September Oh September

Hope everyone is doing well so far.

I realised I hasn't been blogging as much as I would like to in September. This is because there was a major happening in my career recently.

In August I left the company in which I was employed as well as being one of the shareholders. Due to certain disagreements between two of the shareholders - and I'm not one of them, a decision has been made to close down the company.

So now I'm striking out on my own. No longer with partners.

Incorporating the new company was easy. There are many companies out there offering incorporation service for a fee. I engaged one of those to incorporate my new company.

What's occupying my time are stuff that are often taken for granted such as:

Creating my company logo
Designing and printing my name card
Creating letter head
Designing and creating the content for my website
Selecting a host and creating the email accounts
Creating my company profile and individual product catalogues
Creating quotation, DO and invoice formats
etc

These tasks look mundane and I too took these for granted when I was an employee previously. However what needs to be done got to be done. So who else but me.

Most of the designing stuff can be outsourced to professionals. But I wanted to be frugal on this front as I need the funds to be put to better use.

On the bright side I have already completed several projects, thanks to the support from my customers!

I would say it is a good start for me.

On the other hand, I have increased the frequency of my runs recently. I have always love running but for various reasons, I have not been running as much as I would love to.

My pace has suffered as a result however I should be able to return to my old pace soon. Not that I care much about the pace, just that it serves as an indication of how 'lazy' or 'hardworking' I have been.

Most importantly I love what I do and I do what I love and this helps me to maintain my healthy lifestyle.

Just to show off before I log off!

Our dear traffic police sent me a surprise letter, complimenting me for being a careful driver for the past 5 years. Instead of a compliment I would very much prefer some tangible rewards though. 😁

And the environmental-conscious me is thinking why sent a hardcopy compliment? Actually an SMS will suffice.

And I thought I can show off! More than half of the motorists have received this compliment as well. Lol.. 😂

August Updates

August has been a good month for me in terms of investments.

Dividends

Dividends Collected

S$1,486.57

This comes from M1, SingTel, OCBC, CapitaLand Commercial Trust and Suntec Reit.

Stocks Purchased

Mapletree Logistics Trust @ S$1.185

This purchase forms part of my long term portfolio. Reasons for entering have been shared here.

Comfort Delgro @ S$2.18

Bought a second tranche when the price took a battering recently. This lowered my average price and subsequently I sold my holdings to take in some profits.

However I will enter CDG again once the opportunity arises as it is still a solid stock that I fancy and my belief in its fundamentals remains unchanged.

Wilmar @ S$3.11

I have been monitoring Wilmar for some time and when the price dropped recently to what I felt is a value with sufficient safety margin, I decided to make my maiden purchase into this commodities giant.

This will be a short term trade for me as it does not fits into my long term plan.

Stock Sold

Comfort Delgro @ S$2.33

Sold CDG for a small profit during the mini run up on news of possible collaboration with Uber. Decided to lock in the profits first for deployment elsewhere.

Last but not least, I received a bonus S$100 in the form of NS50 vouchers. Cheers!

Surprise Call from M1

I have always been satisfied with M1's customer service in my close to 20 years with them.

From the way they handled my queries over the phone to their staff at the front line, perhaps I have been lucky. So far I'm pretty impressed with their flexibility and initiatives.

Today I received a call from one of their customer service officers who offered me a loyalty voucher with quite a substantial amount to re-contract with them.

On top of that he also told me to delay my purchase (if any) to next month as phone prices will change after end of this month and Comex is coming so I might get a better deal!

I am pleasantly surprised as I was actually looking around for the past two weeks for a replacement for my 3 year old phone which apparently is nearing the end of its life 😞

Looking beyond the surface, this actually tells me that instead of being reactive to market changes, M1 is in fact proactively trying to retain customers.

Kudos to them 👏

Apart from that they are also coming up with promotions to get more customers on board. One example is the 300 mbps broadband plan @ $23 per month for the first year for customers who do not need a 'free' router.

I almost wanted to tell the CSO not to offer so many incentives especially handset subsidies to customers 😀

The above together with the initiatives I highlighted in my previous posts, further reinforce my belief that the sun will be shining brightly for M1 soon!

Wifey's S$20,000 Portfolio

Wifey recently got interested in investment for passive income too.

So one fine day she asked me to build up a dividend-paying portfolio for her with S$20,000 as the base capital.

The first thing I did was to look through my watch list for suitable stocks with dividend yield of at least 4%.

After identifying the stocks I waited for the opportune moment with comfortable price point to buy in for the long term.

After several weeks the first stock I bought is M1 at $1.86 pre-XD.

Weeks later, another opportunity arose. I bought Mapletree Logistics Trust at $1.185 when the price dipped.

Finally when the price fell yesterday, I bought Comfort Delgro at $2.18.

