Group Lease (GL TB)

[anonymousequity]

Hello Value Buddies:

(Thank you to the Moderators for adding a Thailand Listed Companies folder)

Over the past few months, we have conducted detailed research on Group Lease (GL TB), a Thai-listed hire-purchase company with operations across Southeast Asia. We believe that the company's shares, which are currently trading at THB22.3 per share, are massively overvalued and that fair value is closer to THB2.77, some ~88% below their current level.

Has anyone on this forum looked at this company, or have any thoughts? If so, we would love to get a conversation going...

Just in case of further interest, our free report can be accessed here: https://www.anonymousequity.com/

[anonymousequity]

Looks like the Asia Sentinel picked up on our research:

https://www.asiasentinel.com/econ-busine...cl-report/

If anyone has any thoughts on the company, we would love to hear from you...

Thanks

[specuvestor]

Hi

I've actually met Tatsuya Konoshita when they were redirecting their focus to Cambodia and IIRC using mobile payments to manage the micro-financing business. Frankly it sounded very promising but their valuation was too high until they got hit by the auditors' report in March 2017

Thanks for posting the info in VB, but the report link seems to be broken. Stock is limit down now, lower low from March but J Trust is flattish after 16% drop yesterday.

[specuvestor]

(Bloomberg) -- Mitsuji Konoshita no longer chairman and CEO from Oct. 16 following criminal complaint filed by Securities and Exchange Commission for falsification and corporate fraud, according to exchange filing. 
Co. in process of selecting replacement
Board of directors meeting Oct. 18 to further discuss matter
Co. has sufficient cash flow, strong balance sheet to operate as usual
Co. says previous disclosures, include March 13 release, are correct

[anonymousequity]

Sorry about the earlier broken link. We moved from the original blogspot domain to a custom domain (https://www.anonymousequity.com). If anyone continues to encounter issues accessing the blog, please try clearing your browser cache--that usually solves the problem.

On October 11th, we published our first report on Group Lease Pcl, suggesting the company had been lying to its investors and might also be involved in fraudulent accounting. On October 16th, the Thailand Securities and Exchange Commission announced that they had filed a criminal complaint against Group Lease CEO Mitsuji Konoshita for fraud, thus vindicating one of the key findings in our report. Group Lease shares were initially suspended, but once trading resumed the share price fell precipitously from THB22.3 to THB9.15 (-59%) in a matter of days. The company’s shares were once again suspended from trading on October 20th to give the markets time to digest the SEC’s order that Group Lease should urgently amend its financial statements.

We have now done follow-up work and published a new report. We maintain our ‘SELL’ rating on Group Lease and have updated our target price to THB0.00 as we expect an eventual delisting for the company. While a ‘burn-down’ valuation methodology of Group Lease’s book value indicates that the company might still have some equity value, the risks are stacked to the downside and include: the misappropriation of cash, potential lawsuits, and the inability to produce an audited set of financial statements. Our research further reveals that the broader GL/APF Group is populated by heavily-indebted shell companies with few assets other than shares in Group Lease, and we worry that they might have borrowed money from Group Lease itself.

If of interest,  our latest report ('The Group Lease Scandal: Update') can be found here: https://www.anonymousequity.com/