Inflation is everywhere…and yet

the price of a Mcdonald’s burger is cheaper in a lot of countries during burger consumption off peak hour

e.g. weekday night in Hong Kong

        weekday noon in Malaysia Singapore and other countries..wonder why? It is not a coincidence

FSBM Plaza - AmFirst REIT

There is a piece of information missing glaringly from the announcement in Bursa recently – the net property yield of the purchase. A back of the envelope calculation has yielded a maximum net property yield of around 8.3% for the 1st 3 yrs, and around 8.5% for the next 3 yrs. Since this purchase is totally debt funded, of course we will have to deduct the cost of the debt, which will be around 4.5 % – 6 %, depending on whether the loan will be on fixed rate or floating rate. Ignoring the 1% acquisition fee, 2.x% of 51 million will up the current DPU by around 0.xx%.

Quality of innovation

as described by Prof Desai

= extent of pain suffered by customers(the higher the pain the larger the value)

+number of potential customers

+life of the innovation

+difficulty in assembling a solution as well as difficulty in copying likely innovation opportunities

 

Misc

-when there is a pain, there is a need

-not every creative is an innovation

-pain point

-some innovation are only meant for specific market/industry

-FIGURE OUT how to APPLY TECHNOLOGY in ANOTHER AREA – technology for one purpose can be used/transported for another purpose

-how to go from functional(coffee shop, cafe) to emotional(Starbucks, Old Town White Coffee)

lifestyle economy – e.g. emotion(refer to above)

The THIRD PLACE – home, work, starbucks

A Produce Innovation’s lifepath

Special –> Enterprise –> Departmental –>Personal –> Mobile –>Pocket

For example from Giant Machine to Ipad

Video –> World’s first flying car

http://kidstube.com/play.php?vid=7870

-

What are your biggest fears

This blog started off as some sort of a venture which faltered. and then it became my pet for my ideas..and then it turned into a market commentary site..and now I gona deviate part of it back to its origin – more of an idea site..do you still remember what were your ambitions while you were in primary education? I do..I wished to be scientist. wished to be entrepreneur..wished to be an inventor…Well, I am not in any now..but the silver lining is, i still retain the inquisitiveness in me, the entrepreneurial spirit(to my VC friend, I will be back) and thoughts, and finally, the Creating Mind(ala Five MInds for the Future)which mixes disparate ideas into something different. Recently, I have started to firing salvos at a few different areas, putting ideals into motions. As I realized that I do not have to be the owner of the end solution/product/result, I need to contribute the idea, the prototype, or the impetus of a workable solution only. I have been to a few occasions recently, I can see the sparkles in the inventor’s eye. If compared to a lot of dead walking zombies on the road, it is really between heaven and earth. I can feel the enthusiasm of a 1st year undergrads (Woot!) versus the bland expression of someone who has been working for years. I don’t ever want to be like the next guy/girl in the talks/seminars, where nothing is done aftermath and life goes on. If this long winded article lights up a chord in you or you have been slugging it out despite all odds, get in touch =)

Creativity

We live in an age when the most valuable asset any economy can have is the ability to be creative - to spark and imagine new ideas, be they Broadway tunes, great books, iPads or new cancer drugs. And where does creativity comes from?

"To be creative requires divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result).  It comes from being exposed to divergent ideas and cultures and peoples and intellectual disciplines. One thing we must know about creativity is that it typically occurs when people who have mastered two or more quite different fields use the framework in one to think afresh about the other(rojak, in my own terms =) )

Leonardo da Vinci was a great blah blah and blah, eane(and) each specialty nourished the other. He was a great lateral thinker. But if you spend your whole life in one silo, you will never have either the knowledge or the mental agility to do the synthesis, connect the dots, which is usually where the great breakthrough is found




Thomas Friedman

Gandhian Innovation - Bharti Airtel

Read an article in HBR recently titled “Gandhian Innovation” by C.K. Prahalad and R.A. Mashelkar What captured my eyeballs was that the paragraph talking about how Bharti Airtel was losing money until it decided to change tact from looking at profit margin to looking at revenue as key business ratio. I am suspecting Singtel learnt from their partner, Bharti Airtel and brought it over to Singapore. First with its prepaid business since few years ago(you can note this by looking at Singtel’s  prepaid users net adds  per quarter or looking at ARPU that keep making new lows.) and now expanding the same strategy to mio TV line of business as well.  Starhub looks increasingly fragile to me. Bharti Airtel, 1 cent per min in India…hmmmm

