Stocks are up but not in a massive way, not after yesterday's gains. The market always climbs a wall of worry on the way up. On the way down, it's a lot faster and steeper.
China Minzhong is one of the more solid S-chips, with GIC holding 17% stake.
77.9% YoY jump in net profit to RMB93.1m for 1QFY Jun12.
Notably, gross margin expanded by a larger-than-expected 7.7ppt to 40.7%, driven by a positive shift in product mix.
At 97 cents ....Trading at only 4x PER and 0.75x P/B. Surely, at this valuation, the stock is grossly undervalued considering its defensive earnings.
Straco is doing v well in its tourism business with a high barrier to entry. It's very difficult to set up another aquarium in the same city (Shanghai & Xiamen) in a high-traffic area. Straco has no direct competition and there is none which can just come into the industry overnight.
A weakness is that Straco cannot scale up very fast either -- it can't replicate itself in the same city and it cannot acquire new assets in the same space very quickly. Straco is enjoying tremendous free cash flow and its net cash is about S$90+ million. If it can acquire another similar asset in a good location, it will be ready for the next phase of growth. In the meantime, it is a defensive yield stock, in my opinion waiting to be discovered in a bigger way by value investors able to push the stock up to 40 cents from current 26 cent level
Warren Buffett's wisdom: You'll see it again, not necessarily in housing. Humans make the same mistakes again. People get fearful when others are fearful. You saw it in money market funds. I've often thought, if I owned a bank in a two-bank town, I'd hire extras to line-up in front of the other guys bank. But then, the extras would come over to my bank, after the other one went down. This is an area where Charlie and I have an edge. We don't get caught up in what other people are doing. We learned that over time, maybe. When we see failing prices, we think it is time to buy. We don't own on margin. Don't get out on a limb. Leverage is tempting when things are going up. Leverage was a huge part of housing.