iFAST

[Muck]

Can their business sustain?  POEMS, dollardex... all others now attack their platform fee grounding.  On what basis will u continue with ifast if u need to pay platform fee regularly...

I was a customer who moved to POEMS several quarters after iFast implemented the platform fee. Best part was it was charged even on my significant holdings in the Cash Fund. Since this was unacceptable to me, I took my business elsewhere. I understand they have since waived platform fees to their Cash Fund since Sep 2015...

[level13]

After 2 years from IPO, earning seems to have dropped. Its p/e ratio is still above 25, still not attractive even with its depressed share price. iFast is trying very hard to support its share price with its frequent share buyback

BINGO! 

IPO = it's probably overpriced 

In terms of business model, there is no difference between iFast and the rest of the brokerage companies. One can buy/sell stocks and UT through all platforms. 

In terms of reliability, iFast will have it worse because they are relying on third parties to carry out all the stock trades.

[ghchua]

Just to clarify some points here on iFAST. Firstly, platform fees are only charged on cash/SRS holdings on Fundsupermart. If you invest with them via CPF funds, there is no platform fee.

Now that they have cut the sales charge to 0% for all funds permanently since 8 December 2016, it becomes even more cost effective if you are using CPF funds to invest, i.e. no sales charge and platform fee and CPF-IA administrator status means that you only incur a quarterly charge of $2 on your CPF agent bank regardless of how many funds you hold.

We cannot only use PE ratio to measure whether iFAST is overvalued or not. Earnings are volatile due to the one-off sales charge nature of the revenue model. We have to also look at their AUA (i.e. Asset Under Administration) and see whether it is growing year after year because that is where the bulk of their revenue came from, via recurring income from taking a cut off the AUA. It is different from brokerage companies whereby the emphasis is mostly on generating sales revenue from one-off buy/sell trades and interest from margin accounts.

[edragon]

If do not use PE, how about yield?

[ghchua]

If do not use PE, how about yield?

I am not saying cannot use PE. I was saying that cannot only use PE alone to value iFAST. Since the cut of AUA forms most of the revenue model, a dividend discount model might also be used to value iFAST, since we can roughly gauge their revenue and cash flow from AUA, supported by relatively high dividend payout.

Even if you only use PE, you should compare with similar companies with an asset light model like iFAST, and see whether a PE of 25x is high by industry standards.

Hope that the above clarifies.

[cyclone]

iFAST Corporation Ltd. announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, iFAST Financial Pte Ltd has been officially admitted as a Trading Member of Singapore Exchange Securities Trading Limited ("SGX-ST") and a Clearing Member of The Central Depository (Pte) Limited ("CDP") with effect from 9 June 2017.

The admission will allow iFAST Singapore to launch its stock dealing service in SGX-listed stocks over the next few weeks.

[opmi]

will it disrupt the stockbroking business? Free stock trading??? haha

[karlmarx]

Free trading but pay a yearly platform fee? Shares held in their nominee account?

[weijian]

The last "good deal" to come up with, was from Standard Chartered Bank, but the catch was one had to give up ownership of their shares as SCB becomes the custodian of those shares (iirc). I reckon iFAST brokerage will be a "no strings attached" kind of reduced fee business? While i don't trade much but if there are no strings attached, OPMIs should vote with their feet.

[TTTI]

Free trading but pay a yearly platform fee? Shares held in their nominee account?

no platform fees for equities, only for unit trusts.

Shares are held in their nominee account I believe.

Still, a win for retail investors!

Brokerage houses and banks trying to suppress iFAST, but the power of the consumers always wins!