CPALL

Share price has been weak, they’re part of the CP Funding vehicle to buy Tesco, but a share buy back is underway tomorrow. 

More interesting is the trend on twitter over the past month that the younger generation wants to avoid going to 7-11’s on Wednesday’s. I finally found an English article for this, https://prachatai.com/english/node/8399, but will people really give up the convenience of it…?

Sharebuybacks galore

My personal viewpoint’s of sharebuybacks aside, I think they are a massive misallocation of capital – just return the capital to shareholders instead or focus on investments and running the business, if there is nothing new available, reward your wonderful shareholders. However, generally speaking, in SE Asia, I have noticed that companies are owned by the founders not run by professional management such as in the US and therefore they appear to genuinely do buybacks when the share prices are priced attractively i.e. @#$$ing cheap. 

Thai companies have launched some THB 67 bn worth of sharebuybacks this past month (2x what the incompetent Thai government initially mentioned re the stability fund of THB 30 bn) 

Here’s a list as of today

BH vs BDMS 

The virus is taking away the limelight from this 

https://www.set.or.th/set/newsdetails.do?newsId=15844885864670&language=en&country=US

BH just effectively took a poison pill by exercising these convertible bonds, so all shareholders are diluted by ~9-10%, this takeover battle is fascinating to watch. I wonder what BDMS shall do next? They’ve recently postponed their AGM (as have several other public companies) so the BH share purchase is postponed…for now. 

Random Thoughts…

Risk happens fast. 

With more people staying at home now, they’ll begin to notice what home improvements are required and thus when shops open up are we going to see a rush to Homepro? The malls? Global? For housing upgrades? 

No man is getting a haircut this month, unless they already shave their heads so if this lockdown continues are all men in the world going to re-appear as hairy baboons or hippies? 

Isn’t it odd that certain companies/businesses are allowed to remain open whereas everything else has to be closed? For BigC (BJC), Tesco (soon to be CP), and 7-11 can still be allowed to make money but everyone else has to close? I see more opportunities for them to acquire market share after this. Yes other operators are open i.e. Tops, foodland, villa, but still, this is just a random thought…

The data regarding the Chinese-virus, Wu-Flu, Covid-19 whatever you want to call is odd, Germany, Northern Europe reports lower death rates, Spain/Italy are through the roof, unless there is a clear definition on the case fatality rate. Bad data => weak analysis => poor decision making.

Chinese factories are back up and running, clearing out their backlog of outstanding orders, but with Europe, the US and most of Asia still in lockdown, companies are telling ALL manufacturers to hold off on delivery and postponing payment, looks like the W recovery is more likely at the moment.

Thailand still has the 2 of the 3 D’s in place, bad debt and demographics, it doesn’t have deflation, more stagflation in the past few years (lower economic growth with high inflation, want to argue about inflation? Look at hospital costs, transportation costs, housing costs etc etc. I don’t see anything positive occurring…

What is the first thing you’re going to do the moment this crap is over? The flow will be, people return to Bangkok to work (good for petrol station volume => PTT, PTG, SUSCO), mass transit is used (BTS, BEM), restaurants will be filled up (CENTEL, MINT, ZEN, M, MM), the ladies will have to do their beauty regimes (haircuts, nail spas, facials), the gents will drink, together they’ll travel domestically (PTT, PTG, SUSCO, MINT, CENTEL, ERW, VRANDA, AWC) and some will go internationally (AOT, THAI, AAV, NOK, MINT, CENTEL), sports will be back on the cards, gyms etc…What do you think?