The ant cluster(yizu)

It refers to young people with a high level of education who work low-paid jobs and live together in crowded apartments or dorms, usually on the edge of big cities. They’re similar to ants in that they’re intelligent, weak, and live in groups,

BJCORP-JA

died as the structured product which lived for shortest number of days in KLSE

Coming consolidation of China Sports Apparels Industry

The winner will not be the one who have the best design or the most number of outlets, it will be those who have deep pockets/good relationship with states/banks and whoever able to garner wide support from distibutors.

Oceanus

Strategy gone wrong. Oceanus strategy of offering abalones to the public at mid market prices is noble and commendable. But the thing is, abalone is discretionary consumer items. A customer is not likely to visit monthly just to savour the dishes.

Crowdsourcing

F1 Singapore introduced a new type of ticket as a result of customer feedback. You dont expect a low margin product/service offerer to do the same right, do you?

Guocoleisure

A potential privatization is in the bag. and Marathon will not accept Quek Leng Chan’s lowball offer

radha

Taking advantage of weak european currencies, radha imported a lot of chocolates from europe and south america.

Shopping mall reits

Looking at the percentages of malls securitised in the states and Singapore, it looks very likely more and more shopping centres will be bought over and managed by REITs in Malaysia.

kubiq

 

Signature International launched a mass consumer version of its products – Kubiq to pre-empt competitors.

 

Some business does not make it big by luck.

 

Clayton M. Christensen – author of several books on disruptive innovation

Navis Capital

sought out investments in niche areas, consumer sectors and service industry

cash out by selling out to big corporations and mncs

http://naviscapital.net/portfolio/investments-made-by-navis/

Value Proposition

Knowing something and able to solve something is entirely different value proposition
More details follow soon

Testimonial from a victim of landbanking investment scheme

ok my hearing was today. the outcome was not as good as hoped for, but i think Profitable Plots came away worse-off than i did.

i know staff of Profitable Plots are reading this forum, and i know at least 1 other forummer here knows my identity, but i hope you'll keep my identity anonymous please? i need to say what needs to be said, but i don't need the unwanted attention.

if there are any members of the press or media here on this forum, yes i'll consent to interviews, just respect my request for privacy please.

so before it's too late, here's my story:
like many of you, i'm a victim too. i bought AAA product in July 2008, and have yet to receive payment when it matured in July 2009. As May approaches, almost 1 full year has elapsed since payment was due.

When i purchased the product, i too was told that 12.5% returns wld be guaranteed within 1 year, potentially sooner (if the Philippines site got sold or UK received planning permission approval etc). I told my CSO, "thanks... but forget castles in the sky, 12.5% per annum is good enough", rejecting other products like Concorde Village etc that offered 900% returns but an indeterminite time-frame. She assured me 12.5% within 1 year was definitely possible, and legally binding.

So i paid the money in July, signed the contract in August. Many of you must've also had your contracts backdated to the time of payment right? That makes the contract itself somewhat dodgy, but i won't dwell on that.

In June 2009, i filled up my Exercise Form to request payment, and it got accepted by my CSO, and Chandra their Grp Sales Director. Was told by CSO that my payment wld be in August, since maturity was July.

Come August no payment was made, so I met Chandra to see what terms he cld offer as compensation. He dropped the shocker, "after 1 year 12.5% interest payment was due only, not the principal sum". He even challenged me to get lawyers. So i did.

I engaged a lawyer thru a friend of mine. My lawyer's name is Selva Naidu, of Liberty Law Practice.

With Selva's advice, I documented every twist, every ridiculous excuse and noted the times, places, and who said what. Also clearly documented, was their lame attempts to stall payment by trying to "fix an exchange rate".

They offered me the highest exchange rate within 30 days after maturity. That rate was 2.43 on 5 August 2009, which i kept pointing out to them but fell on deaf ears. Somehow they kept bouncing around 2 other rates instead, 2.37 and 2.39 (which to me is an obvious time wasting tactic, because a difference of 2 cents forms less than 1% of the entire sum payable)

I sent the customary Letter of Demand in September, they ignored my lawywer's 8 day deadline.

