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Coincidentally, i just changed my gas cylinder yesterday. What we did was simply call the number in the sticker on the gas cylinder. And of course, it came from the same supplier and I had already paid an earlier deposit. Unless the whole thing explodes, i don't believe we will change the supplier again. If the supplier gets bought out - i am agnostic to it as long as someone picks up the phone when i refer to the sticker.
Of course, unless someone starts some sort of gas cylinder sharing (pun), I believe Towkay Teo's LPG business is pretty sticky in a sense for the retail customer (at least until the day where gas cylinder buying gets e-commericalized). Of course, there are corporate clients (eg. coffee shops and restaurants) but this is where prices and the scale of the distribution network comes in. Prices and scale becomes an advantage as one gets larger.
From pg134 of the prospectus, excluding its shrinking CNG taxi customers and single diesel kiosk station, Union Gas wants to grow via acquiring existing LPG cylinder competitors - something which it has done with the announcement on 12/29. So it wants to get bigger in an overall market that is stagnant/shrinking - From the textbook case, it may become a case of "Efficient Scale" here where the market is not attractive to new participants. The upside comes when the pool of existing participants get less with M&A, and then the remaining players improve their bottom-line and then become more and more "efficient" in extracting profits from customers.
The bad is obvious in Union Gas and the IPTs make the "structure" part of ABS (asset/business/structure) of analyzing the company, worrying. But interesting to see Towkay's next steps to see whether there is any good to out-trumps the bad.
Of course, unless someone starts some sort of gas cylinder sharing (pun), I believe Towkay Teo's LPG business is pretty sticky in a sense for the retail customer (at least until the day where gas cylinder buying gets e-commericalized). Of course, there are corporate clients (eg. coffee shops and restaurants) but this is where prices and the scale of the distribution network comes in. Prices and scale becomes an advantage as one gets larger.
From pg134 of the prospectus, excluding its shrinking CNG taxi customers and single diesel kiosk station, Union Gas wants to grow via acquiring existing LPG cylinder competitors - something which it has done with the announcement on 12/29. So it wants to get bigger in an overall market that is stagnant/shrinking - From the textbook case, it may become a case of "Efficient Scale" here where the market is not attractive to new participants. The upside comes when the pool of existing participants get less with M&A, and then the remaining players improve their bottom-line and then become more and more "efficient" in extracting profits from customers.
The bad is obvious in Union Gas and the IPTs make the "structure" part of ABS (asset/business/structure) of analyzing the company, worrying. But interesting to see Towkay's next steps to see whether there is any good to out-trumps the bad.
