SunCity and Sunway to merge into single entity

After SunCity (6289) and Sunway (4308) suspended for 2 trading days awaiting for this announcement, the Sunway Group has proposed to buy over SunCity (Sunway City Berhad / 双威城) and Sunway (Sunway Holdings Berhad / 双威控股) with a private company called Sunway Sdn Bhd, which is controlled by the same boss Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah Fook Ling (谢富年).

After the merger, the new company (newco) will be relisted.

It is proposed that:

• SunCity to be bought over at the price of RM5.10 per share, a premium of RM0.61 (13.59%) to its last closing price of RM4.49.
• SunCity-WA to be bought over at the price of RM1.29 per warrant, a premium of RM0.17 (15.18%) to its last closing price of RM1.12.
• Sunway to be bought over at the price of RM2.60 per share, a premium of RM0.35 (15.56%) to its last closing price of RM2.25.
•  Sunway-WC to be bought over at the price of RM1.50 per warrant, a premium of RM0.36 (31.58%) to its last closing price of RM1.14.

Existing shareholders and warrant-holders will get:

• Newco shares at the new listing price of RM2.80 representing 80% of the offer price.
• Cash representing 20% of the offer price.
• 1 free Newco warrant for every 5 Newco shares. Exercise period for the Newco warrant is 5 years.

With this information, and assuming that you are currently holding 1000 unit of the share or warrant of SunCity and/or Sunway, I have done a quick calculation of what you will get from this exercise.

What you will get are all the things in the last 3 columns. I think the free Newco warrant will have an initial listing price of RM0.005 and it is up to the market to give it a value during its 1st trading day.

The bad thing is, you will probably have some odd lots of NewCo and NewCo-WA after the exercise.

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.

The end of Novell

Novell, once being extremely famous with their NetWare Operating System, and also being the pioneer in Directory Service architecture, and later shifted focus to SUSE Linux, is now going to be sold to a not so well-known company - Attachmate.

The deal worth US$2.2 billion, or $6.10 per share.


Attachmate said it plan to operate Novell as 2 divisions:

• SUSE Linux
• The rest of Novell, including the ZENworks virtualization software and other networking solutions 

Beside that, Novell is also going to sell some of its intellectual property assets to CPTN Holdings, a Microsoft-organized consortium. The deal worth another US$450 million.

With this acquisition, here come the end of Novell, once a technology giant with excellent products, but failed to compete with rivals such as Microsoft (NetWare vs Windows Server), Red Hat (SuSe vs Redhat Linux), etc.

Garmin releases MalSingMaps Malaysia/Singapore/Brunei NT 2010.40 for free update

Garmin has made available MalSingMaps (MSM) Malaysia/Singapore/Brunei NT 2010.40 (2010-Q4) for free update now.

You can click here to download the installation file of MalSingMaps Malaysia/Singapore/Brunei NT 2010.40 from Garmin server. The download file is split into 4, and you just need to download the file relevant to your Garmin GPS navigator:

• nuvi 3790
• nuvi 1460, 1350, 765 or 255w
• nuvi 1250
• nuvi 205 or 205w

Due to this improvement, the installation file is much more smaller than the previous version. For example, the installation file for nuvi 255w is now 237MB only (compared with previous version's 743MB)

The installation program will update gmapprom1.img, gmapprom1.unl, gmap3d.img and SGMYMAL.JCV into your Garmin GPS navigator. As nuvi 255w doesn't support 3D maps, if you are installing to this model, gmap3d.img will automatically be removed during the end of the installation process.

During the installation process, you'll be asked for the unlock key. The key is stored in the existing gmapprom1.unl file in your Garmin GPS navigator, which you can open with Notepad or any text editor. Just copy and paste the key to the installer when asked.

Version highlights:

• Update Traffic Message Channel in Singapore
• DPOI of Singapore
• Add more POIs, postal code data and laneinfo of Singapore
• Extended road shield of Singapore & Malaysia
• Trails are built into the map
• Road Signs value-added
• Synchronize to Malsingmaps v5.00
• Extending more Junction Views for complex intersection around Malaysia

Surprisingly, this version has a smaller SGMYMAL.JCV file of size 217,747kb only (compared with the previous 352,764kb), but it contains more Junction View pictures and more lane assist triggers.

It seems that the Garmin release of MSM has improved a lot over the year. However, I still prefer using MalFreeMaps (MFM) as the later contains much more POIs and also able to provide more precise route to the destination.

Fabulous Food 1Malaysia 2010 in conjunction with Deliciously 1Malaysia

For the 2nd year, the Malaysian restaurant food festival and cooking competition namely Fabulous Food 1Malaysia 2010 (一个大马。食全食美) held in conjunction with Deliciously 1Malaysia carnival is coming again.

Fabulous Food 1Malaysia 2010 is all about food. It brings together F&B businesses, restaurateurs, tourists and consumers in celebration and recognition of Malaysia's sumptuous spread of local and international culinary delights during the festive seasons, reinforcing Malaysia as a gourmet paradise to savor fine cuisines and food delicacies.

