Singapore Press Holdings (SPH)

Royston from thesmartinvestor.com.sg@14 Oct 2020
Singapore Press Holdings’ Share Price Drops Below S$1: 5 Things You Should Know About its Full-Year 2020 Earnings

It wasn't a pretty picture.
Revenue down just 2.4% but total cost went up 6.8% in FY2020.
1. A loss incurred for the media division
2. A continued decline in group operating margin
3. Digital subscriptions and revenue continue to rise
4. Property portfolio revalued downwards
5. A large decline in dividends

Unless the group comes up with a strategy to enable a gradual turnaround, dividends may continue to decline over time.
https://thesmartinvestor.com.sg/singapor...-earnings/

Stay home and stay safe, everyone.

SPH - AR and eAGM announcement
Friday, 27 November 2020 at 2.30 p.m
(click to pre-reg)

As SPH sprint into the global stage with various digital initiatives, personal data protection and cybersecurity becomes a challenges.
Extracted from AR:
In FY2020, a financial penalty of $26,000 was imposed by the PDPC on SPH Magazines for failing to put in  place reasonable security arrangements to prevent the unauthorised access of personal data of members of the HardwareZone forum site. This related to an incident in September 2017 where a hacker accessed a senior moderator’s account to perform 704,764 attempted views of members’ user profiles. 

The breach was notified to all users of the forum. In 2018, a series of corrective measures were swiftly implemented to prevent recurrence.

There were also 12 substantiated complaints received from outside parties regarding the removal of certain content, personal information and subscription fromvarious media streams. SPH took action to address all cases and they were all closed during the year. Follow-up measures have been taken to prevent such recurrences.

In September 2019, Orange Valley was fined $2,000 by the Ministry of Health (MOH) for failing to keep and maintain proper medical records for a 12-day period in 2016.

Orange Valley has since reinforced filing procedures, and Nurse Managers/Nurse Clinicians conduct frequent audit checks on documentation.

These fines are not considered significant and we will continue to minimise and prevent non-compliance, moving forward. At PBSA, there was one incident of data breach, impacting a resident and involving an external party. This was the result of the accommodation applicant providing a wrong email address via the booking portal when applying for accommodation at Clifton & Stewart House. When responding to the applicant, the data was sent to the provided email. The recipient of the email, an external party, contacted the property to inform of this and based on CRM-Student Data Protection Officer, this was resolved and no fines were meted out.


https://links.sgx.com/FileOpen/SPH%20Ann...eID=637506


Stay home and stay safe, everyone.

Will just park this under SPH's thread since they have a 0.1% stake in the business

The cost of convenience

Meanwhile, the company’s innovations have already taken on a life of their own. Same-day delivery has become the new and irreversible norm. Tech giants and brick-and-mortar retail conglomerates alike are jostling for space in an e-commerce market that continues to grow, with many eating huge losses of their own to compete with Coupang. Yet none of this seeming progress has felt like innovation to the company’s workers. “There is nothing sophisticated about this system,” Go says. “It’s just mixing in workers and grinding them up.”

https://restofworld.org/2020/the-cost-of-convenience/

https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/sp...fit-entity

This is really beyond my range of expected outcome.

Interesting to see how the market will react when it open. At least it is getting rid of a loss making division (at a cost).

Your tax dollars are going to pay for your newspaper. I can't imagine paying $1.20 for ST if my taxes are subsidising it.

(06-05-2021, 04:15 PM)ongweehiang Wrote: https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/sp...fit-entity

This is really beyond my range of expected outcome.

Interesting to see how the market will react when it open. At least it is getting rid of a loss making division (at a cost).

This is indeed beyond the range of "expected" outcomes. Mr Market (or those who bid up the share price since it announced a restructure in end March) was probably expecting Ah Gong to buy up its media assets but it seems like SPH had to let them go at a cost.

Post restructure, SPH is just a developer + "angel investor". The announcement states its NTA and NAV at ~1.82sgd and 2.08sgd respectively (post restructure). Developers always trade at a 20-40% discount to NAV/NTA and I am not sure if there is a good reason for Developer SPH not to trade as such?

As for "angel investor" part, there are hits and misses and so I reckon the jury is still out.

For many other companies, making an investment decision maybe tricky and unclear. For SPH in its current form (with or without restructuring), it is actually extremely clear.

The management has a *ahem* less than stellar track record, that is more than enough reason to avoid. Unless the board have enough horse sense to get someone with real experience to helm it, dont count on it to perform up to par. But judging on how it has always been run, chances of it happening is extremely low. Previously when Print is King, you can probably put a piece of agar agar jelly at the helm and the business would still be great, not the case now even with media segment eliminated.

Charlie Munger runs Daily Journal, which is somewhat comparable to SPH. But management could not be more different in terms of quality and likewise the investment returns.

lolz! management MUST know that running a new paper is not same as running SAF pioneer magazine lah... aiyoh!

