Old Chang Kee

[karlmarx]

Why was there a need to revalue its factories down?

[karlmarx]

Over the years, profits has gone up, and down.

Share price has also gone up, but has yet to come down.

Looks like its tea time promo may have hurt profits, which has come down to $671k this quarter. Annualising this performance will get us about $2.5m for the full year.

At current market cap of about $100m, estimated p/e runs high at 40.

http://infopub.sgx.com/FileOpen/1Q2018%2...eID=466930

[karlmarx]

Profits of $748k this quarter. More capex for expansion of factory.

http://infopub.sgx.com/FileOpen/2Q2018%2...eID=478162

More importantly, are people changing their diet and not eating as much deep fried snacks? I see OCK shifting towards selling easy-to-prepare meals (bee hoon, curry chicken, etc) and providing some seating. This increases its labour and rental overheads; not as efficient as before. It needs a higher volume of customers at these outlets to increase profitability.

Can OCK succeed as it tries to transform from a food stand to a 'restaurant?'

[snowcap]

Profits of $748k this quarter. More capex for expansion of factory.

http://infopub.sgx.com/FileOpen/2Q2018%2...eID=478162

More importantly, are people changing their diet and not eating as much deep fried snacks? I see OCK shifting towards selling easy-to-prepare meals (bee hoon, curry chicken, etc) and providing some seating. This increases its labour and rental overheads; not as efficient as before. It needs a higher volume of customers at these outlets to increase profitability.

Can OCK succeed as it tries to transform from a food stand to a 'restaurant?'

I tend to agree that there is a trend towards healthy eating, but imo, there will always be a demand for fried snacks. 

The fried snacks market roughly can be thought of in 3 segments: 1) very healthy eating. Avoids fried snacks or eats only under "no choice" circumstances, like when the boss buys for the office; 2a) the hard core foodie. live to eat. If have to give up food as enjoyment, then life is not worth living so he will do the heart bypass in order to continue eating his favourite cha kway teow, curry puff etc.; 2b) young and high output. people like NSF boys and high output athletes, can eat junk food without fear of health issues because they are young and they exercise a lot; and 3) the moderates. Likes good food, but with increasing health education and maybe a health scare, tries to lower the consumption of fried snacks to less frequent.  If your segment #2 is big enough you need not worry about OCK's fried snack revenue. The question is how big is segment #2?

To me I think "Curry Times" is a decent sit-down cafe offering. I have eaten there before and the food is ok.  It is a different proposition from the curry puff stands, not a substitute but a complement. I would not say OCK is trying to 'transform' from a snack stand to restaurant. I think they are trying to diversify their revenue streams.

My view is that the largest market segment is #3 (the moderates), but even then, they do not eat curry puff regularly (like once a week).  But everybody has to eat meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner) thrice daily - if OCK can capture a small percentage of this meal demand (which is more inelastic than snack demand), they have more stable recurring revenue.

Not vested.

[Behappyalways]

“Award-winning” UK reviewer bashes Old Chang Kee curry puffs on The Guardian
https://mothership.sg/2018/07/old-chang-...ew-london/

[brattzz]

lolz! like tat also want to bash.... gimme a break....
taste is very different, and to each, his own...

cheerios lah!

[Big Toe]

"Award Winning" UK reviewer bashes OCK.
Who's the reviewer again?

Just to share what is actually happening in the world right now.
The internet is full of trash nowadays, especially when it comes to reviews.
There are many 1-3 out of 5 star average consumer review businesses doing extremely brisk business but being badly bashed online. And they are too busy handling day to day operations that they dont bother what is being said online. And then there are countless 5/5 star businesses that closed shop, completely no customer(s) most of the time.

The thing is that everyone is given a say and there is a minority of consumers are getting much more demanding to a point of being unreasonable and is not afraid to express their opinion online. The quiet majority, being satisfied with the product/service just keep quiet. There even reviews being posted on the wrong company, or companies paying people to review bad things/good things. An example would be a person buying something online but was faulty, he then ask an unrelated shop(who sells the same brand) to exchange or repair it. And when the shop refuse, the bashing starts. And it happens quite often. It's a different world with different expectations and businesses have to navigate through all these noise.

[weijian]

This reminds me of the nasi lemak crispy rendang chicken issue that got Msians up in arms recently. As much as we want others to take into account diversity in their judgement, we should probably also take into account the diversity of judgements.

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asi...malaysians

London is a big melting pot of Asians, (crazy rich) Russians, Arabs and many more, not to mention the ethic Caucasians. Probably 1 person's judgement is not a good proxy of OCK's entry into the UK market i suppose.

[librarian888]

It is definitely a cultural difference in taste. Not sure what the person will write if he try our fried kuay teow

[opmi]

I think market validation is more important than opinions. Though opinions/reviews can influence reality.