Date: 17-19 December 2010
Time: 10:30 am - 8.00 pm
Venue: Tun Razak Hall 1, PWTC, Kuala Lumpur
Admission: Free

This event is presented by Ministry of Tourism, organized by The Malaysia Selangor and Federal Territory Ku Su Shin Choong Hung Restaurant Association (马来西亚雪隆姑苏慎忠行餐饮业公会) and co-organized by The Federation of Hawkers and Petty Traders Association of Malaysia (马来西亚贩商同业总会). It is ambitiously targetted for 120,000 visitors from local and overseas.


150 exhibition booths will be setup, and there will be cooking competitions, restaurant showcases, cooking demonstrations, food acrobats, etc.

According to statistic, 2008 tourist spending on F&B in Malaysia stood at 8.77 billion and increased to 9.29 billion in 2009.

Click here to go to the website of Fabulous Food 1Malaysia 2010.

The Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) - A Roadmap for Malaysia

Resulting from the results and targets of the 1,000-person workshop and 500-person laboratories orchestrated by the Performance Management and Delivery Unit (PEMANDU), Najib has launched the Economic Transformation Programme (ETP): A Roadmap for Malaysia on 25 October 2010.

The ETP contains action plans, hopefully will transform Malaysia into a high-income nation by 2020. This is charted by lifting Malaysia’s gross national income (GNI) per capita from US$6,700 (RM23,700) in 2009 to more than US$15,000 (RM48,000) in 2020. In order to achieve this target, GNI need to continuously grow at the rate of at least 6% per annum.

The ETP is planned to be driven by 12 National Key Economic Areas (NKEAs) announced in the 10th Malaysia Plan, which are:

• Oil, Gas and Energy
• Palm Oil
• Financial Services
• Tourism
• Business Services
• Electronics and Electrical
• Wholesale and Retail
• Education
• Healthcare
• Communications Content and Infrastructure
• Agriculture
• Greater Kuala Lumpur/Klang Valley

It seems that areas ruled by MPSJ, including Subang Jaya, USJ, Bandar Sunway, Puchong, Kinrara, Seri Kembangan, etc. will be at the heart of Greater KL, and hopefully will be greatly benefited from the plan.

However, the planned MRT system under Greater KL, where the Red Line linking Damansara to Serdang, and the Green Line linking Kepong to Kajang, seems to have bypassed the heart!

Under the ETP, 131 Entry Point Projects (EPP) and and 60 Business Opportunities (BO) were planned, spanning across the 12 NKEAs. They include:

• Expanding the production of swiftlet bird nests (燕窝)
• Seaweed farming in Sabah
• Mushroom project
• Establishing dairy clusters in Malaysia
• Growing aviation support services
• Building globally-competitive outsourcing services
• Data centre and green technology
• Islamic financial services
• Launching EduCity @ Iskandar
• Solid state lighting (SSL)
• Home appliances and semi-conductors
• Solar energy
• Developing health metropolis
• Connecting to Singapore via a high-speed rail system
• Deploying nuclear energy for power generation
• Building a regional oil storage and trading hub
• e-Healthcare, e-Learning and e-Government
• Positioning Malaysia as a duty free shopping destination for tourist goods
• etc.

Click here to go to the download page of The Economic Transformation Programme: A Roadmap for Malaysia

A furniture stock called LIIHEN

There are plenty of furniture stocks listed in Bursa Malaysia, including the recently listed HOMERITZ. Most of them are majoritically doing export business, and hence, furniture stocks are known to be cyclical and buoyed by the worldwide economic sentiment.

You would probably not be interested in furniture stock at the moment, especially when the Ringgit is going high against USD, which is not so good for export industries. However, there is one called LIIHEN (7089, 利兴) which attracted my attention.

Located in Muar the "furniture town" in Johor, Lii Hen has been around for decades since 1985, and now their furniture plants spans across an area if approximately 30 acres, undertake the full range of wood-based manufacturing activities from timber processing up to manufacturing and packaging of finished goods.

This is their corporate structure:

The boss, Mr Chua Lee Seng (蔡利成) has been active in local, state as well as national level of furniture associations, and has taken significant roles including executive advisor of Muar Furniture Association, president of Federation of Johore Furniture Manufacturers & Traders Association, etc.

Lii Hen was first listed in 2nd Board in April 2000, and transferred to Main Board in 2002. Most of the time, Lii Hen was a dull counter, except once been "goreng" around October 2004. However, it shows remarkable fundamental improvement since 2009, despite the global economic downturn.

As you can see, from 2009 onwards, its EPS surges, boosting its ROE to above 15%. And then, Lii Hen paid dividend every single quarter. If this is sustainable, it would become a dividend stock too.

Note that there was a fire incident on 28 October 2009 night at one of their main premises, and it was covered by insurance. The fire caused the total loss of buildings, inventories, plant & machinery and factory equipments amounted to RM8.3 million. The fire had caused lost of sales in 2009 Q4, and you can see that quarter has some figures gone red in the table above.