Gentleman Chairman LBY, feel asleep at KepCorp Board brazil scandal and CEO Star General Ng sir umbrage at Q&A session...

https://lloydslist.maritimeintelligence....stand-down

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2H515mFF28

And now taxpayers money to take over SPH.... haha!
SPH is now a statutory board liao! and all taxpayers will have free subscriptions, whether you like it or not?!! haha!

As a taxpayer, please fire the current management now!!!

(07-05-2021, 01:09 PM)brattzz Wrote: And now taxpayers money to take over SPH.... haha!
SPH is now a statutory board liao! and all taxpayers will have free subscriptions, whether you like it or not?!! haha!

As a taxpayer, please fire the current management now!!!

Strictly speaking, the final ownership of SPH media is still an unknown as of now. And post spin off, actually SPH has the "freedom" to get away from Big Daddy, rather than becoming a stat board...So i assuming you are talking about "SPH media".

Since there is a spin off as per announcement, we may have to make a strict differentiation between SPH and SPH media.

Seems like SPH foots part of the bill (initial losses) and maybe some of the GLC profit entities like TOTE board will donate to SPH media, hence the taxpayer doesnt need to pay?

SPH restructuring?
I don't think so.
To me, it's more like a Umbrage.

 I am very keen in SPH because it's a monopoly and with the right resources and talent inject into SPH business, there is no doubt that this tech giant can fly. No doubt.

Before I continue, let's do a proper definition of the 2 distinct business SPH owned.
One of course is the legitimate media business.
Post restructuring, it will keep it's title and called what else? SPH.

The other business that SPH currently owned, post restructuring will have nothing to do with SPH and it will not have any image of SPH post restructuring.
Since, it's going to be operated by current CEO, lets call this business "Umbrage Pte Ltd" - pardon me for lack of creativity.

Valuebuddies worth their salt will recall a favorite portal operated by Michael Leong?
Yes, fond memories hur... ShareInvestor.COM

Michael started the portal in HP Singapore. The long aisle that connect HP Alexandra and it's canteen was the birth place for ShareInvestor.COM.

ShareInvestor.com and STI was part of SPH.  Given some focus, I'm not surprise that SPH could become a tech company that provide a nice testbed for FinTech startup in Singapore.  I wonder how SPH senior management understand or see the potential of ShareInvestor.com and STI could help to bring up the financial literacy of fellow Singaporeans... especially those undergrad and newly grad.

Singapore, being a leading global financial center, how could we gear up our young generation to be financial savvy? Education, especially public education would be the key. 

Right?  (please, MOE, not another curriculum,  the best way is to practice one's financial literacy and rough it out.  No short cut, please, not another exam or assignment, please)

Ok, Michael Leong SI.com would be a huge success at it's old day. Moving forward, there is another even more exciting portal and information sources SRX.com.

I tell you a secret.
We all have property and sometime we have a few properties.
When we sign up an exclusive with a property agent to rent out or sell our property, the property agent will go to SRX.com and register the exclusive deal.

You see, there are many property companies in Singapore.
There must be one central registry where the property agent can claim to be the first (or last) one who gotten the exclusive selling rights.

So, SRX is the answer.  It's the center point for all the property companies.

Similiarly, when a property agent closed a deal, who shall he report the deal?
His manager? His company IT system? URA or HDB?

Neither. SRX - bro.

Again, same reason as above, all the property companies trusted SRX.
SRX will be the first place all the property agents submit their closed deal.

SRX is the authority of who close what deal first.

And of course, a property agents do that diligently because that determined his entitlement to commissions too.

What it means is before URA/HDB gotten the price of the transaction, SRX already had the preview (2 weeks OTP).

Given how critical and sensitive of market movement, especially during Covid-19 and increasing volatile financial situation, a 2 weeks lead time on the latest property transaction is a information to die for.   

Having says that, SRX is not just a property portal or trusted authority for the agents, SRX is actually a big data integrated with spatial, AI/ML information directly from sources that include user input, Real Estate professionals, retail business, and Government Agencies that include but are not limited to, the URA, Singapore Department of Statistics, Singapore Post Limited.

When everyone is talking about big data, data analytics, digitalisation, automation, do you know what SRX had already done that with the ingestion of data from multiple sources including Singapore Government.

I can tell you that SISV is a no nonsense organisation.
Their agreement/settlement with SRX regarding the legitimate use case of automated valuation model is a testimonial.
SRX automation stands up to extreme critical scrutiny of the professional surveyors 26 of them. All no non-sense type. And SRX managed to convinced them that 
 “better understanding to promote the use of technology” as a tool for pricing residential property. SISV acknowledged that automated valuation models, which are widely used by property buyers and sellers as well as real estate professionals to obtain an instant indication of property value, “have transformed Singapore’s property industry”. It also encouraged property professionals and financial institutions to embrace technology “as important tools in performing valuation and transacting property”.

to be continue...

Gratitude.