III: buys 32% of cargo sale agent, Excel Air Cambodia (EAC) to expand access cargo sales for Emirate, ANA, Air China & Thai Air Asia in Cambodia, transaction to complete by end of-July.

Comment: Not a bad move.

ILM: furniture retailer, Index Living mall, debut IPO 105m shares at Bt 22 apiece.

Comment: With this and Dohome going public…then you’ll see how bad the industry is performing.

MTC: branch out from consumer loans & auto loans to motorbike hire-purchase, maintain Bt 100b loan book target by end of year.

NOK: cancel flights to Mae Hong Son from August 2, sees advance booking at 6%/flight on average, considering new routes for better potential.

PRM: mulls to add floating storage vessel from increase demand for restocking ahead of IMO Sulphur cap requirement effective January 1,20.

Comment: We’re of the viewpoint that you’re going to see the shipping indices spike ridiculously high, go back and have a look at the BDI indices in 2002-2005 to get an idea.

SYNEX: anticipates 2H turnaround after handset sales hurt by Huawei jitters in 2Q, will add 3 gadget brands ahead of holiday season, maintaining 10-15% full year revenue growth target, mulls to tap in warehouse management business, will finalize plan in 4Q.

Comment: I have my doubts, the past few years I’ve noticed that the people aren’t upgrading their phones as often as they used to. The mobile phone market is going to exhibit the same trends as the PC/laptop market has going forward. SYNEX however has done well from grabbing more market share

TMB: Finance ministry to subscribe newly issued shares to maintain 25% holding ratio in TMB-TBANK consolidated at Bt 1.6-1.75/share, 20% below market price, finalize on an extraordinary meeting, Aug1.

Comment: I’ve been told that TMB are going to retrench 40% of their work force, that’s 5,000 people. Combine the retrenchments of SCB and KBANK that’s above 30,000 people that will be unemployed from the financial sector alone in the next few years. Combine this data with the fact that private investment has been non-existent in Thailand for the past few years. That’s a rather sad outlook.