Anyhow, Lii Hen started to show better result a few months prior to the fire incident. After the fire, they promptly recovered and resume the up-trend again, as the disruption of the production capacity due to the fire incident occurred in the preceding quarter had been fully restored at rented premises in 2010 Q1. You see another red in the net profit of 2010 Q2 "due to the erosion of profit margin resulting from the depreciation of USD against RM".

Based on its closing price of RM1.23 on 9 November 2010, and using the figure of its rolling quarter:

• PE = 1.23/0.35 = 3.51
• DY = 0.145/1.23 = 12%

That's why it attracted my attention.

Click here to visit the website of LIIHEN.

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.

How to make your boss like you

The November 2010 issue of Personal Money magazine has an article titled "9 Ways To Get Into Your Boss' Good Books" which I believe is very advisable for all employee to read, understand and practise in order to excel in their career.

The 9 tips to let your boss like you are:

• Make your boss look good
• Understand your boss
• Understand your boss' expectations and do more than is expected of you
• Provide solutions rather than problems
• Working independently on the job
• Make your time count
• Communicate with your boss
• Watch your code of conduct
• Showing positivism in your life and work

Beside that, the following are something usually done by employee to please their boss, but might not work at all:

• Trying to look productive but nothing is happening
• Making your boss look good in the wrong way
• Tripod-ding and apple-polishing
• Working overly independent of your boss

For detailed explanation of all the above points, grab yourself a copy of November 2010 Personal Money magazine and read through page 59-61.

Using Dropbox service to sync, backup, share and publish files

Nowadays most of us have more than one computing devices - desktop, laptop, netbook, smartphone, tablet (eg. iPad), etc.

It would be nice if we can seamlessly synchronize some of our commonly accessed data files across those computing devices, so that the file will store in each (or some) of them, and always be accessible to us regardly we are at home, at work, at other place, or even on the road.

If the file is updated by us in one of the computing devices, we would like the same file storing in our other computing devices to also be updated to the latest. Technically, we call this as "synchronize" or "sync".

Dropbox is among the services that can answer that need. It uses cloud computing technology to enable users to store and share files and folders across the Internet with synchronization.

Data transmission of Dropbox is encrypted with SSL, and data stored in Dropbox cloud service is encrypted with AES-256. Dropbox uses Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) for storage, which is the same cloud backend storage used by Ubuntu One.

One of the advantage of Dropbox is it supports multiple platform, including Windows, Macintosh, Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.), Android devices, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, etc.

All files stored in Dropbox cloud storage are automatically backup. You have the option to undelete the files in your Dropbox folder. If you make changes to the files, you can also retrieve back earlier version of the files. For free account, Dropbox keeps 30 days of your files undo history. You can opt to have unlimited undo history by subscribing to their Pack-Rat service.

Beside synchronizing files and folders among your own computing devices, you can also share out one or more folders in your Dropbox with other Dropbox user(s). You control who to share the folder with by inviting them with a special link, and the invitee has to Accept your invitation to initiate the sharing.

There is no special ACL in Dropbox sharing. Everybody who is sharing the folder can make changes in that folder. Anyhow, all the changes will be versioned and kept in history, and can be undone if necessary. In the event 2 or more persons are editing the same file in the shared folder, Dropbox will save the file in different filename to avoid overwriting.

Once you installed Dropbox, you'll notice there are 2 default special folders automatically created - Public and Photos. Files and folders resided in the Public folder can be shared out even to non-Dropbox users. This is made possible as the file there is accessible with a unique special URL, which you can disclose in email, instant message conversations, blogs, etc. However, the files will not be searcheable by search engine like Google.

The sharing concept of the Photos folder is similar to Public. In addition to that, Photos sharing enables you to have an online gallery of your shared photos with unique special URL to each of the folders inside as individual Album.

Dropbox provides 3 account options. The Basic account is free, and started with 2GB online storage. The other 2 are paid Pro account with 50GB or 100GB online storage.

The Basic account storage is expandable for another 8GB up to a total of 10GB by:

• Creating your account with a referal link (add 250MB once you installed your Dropbox client)
• Inviting your friends to create their own Dropbox account (add 250MB each after they've installed their Dropbox client)
• Becoming a Dropbox Guru (add 250MB, refer to the "Get Started" tab in your Dropbox web interface)

Microsoft has just released Windows Live Mesh 2011 (after long period of beta of Live Mesh, Windows Live Sync and Windows Live FolderShare) with similar function and providing 5GB free online storage in SkyDrive. However, Windows Live Mesh 2011 does not support Linux. Worse still, it also does not support Windows XP and earlier version of Windows. Currently, it also doesn't support any mobile devices.

Therefore, if you are upset with the limitation of Windows Live Mesh 2011, perhaps Dropbox is your alternative.

Click here to open your free Dropbox account with 2.250 GB free initial Cloud storage.

Click here for a list of interesting Dropbox Addons. For example, Dropbox Folder Sync can make your live easier to sync folders into Dropbox, and they can still reside in their original location. This is useful for you to sync your IE Favorites, Firefox Profiles, etc.