Noble Group

grandmaster89?

That guy was grandmaster. If I did not guess wrongly, grandmaster has changed his Nickname here. hehe

I remember the times when I engaged with him discussion on Mercator as well.

(22-12-2010, 09:21 AM)mrEngineer Wrote: That guy was grandmaster. If I did not guess wrongly, grandmaster has changed his Nickname here. hehe

I remember the times when I engaged with him discussion on Mercator as well.

Ah, yes I remember Grandmaster89. What's his nick now?

Its just my guess based on the writing style, content and investment philosophy. I wouldnt give anymore clues. hehe
Need to respect his reason to change Nickname as well.

Yup, we should respect the reason (whatever it may be) that GM89 has chosen to post under another nick (if this is the case at all!) No wonder I found it strange that GM89 hasn't joined yet because I remember Momoeagle saying that he would let GM89 know about the new forum. Really enjoyed his postings. He was very meticulous in his analysis.

so just a shout-out to GM89: If you're here and posting under a different nick, please continue to do so! Really enjoyed your postings.

Yea! That's the guy, GM89! Thanks for jogging my memory. I have a guess as well as to who it is. Lips sealed...

I think a lot of people misunderstood Noble's business. Noble is more of commodity trader rather than a commodity producer, which commodity price affects its business greatly, as it owns not much upstream assets (maybe around 20%). High/low commodity price does not affect the profit margin that much. actually quite the opposite, low commodity price actually would reduce the risk of Noble's operation, because it would require much less working capital. We can easily conclude the above from the 2009-2010 operation comparison that Noble did not earn much less than 2010 when commodity price was much higher(NP:556/606). Being a commodity trader make its readily marketable inventory at 90+% most of the time to reduce the risk of holding commodity.

(not invested, but watching)

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I like noble's asset medium strategy. It reduces the operation risk, as well as the risk of volatile commodity price. Noble normally just owns minority stake to secure the supply of commodity, rather than owning a majority stake. Doing so also makes sure that it is not a competitor of other commodity producers so that it can market their product as well.

On 2-Aug, Noble announced that it has signed Heads of Agreement with InterOil for the supply of 1 mtpa LNG for 10 years starting in 2014. As the LNG prices has yet to be finalized, we do not know the size of this contract. Taking US$10/MMBtu as the price of LNG, I calculate this contract is worth about US$ 400 million a year for 10 years.

I entered a small position for Noble given its recent price drop.

Noble is definitely stronger than pre-crisis. They are better in origination side, they are better in demand side, they are better in financial position, they are better in diversification of traded commodities. Also, they pared down their holding in riskier upstream assets, (lower shareholding of Gloucester coal, sold Donaldson coal/Middlemount coal to Gloucester coal)

Noble has just released an announcement on a possible spin-off and primary listing of its agriculture business on SGX.....
http://info.sgx.com/webcoranncatth.nsf/V...F0039FE7B/$file/AnnouncementFinal041011.pdf?openelement

To me, this is a rather crazy idea - tantamount to a dual listing? - likely with some untold strange and possibly undesirable intentions!

With prices of nearly all the commodities having taken a sudden and unexpected sharp correction in the last few weeks, and with most of the international banks now facing new constraints in lending, the risk profile of commodities traders like Noble has undoutedly increased by a big, big margin!!