Stock Screening Results - Mar 2019

With the recent cash from the sale of my M1 shares, I have to look for other dividend-paying stocks as replacement(s) to at least maintain and hopefully increase my portfolio yield.

So I turned to my best friend for help. Stock screeners.

Usually I used the StockFacts screener from SGX. However for this time I also tried Yahoo Finance screener for curiosity sake.

The criteria I set for the screen are as follows:

P/E Ratio: < 20

One of the most fundamental of valuation screeners. It is more meaningful if the PER is compared among companies in the same industry.

However in this case I usually set it to 20 as a rudimentary guard against overpaying.

Net Profit Margin: At least 10%

10% is the minimum margin in my opinion, for a company's sustainability.

Debt to Equity Ratio: < 50%

Obviously gearing is one of the most important metrics in terms of risk management. 50% is the most I can accept unless there are very good reasons for the high gearing.

Price to Book Value: < 1

I do not like to overpay for a stock. However having said that I have done it on a number of occasions usually due to a combination of other factors which paint an overall rosy picture of the stock. 

Dividend Yield: At least 5%

Ideally 5% is the minimum for my dividend stocks which is not too high honestly.

As you can see, the criteria I used are geared towards screening of income stocks suitable for my income portfolio. Not so much on growth or other value stocks.

Interestingly the result from Yahoo Finance screener is almost identical to that of SGX StockFacts screener except that the former includes one more counter in the screening result - Metro Holdings Ltd.

Here are the results.

                                                                         

Another interesting observation is that my previous screenings say 1 - 2 years back, almost always yield a 2 page long results.

However this time only 9 counters appear from the StockFacts screening.

Is the market worse or better than before? Or are most stocks overpriced now?

I think apart from the surface results from the screening, we can also delve deeper and we will be able to get a feel on the current market conditions.

Back to the screening results, I will do more due diligence into 1) Frasers Commercial Trust and 2) Sasseur REIT.