainly apply for excess rights, but one must take into consideration that the rights issue may not be underwritten, and thus you have a higher chance of getting your full al ..read more

So I recently tendered my Keppel T&T shares up to the offeror, and to my surprise, OCBC didn’t charge me anything for this. Usually there will be bank charges for share purchases/sales and custodial fees, but it seems that in the case of a general offer, charges are either waived, or borne by the offeror. Good news for me, I guess, as I get to save a little bit of money ..read more

My humble apologies dear readers, as I was really caught up with work till date. There wasn’t much time for me to put my thoughts onto “paper”, so finally here is my quick write-up of two counters – Ascott REIT and AsiaPhos. Two very different counters, two very different industries, but both have a common goal – raising cash. For Ascott REIT, the objective was to raise cash for an acquisition in Europe and one in Singapore. While it might be dilutive to existing unitholders, this was an opportune time for me to enter into Ascott REIT by way of the rights issue. In hindsight, it was quite a ..read more

In a rare case of “happy endings” with insurance companies, I sold my NTUC endowment policy that I bought during my NS days to a company that buys them. After calculating the quoted value that REPS Holdings gave me (using the spreadsheet from InvestmentMoats) by e-mail, versus the internal rate of return on the total value of premiums paid till date, it was at an “acceptable” value of -1.53%, which is around the cost of a fund manager’s fees for a unit trust. Some of you might ask, why would I want to sell it? Well, silly me did not plan for this endowment properly as a 21 year old fortunate ..read more

After raising money back in 2005, KrisEnergy is back at the deal table due to their upcoming notes this year. Seems that it was a pretty good deal for the shareholders, as the zero coupon bonds that were issued are secured. However, instead of a vanilla zero coupon bond mechanism, they moved the discount on the zero coupon bonds to the free warrants attached to the bonds. Pretty cleverly designed – I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree (Keppel). Personally I didn’t like the way bondholders were treating KrisEnergy, as the noteholders were most likely to believe that it is a “low ri ..read more

Usually, REITs don’t issue rights at a severely discounted price to it’s NAV unless they are in financial distress, and the recent rights issue from Sabana was heavily discounted, but Sabana isn’t in a financially distressed position. So what gives? Well it turns out that having a REIT with a sponsor is a double-edged sword; particularly if the REIT made some purchases which are of a questionable nature in terms of valuation and yield accretion, and the REIT manager prices the rights issue to finance the purchases at a very high discount to it’s recent trading price, compared to other REITs w ..read more

So apparently I forgot to do a portfolio review at the start of 2016 (and I’m not sure why!), so I guess it’s opportune to do a breakdown now. Looks like my portfolio is heavily weighted on Finance, mainly due to the REITs which I’ve picked up over the years during the recovery from the 2008 crisis, and Producer Manufacturing, which is a little vague, and I will drill down that sector further below. It looks like the bulk of my exposure to the finance sector consists of REITs and banks, followed by real estate developers. With regards to interest rate hike taking a hit on my REIT portfolio ..read more

Yes, a new platform has arrived in Singapore as announced in the newspaper today, and while most people did not see this coming, I have been following the company’s growth and development closely over the last year or two when they started to expand their business to overseas markets, being a shareholder of IFAST, so this doesn’t come as much as a surprise to me. So what’s up with FSMOne? Well it is a unified account which comprises of their funds, bonds and equities platforms, and also their robo-investing product called MAPS. So after logging in as an “old user” with my NRIC, I was prompted ..read more

Sorry folks for the late post (almost a month!), as I was really busy with work and life. Anyway, Frasers Hospitality Trust declared a rights issue at the end of September, and I took up the rights issue with excess, as I believe that this was a prudent and pro-active measure by the management to lower their gearing and to fund an acquisition of a hotel in Australia. An interesting thing to note was that the dormant business trust portion of the stapled security would be activated as the master lesse of the hotel once the hotel as been acquired, as set out in the circular for the rights issue ..read more

Normally, I’m not an active blogger due to my day job, which requires me to dabble in technology and finance, but when an interesting piece of news comes across my desk, I can’t pass up the chance to write. In case anyone hasn’t heard the news yet, Phillip Capital has launched an IPO for a REIT ETF to be listed on the SGX, and from the product fact sheet, the ETF shall track a list of Asia-Pacific REITs, excluding Japan. This is a dual-currency ETF, so you can choose to invest in it using US dollars or Singapore dollars, depending on your preference for currency. Personally, I would take the ..read more