Singapore Technologies Engineering, a regular top winner at the Billion Dollar Club, has made its mark again. The engineering conglomerate has been named top for weighted return on equity, as well as overall sector winner for the category. Yangzijiang Shipbuilding (Holdings), meanwhile, is the sector winner for growth in profit after tax, and Sri Trang Agro-Industry Public Company was top for returns to shareholders.
ST Engineering can be divided into four major operating units: aerospace, electronics, land systems and marine sectors, and each unit generates its fair share of both military and commercial contracts.
In recent years, it has been pushing actively into smart city projects requiring capabilities in smart mobility, smart security and smart environment solutions, with more than 700 such contracts across 130 cities to date. The company has a total headcount of around 23,000 — the majority is in engineering — in more than 40 cities in around 20 countries from Asia and Europe to the US and the Middle East.
On Nov 17, the company announced it will move on from the land, sea, air and electronics sector-based structure that has defined the company for decades: With effect from the new year, ST Engineering will be reorganised into commercial, and defence and public security clusters, which are designed to enable better execution of its global growth strategy of strengthening its core businesses and pursuing growth in smart city and international defence businesses.
Yangzijiang enjoys 21% growth
Meanwhile, Yangzijiang’s earnings generated a CAGR of 21% in the period under evaluation, which makes it the best-performing in this metric within this sector.
The company can trace its roots to more than six decades ago to a small shipyard in China, before gradual growth over the years to become the largest private shipbuilding company in China. It was listed on the Singapore Exchange in 2007 and is one of the 30 component stocks of the Straits Times Index (STI).
In the company’s 2019 annual report, then-chairman Ren Yuanlin described the issues facing the shipbuilding industry as “severe” and “complicated”. Nevertheless, he was upbeat that the long-term trend for demand and supply will balance. He believed global trade and the economy will recover, while the industry will evolve at the same time to see significant structural changes in favour of clean-energy vessels, with energy efficiency and emission at the centre of vessel design and production.
Integrated rubber giant
Sri Trang Agro-Industry Public Company is this sector’s winner for best shareholders’ returns, with a CAGR of 30.2% over the evaluation period. The Thailand-based company describes itself as the world’s leading fully integrated natural rubber company with a market share of 8% of global natural rubber consumption and 7% of global glove consumption. Its operations span all sectors of the natural rubber industry, from rubber plantations and rubber processing to glove production.
Somewhat different from the glove makers such as Top Glove, Sri Trang owns its rubber plantations and processing facilities. But similarly to the listed glove makers, Sri Trang’ share price enjoyed a strong lift when the pandemic hit, driving up demand for its products.