In October they "offered" to make payment (lip service), and i agreed to go and personally collect the cheque from their offices, but then they said the exact date / time and exchange rate was not confirmed, and the cheque was not ready. no payment was made, and there was no attempt to contact us.

In November we served Writ of Summons to appear in Court, they ignored that too (begining to see a pattern here eh?) and they offered to make payment in mid-November but didn't know who's address to send the cheque to? (can you believe that? how stupid do they think we are?) Since they simply refused to acknowledge that the rate to be used was 2.43 (highest in 30 day period after my maturity date) my lawyer and i were at wit's end. He asked me why we were using 2.43 in the first place? i said it was because that was what they offered. We decided that since they refused to accept the simple truth, why not just use the rate that i purchased the product in? After all, it was what i paid in July 2008, and that was what my receipts state. So we submitted our statement of claims with the GBP 14,625 amount to be converted to SGD at 2.69 (the rate at which i entered in July 2008)

Unsurprisingly, they ignored our summons, and didn't even file an appearance in court. So we took out a Default Judgment against them in November. In December, we served the Judgment on them, demanding payment of the full sum, plus interest, plus legal fees.

Guess what they did? They ignored that too. So my lawyer and I set out to seize money from their bank accounts using a Garnishee's Order. Surprise surprise. In January, they had money amounting to around $40k to be seized, and their bank (UOB) complied with the court's orders. Now, lo and behold... we got their attention.

Their lawyers (Drew & Napier) sprung into action that same day in January when their assets got frozen, and applied to set aside Default Judgment, applied to stay proceedings because of an Arbitration Agreement, and applied to undo the Garnishee's Order too.

At the same time, they offered a settlement out-of-court. It was about 97% of my original payment sum. Of course, they didn't offer any interest payment. Nor legal fees. Still it was very appealing, but in exchange they wanted me to shut up, and to withdraw the Judgment that i had against them. I told my lawyer I refused to accept their terms, because I knew the evidence i had could be used to help others in a similar predicament as mine.

This was the only time my lawyer and I disagreed. His sole concern was recovering my money, and rightly so, he assumed the settlement would have achieved our aims. He told me to leave it; if i engaged in a legal battle, it could cost tens of thousands, and possibly end up losing...

As the deadline to accept their offer was fast approaching and we hadn't replied, PP sent one of their more junior lawyers, a lady, to phone us and state the obvious that we are allowed to counter-propose (duh!). Eventually I convinced my lawyer to stick to our guns. No compromise. The fight was on.

February and March we were exchanging affidavits. It was my chance to submit all my evidence, and for Profitable Plots to surface all their inconsitencies. To me, they seemed like blatant lies like claiming the Option Agreement DID NOT allow for GBP 14,625 payment after 1 year, hence they didn't owe us any money... or really lame excuses like they tried so hard to make payment to us but don't have our address...

Now April, was our hearing. Even right up until yesterday, in their arguments submitted to the judge (and to us) they claimed the payment of GBP 14,625 was "good-will" and not obligated. But today, they sang a totally different tune... before the judge, they conceded payment was indeed due after all! (Hopefully, this is a sign of remorse, repentance, and a willingness to change from being the blatant arrogant jerks)

Also, the judge ruled that all costs of my own legal proceedings be paid to me.

Unfortunately, it's not completely a happy ending for me. The judge agreed to their request to set aside the judgment, solely on the grounds that the exchange rate we used (2.69) was questionable, since the AAA contract itself never stated what rate should be used. Although i'm rather disappointed the judgment got set aside, in truth, the main reasons why i wanted our initial judgment to stand in the first place was because:

a. I wanted all future investors (who can be bothered to do a background check on Profitable Plots) to KNOW that they're a shady no-good company, and
b. It was the only way to get Profitable Plots to PAY UP MY MONEY when they initially refused to admit they owed me a cent.

But now, on part a. that's what my desire to go to the media is for. As for part b, well they finally admitted openly to a judge that they do owe me money... not out of good-will, not on a special case-by-case basis... but contractually required, as we stated all along.