So as it stands wifey's portfolio now consists of the following:

M1 @ 4,000 shares (+ another 2,000 shares bought previously)
MLT @ 5,000 shares
CDG @ 3,000 shares

There are several more stocks in my watch list which will be added if the opportunity arises.

Recent Action - Mapletree Logistics Trust

Taking advantage of the dip in price, I purchased 10,000 shares of Mapletree Logistics Trust (MLT) today as my maiden entry to the Mapletree family.

Has been eyeing several of the Mapletree counters in my watch list for some time and ironically my first choice in the Mapletree family is actually another trust : )

Anyway the reasons for purchase are summarised as follows.

The recent news concerning logistics players such as FLT and GLP signal a favourable outlook for this sector as a whole.

With a diversified portfolio in 8 countries, MLT presents a good choice with exposure to growth in the APAC region.

And add a well spread of tenants to the equation. I like the fact that the biggest sector of tenants accounts for just 24% of the revenue contribution. This is from the F&B sector by the way.

Exposure to the troubled oil & gas and marine sectors is also limited as they account for only 5%.

Customers-wise, none account for more than 5% of total gross revenue. I find this a good hedge against any major upheaval in specific industries.

Weighted lease term to expiry (WALE) of over 4 years. Although this is not too long in my opinion, I am not overly concern with this.

After all there is no one anchor tenant account that makes up a substantial portion of the revenue where it can skews the results upwards (or downwards!).

Furthermore a lower WALE might be advantageous to MLT since it has shown positive rental reversions in China, Vietnam, Japan and Hong Kong.

Portfolio occupancy remains high at 95.5% despite a slight decline from previous quarter. This can be be explained by the transitional downtime from a property in South Korea.

Importantly, occupancy rates from other countries actually improved from the last quarter.

93% of leases that expired in 1Q FY17/18 has been renewed or replaced.

Freehold and long leasehold properties. About 30% of MLT's portfolio is freehold and average expiry to their leasehold land is 47 years. Pretty long if you ask me.

Talking about portfolio, I also like the current and future yield-accretive acquisitions and AEIs by MLT.

Even with lower contributions from the South Korean property and absence of contribution from one block of Ouluo Logistics Centre, MLT's gross revenue actually grew by 7% year on year and NPI grew by 7.5%.

Nice!

Of course DPU increased of 2% year on year and 1.5% quarter on quarter doesn't hurt ; )

Risks

Total outstanding debt increased by S$18 million. However approximately 79% of total debt has been hedged into fixed rates.

Continued pressure over the increased in supply of warehouse space locally. However this is mitigated by the renewal and replacement of expiring leases as well as positive rental reversions in other markets.

Lastly, I'm paying a slight premium to the NAV. Not my usual style. But I feel the upsides outweigh this hence this purchase.

Note: Figures obtained from 1Q FY17/18 financial results.

New Subsidiary for ISOTeam - Tide is Turning?

So ISOTeam has incorporated a new subsidiary for the wholesale and leasing of bikes, including provision of bike sharing services.

Bike sharing is not new in Singapore with Ofo, Mobike and Obike having the first mover advantage. Now with SG Bike (ISOTeam's subsi) jumping into the bandwagon, we have a homegrown player in this business.

I like this move of ISOTeam because of two reasons:

1) Green and eco-friendly business development
2) New business that rides with the trend

These two are among the reasons why I initiated a position in this counter and I have blogged about them here previously.

However I feel it's more than these reasons as to why ISOTeam decided to go into this business.

Our government is pushing for a car-lite country and they have long taken steps to move in this direction. Among these is the round the island park connector.

Now with a park connector that is more than 100 km and can connect you to most parts of the country, how do you traverse on it?

Bikes of course! So this makes business sense afterall.

Another plus point for me (I like companies that leverage on the governments initiatives)!

Quotable Quotes

Last day of July, decided to share some quotable quotes that I have came across over the years.

Some of these quotes are inspirational, some funny, some serious, some serve as a reminder and some are simply coined by myself.

1. When you are nobody everything you say is rubbish. When you are somebody everything you say is a quote.

2. It's not what you say. It's how you say it.

3. Having a bad day doing something you love is better than having a good day in an uninspiring workplace.

4. Second place is the first loser.

5. Nobody dies a virgin because life fucks us all.

6. Enjoy life. There is plenty of time to be dead.

7. Since light travels faster than sound, people appear bright until you hear them speak.

8. Money is not everything. There's Mastercard & Visa.

9. Behind every successful man, there is a woman. And behind every unsuccessful man, there are two.

10. Every man should marry. After all, happiness is not the only thing in life.

11. The wise never marry. And when they marry they become otherwise.

12. Earlier in my life I have to choose between hypocritical humility and honest arrogance, I chose arrogance.

13. Only speak if you can better the silence.

14. We do not stop playing because we are old. We grow old because we stop playing.

15. Try and regret rather than regret for not trying.