Riverstone Holdings

[mrEngineer]

Hi fellow forumers,

I have not started studying this company in detail but I am kind of interested as the ROE has been relatively stable for the past 5 years. Gloves manufacturing does not seem to be a high moat industry and probably faces quite alot of competition. Anyone care to share? Thanks.

[Blackjack]

Think they went into medical gloves? Supposedly higher barrier of entry than ordinary gloves and gave the company greater prospects for growth.

Haven't gone into it in detail though as I didn't buy the logic.

[VestedInterest]

Rubber prices high at the moment. May not be the best time to go in unless can hold a little long.

[mrEngineer]

Thanks for the heads up. Stop researching on this stock as I realised that they are not even market leader in Singapore/Malaysia market.

[FFNow]

I think Top glove is the market leader followed by Supermax. Both are listed in Malaysia.

[Jacmar]

Hi guys, I think all your "research" and understanding is not correct as posted. Here are some info as gathered from their last qtr results announcement available on SGX:

1. 85% of their gloves is made of nitrile(synthetic rubber) and only 15% is natural rubber. so effect of rubber price is not significant.

2. 80% of their business comes from clean room application and the rest others including medical application. So their business is much more tight to the technology industries.

3. their competitive moat is in clean room whereas all those makers in malaysia are not strong in this segment. clean room gloves are much more stringent and hence margins are higher according to their charts.

This is not an inducement for you to buy/sell but to ensure you do your research more thoroughly.

[mrEngineer]

Hi guys, I think all your "research" and understanding is not correct as posted. Here are some info as gathered from their last qtr results announcement available on SGX:

1. 85% of their gloves is made of nitrile(synthetic rubber) and only 15% is natural rubber. so effect of rubber price is not significant.

2. 80% of their business comes from clean room application and the rest others including medical application. So their business is much more tight to the technology industries.

3. their competitive moat is in clean room whereas all those makers in malaysia are not strong in this segment. clean room gloves are much more stringent and hence margins are higher according to their charts.

This is not an inducement for you to buy/sell but to ensure you do your research more thoroughly.

http://www.latexglove.info/latexglove10/..._Trade.pdf

Page 11, it states Malaysia is exporting 72% rubber gloves. At this point, Riverstone is not currently a market leader in the entire gloves industry.

Even though, nitrile gloves may have potential to replace latex gloves (not forgetting low protein gloves, powder-free), I believe it will take some time before this to occur. Moreover, Top Glove is 10x larger than Riverstone, switching to Nitrile glove production should not be a big feat.

[Jacmar]

Page 11, it states Malaysia is exporting 72% rubber gloves. At this point, Riverstone is not currently a market leader in the entire gloves industry.

Even though, nitrile gloves may have potential to replace latex gloves (not forgetting low protein gloves, powder-free), I believe it will take some time before this to occur. Moreover, Top Glove is 10x larger than Riverstone, switching to Nitrile glove production should not be a big feat.

You are right in that RS is not a mkt leader in the gloves industry. Beside Topglove there are many more other manufacturers in malaysia that are many times larger than RS. However RS is the mkt leader in the clean room glove industry segment and this is their area of focus.

Most of the malaysian glove manufacturers also have nitrile glove manufacturing capability but that does not mean they can supply to the clean room industry segment.To be able to supply to the clean room industry gloves you will need a class 1 cleanroom facility and that's not cheap.Barriers to entry to the glove mkt industry is low but barriers to the cleanroom industry is high.No wafer fab manufacturer is going to risk introducing contaminants to their wafers fab line over some small savings of gloves.

[mrEngineer]

However RS is the mkt leader in the clean room glove industry segment and this is their area of focus.

Most of the malaysian glove manufacturers also have nitrile glove manufacturing capability but that does not mean they can supply to the clean room industry segment.To be able to supply to the clean room industry gloves you will need a class 1 cleanroom facility and that's not cheap.Barriers to entry to the glove mkt industry is low but barriers to the cleanroom industry is high.No wafer fab manufacturer is going to risk introducing contaminants to their wafers fab line over some small savings of gloves.

In my fab, we do not only use RS gloves. There are too many suppliers for us to choose from.

Pls prove your statement that RS is a mkt leader in clean room glove industry from an external source report.

[Jacmar]

Pls prove your statement that RS is a mkt leader in clean room glove industry from an external source report.

I have to go ask them to prove what they claim:

"Riverstone is a leading manufacturer of High-Tech Cleanroom
and Healthcare Gloves
OUR VISIONTo stay as the global leader in the manufacturing of Cleanroomand Healthcare consumables"