Now friends, see if their attitudes have changed? If they haven't, you may approach my lawyer Mr Selva Naidu. He's certainly well-versed with all their tricks and excuses seen so far, knows how to deal with them, and his costs are reasonable.

Market penetration

Wonder why Unilever, P&G and many other MNC FMCG products are on sale in India
Ever wonder why there are a number of fast food outlets offering cheap breakfast?
Its all about penetrating the market guys
Its about influencing your habits ->encouraging you to visit them during non traditional visiting hours

persuading Asians to go fast food outlets in the morning is like persuading Westerners to go for Chinese food in the morning, or persuading Asians to go for bread and other pastries as regular dinner

Business-like investing

The trick is to find a stock that is priced so that a profit is almost inevitable.

I will skip what most other books already told you and instead focus on some other parts

Organic growth - growth that can be achieved organically without involving M&A
High probability event - divident announcements, pending corporate actions etc
Catalyst - rerating of sector / industry

More examples of the above will be given in future posts










Disclaimer:  Parts of the article contains ideas from uncle ho's article

Cambridge SREIT

Cambridge -selling assets above book value
cashing out but sacrificing future's gain
asset disposed located at stone's throw away distance from jurong east mrt station
have a look at jurong transformation plan

Hektar REIT

One have to be prudent when it comes to investing
A mall is being built right next to Mahkota Parade
completing next year. What will happen to the occupancy rate once the new mall is ready next year?The management will have to decide which they prioritize? Occupancy or rental?

Use the website below for more info
http://www.epbt.gov.my/osc/Carian_Proj.cfm

Monkey See, Monkey Do

1. Start with a cage containing five apes. In the cage, hang a banana on a string and put stairs under it. Before long, an ape will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana.

2. As soon as the ape touches the stairs, spray all the apes with cold water. After a while, another ape makes an attempt with the same result - all the apes are sprayed with cold water.

3. Turn off the cold water. If, later, another ape tries to climb the stairs, the other apes will try to prevent it even though no water sprays them.

4. Now remove one ape from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new ape sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his horror, all of the apes attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs he will be assaulted.

5. Next, remove another of the original five apes and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The former newcomer now takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm.

6. Again, replace a third original ape with a new one. The new one makes it to the stairs and is attacked as well. Two of the four apes that beat him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest ape.

7. After replacing the fourth and fifth original apes, all the apes which have been sprayed with cold water have been replaced.

Nevertheless, no ape ever again approaches the stairs. Why not?

BECAUSE, that’s the way it’s always been done around here.

I like the above 'experiement' on the monkeys as it reminds me of HUMAN, they act like those monkeys.

sreit's ozzie venture

kreit
starhill global
cdl hospitality

who's next?

why?
look at sg funding rate and oz's recent property transaction cap rate

Jobstreet

Wilmar China

back to basics

what do you want eventually when you invest
profits, profits and more profits
this blog failed to achieve its original intention due to the fact that the owner doesnt have enough time allocated for regular posting and link exchanging
From now on, posts which are still work in progress will be published
thanks

aenith's aim
in 5-10 yrs time - matching 30% of the professionalism that belongs to an investment blog
in 10-15 yrs time - matching certain ranges of basic analytics provided by small research/analytics firm

China Hongxing, China Sports, Hongguo

China Hongxing Dec 560 0.200 0.22 10% Hold 15.1 10.4 7.9 38 0.6x 0.6x

China Sports      Dec 147 0.175 0.26 49% Buy 4.2 4.0 3.8 5 0.7x 0.6x 

Hongguo Int      Dec 131 0.330 0.30 -9% Hold 9.1 6.5 5.4 30 1.0x 0.9x 

Among these three, Hongguo is the most expensive from valuation point of view and yet it is the only to be delisted so far. Perhaps something is missing from the list.

Well, let me ask one question here, when quality of life improves(i.e. income), what do you think is most likely to happen?

Buy extra sports shoes(for male) or buy extra ladies' footwear(for ladies)?

lol

Fighting over loss making company

Why? Why is YTL Cement and Holcim fighting over a loss making Jurong Cement and bidding to buy its shares from $1.28 to $2.50?