92 Year Old Janitor Amassed $8 Million on a Meager Salary

[ValueMushroom]

Unlike in US, I think it is quite hard to find stocks in SGX that can deliver consistent performance over a long period of time, for example 40 years. Let me share my personal experience. In 2000, I was working in a US pharmaceutical company based in Singapore. Over the 5 years period when I was working there, I participated in the employee shares purchase scheme, where 15% of my monthly salary was deducted to buy the company shares. I also opted for dividends to be reinvested, and the company pays quarterly dividends. I never sell a single shares, even after I left the company.

This company subsequently had a stock split, because the share price went up a bit too high and accordingly to the management, priced out many retail investors. That means my number of shares on hand doubled, even though the price halved. However, over the years, the price has risen back to the pre-split level, and more!

Recently, the company split into two legally separated entities. Reason given was that it has two distinct businesses, and the company has grown too big to be able to effectively manage as one. Management says the breakout value is more than the combined. I get to own 1 share of the new entity for every share I currently own. Obviously, the share price will again have to drop by halve to reflect the change, even though the value of my total holding remain the same. Again, and very quickly, the share price of both entities risen quite fast post separation.

And that’s not the end of the story. No long after the separation, the new entity was acquired by another company, and as usual, the acquisition price was at a premium to the market price. The acquisition term was a mix of cash plus shares in the new merged company. I just received the money from the BO, and the amount is already substantially higher than all the monies that I have used to buy the shares when I was still an employee there. Plus I have a small holding in the new merged entity, plus my original holding in my ex company still fully intact. I will therefore continue to receive my quarterly dividends, and of course to use it to buy up more shares, hoping for the cycle to repeat itself again.

Thanks for reading and sorry for my boring writing, but I just want to share that investing in the long term does have its merit.


Look at Jardine group of companies, look at Raffles Hospital, look at Hour Glass...