As the shares closed at 6.74 today, I tot readers might be interested in DBS’s continued call to buy F&N.
My problem with this stock is that there doesn’t seem to be any plans to reshuffle the portfolio of assets (Asia Pacific Breweries, F&N Berhad, Times Publishing, properties and a few other things) to extract more shareholder value. It’s more of the same. But dividend is sustainable, yielding abt 2.7% (trailing). Better than leaving money in the bank.
DBS Group Research | Mar 30
Close: $6.70
… announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, FCL (China) Pte Ltd, is proposing to privatise its 56.17 per cent-owned, Hong Kong-listed entity, Frasers Property (China) Ltd (FPC). The proposed privatisation will be undertaken jointly with Riverbook Group Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ascendas Land International Pte Ltd. Riverbook is also the second largest shareholder of FPC with a 17.16 per cent stake. The main assets of FPC include the 157,610 sq m Vision Shenzhen Business Park and Shanshui Four Seasons in Shanghai with 737,000 sqm earmarked for residential/commercial uses.
We believe that the rationale for this exercise is that the current traded price does not reflect its value as FPC is trading at a 43 per cent discount to its NAV.
Furthermore, FPC’s trading value is relatively low at less than HK$1 million a day. The privatisation is likely to provide more flexibility for the major shareholders to extract value, in our view.
We continue to see value in F&N, as it is trading at a 24 per cent discount to our RNAV ($9.02), with the potential to progressively unlock value over the longer term – Asia Pacific Breweries, F&N Berhad, Times Publishing, properties, etc. In the meantime, the group’s earnings will benefit from the strong performance of its brewery unit, stable investment property earnings, coupled with about S$1.7 billion in unrecognised property development sales in Singapore. We believe its low landbank and partnership strategy for land tenders will better insulate it from policy risks in this uncertain market.
