Tan Teng Boo emerged as substantial shareholder for PIE

On 7 Nov 2007, iCapital.Biz Berhad (5108), the public listed closed end fund managed by Tan Teng Boo (陈鼎武) who has been famous for writing excellent independent financial review for many years, disclosed their substantial interest in P.I.E. (7095, 广宇科技) for 3,407,200 or 5.32% shares purchased at open market by 1 Nov 2007. Since then, the share price of P.I.E. has surged up from the RM4.20 closing on 1 Nov 2007 to way above RM5 all time now.

As published in the 2007 annual report of P.I.E., iCapital.Biz maintains as the 3rd largest shareholders following Pan Global Holding Co. of Taiwan (holding 51.42%) and Lembaga Tabung Haji (holding 5.82%). The shareholding of iCapital.Biz has increased from 4.78% interest in 2006 to 5.32%. What is more interesting is that, Tan Teng Boo by himself also acquired 194,000 shares or 0.30% of P.I.E., making him the 27th largest shareholder as well. Previously he was not in the top 30 shareholders list of P.I.E..

P.I.E. has an excellent growth record during the past 5 years (please refer to page 24 of its 2007 annual report), bringing a 5-year average EPS growth rate at 35.09% and 5-year average price appreciation rate at 20.79%. Baring unforeseen circumstances, its EPS is prospected to grow further by about 16% in 2008 to another record high.

In year 2007, their trading arm showed a substantial decline in revenue, but offset and covered by improvement in revenue of their manufacturing arm, making an overall revenue increase by 1.22% from 2006. Margin of trading activities was also seen lower, but offset and covered by higher margin of manufacturing activities, making an overall net profit growth of 36.05% from 2006.

P.I.E. has a strong balance sheet with zero borrowings, and cash in hand of RM80,960,674 which is equilvalent to RM1.26 per share. Its NTA stood at RM3.06 per share in 2007, from RM2.71 as in 2006. It has declared a first and final dividend of 12 sen per share (less 26% tax), a special dividend of 8 sen per share (tax exempt), and another special dividend II of 16 sen per share (less 26% tax), which goes-ex on this 26 May 2008 and payable on 10 Jun 2008. This makes up its gross dividend of 28.72 sen per share, or a nett DY of 5.13% based on its last closing price of RM5.60 on 9 May 2008.

Dr. Neoh Soon Kean (梁孙健博士) of Dynaquest has been making recommendation to P.I.E. since 2004 while its price was RM2.07 then. However, Fong Si Ling (冯时能, a.k.a. 冷眼) has not been seen in this counter yet.

Disclaimer: This article is intended for sharing of point of view only. It is not an advice or recommendation to buy or sell any of the mentioned stock counters. You should do your own homework before trading in Bursa Malaysia.

Malaysia to liberize steel market effective 12 May 2008

It has been quite some times since the Master Builders Association of Malaysia (MBAM) and Real Estate Housing Developers Association (REHDA) called on the Government of Malaysia to lift the price controls on steel products and allow the free market to decide its actual price. The Malaysian Iron and Steel Industries Federation (MISIF) has also been urging the Government to lift the import restrictions of flat steel products.

Finally, our Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi announced the liberization of steel market after the cabinet meeting on Friday 9 May. This decision includes:

• lifting of price caps to steel products
• exempting steel importers from having to pay import duties
• scraping the requirement for steel importers to obtain import license
• allowing local steel producers to export their products

So, who will be benefited from this move?

1. Manufacturers of cold rolled coils (CRC)

Currently, there are 4 main CRC manufacturers in Malaysia, which are Megasteel (of Lion Group), Mycron (5087), Ornasteel (5094) and Yung Kong (7020).

Before this, Megasteel is the only local producer of hot rolled coils (HRC), which is the raw material for CRC. The problem faced was:

• lack of supply
• price of HRC supplied by Megasteel is relatively higher than world market
• quality of HRC supplied by Megasteel is lower because they relies on scrap metal as feedstock
• restriction of importing raw material
• price cap to end product

All the above problems will be solved following this steel market liberization, and Ornasteel (5094), being the largest CRC producer in the country, will benefit the most.

2. Construction, property and automotive players

Before this, even though the price was capped to steel product, the supply and demand market was disrupted, and there was almost no supply to these industrial players unless they are willing to pay at the black market price, which is higher than the capped price.

The supply and demand market for steel products is expected to fall back to normal following this liberization, and the projects can be planned and budgetted more effectively.

The following industrial players are expected to get benefit from this:

Construction: Gamuda (5398), IJM (3336), WCT (9679)...

Property: SP Setia (8664), IOI Properties (1635), Metro Kajang (6114), Plenitu (5075), Suncity (6289), E&O (3417)...

Automotive: Proton (5304), MBMR (5983), UMW (4588).

Disclaimer: This article is intended for sharing of point of view only. It is not an advice or recommendation to buy or sell any of the mentioned stock counters. You should do your own homework before trading in Bursa Malaysia.

VisualWade the PHP code generator

VisualWade is a freeware PHP code generator that generates web applications from design models. You will be able to design and deploy sophisticated web applications in PHP connected with relational databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL or ORACLE with just a few mouse clicks.

VisualWade is a great PHP developer solution to generate a complete solution in a very small period of time and ready to deploy in a PHP web server. It generates all PHP necessaries pages and also the database creation script. It generates the interface tier as templates, easy for customization and final touch-up.

This Model driven web development tools uses UML as class diagram specification, and complete with Navigational Access Diagrams (NAD) and Composition Layout Diagrams (CLD) for the user navigation specification according to the Object-Oriented Hypermedia (OO-H) method developed at University of Alicante. It also uses Object Constraint Language (OCL) as complementary language.