SINGAPORE (Mar 13): Hong Pian Tee, an independent director of Yanlord Land Group, nearly doubled the number of shares he held in the China-based developer, which is now trading at near its 52-week-low.
On Feb 28, Hong bought 194,800 shares for $225,968, or an average of $1.16 each. On March 2, Hong bought another 324,000 shares for $375,840 or an average of $1.16 each. Besides his own direct stake of 614,500 shares, Hong has a deemed stake of 224,000 shares which is held under his wife’s name. Therefore, Hong now has a total of 838,500 shares, which translates to 0.043% of the company.
Hong was previously a partner of auditing from PricewaterhouseCoopers from 1985 till his retirement in 1999. He joined Yanlord’s board of directors on Sept 1, 2018. Besides Yanlord, Hong is a member of the board in a few other Singapore Exchange-listed companies. This includes non-executive chairman and independent director of AsiaPhos, independent director of XMH Holdings, independent director of Sinarmas Land. He was also previously an independent director of Golden Agri-Resources and Memstar Technology.
Meanwhile, Zhong Sheng Jian, Yanlord’s executive chairman, is a frequent buyer of his company’s shares. He last bought on Jan 2, when he acquired 80,400 shares at $97,284, or an average of $1.21 each. Zhong owns 70.322% of the company.
On Feb 26, Yanlord reported 4QFY2019 earnings ended March 31, 2020, surged 718.7% to RMB2.1 billion ($418 million) from a year ago while revenue more than trebled to RMB8.07 billion. During the quarter, Yanlord saw a more than sevenfold surge in gross floor area of its properties sold at 272,244 sq m. However, the company had to make do with significantly lower gross margins of 30.1% versus 43.2% a year ago.
In FY2019, Yanlord recorded earnings of RMB3.35 billion, down 5.5% compared to FY2018. Revenue fell 25% to RMB18.67 billion.
During the year, sales of the company’s properties such as Zhuhai Yanlord Marina Centre, the Suzhou Riverbay Gardens and Shanghai Yanlord on the Park progressed well.
For FY2019, Yanlord plans to declare a dividend of 6.8 cents. It had declared the same amount of dividend for FY2018. As at Dec 31, 2019, Yanlord’s NAV was RMB14.62, or $2.91 per share, versus RMB12.96 as at Dec 31, 2018.
As Dairy Farm restructures
In a rare move by a member of the board of Dairy Farm International (DFI), director George J Ho recently bought shares of the company on the open market. Ho, who joined DFI’s board back in 1998, bought 70,000 shares on March 6 at an average price of around US$4.72 ($6.54).
According to the company’s 2018 annual report, Ho was already the owner of some 1.82 million DFI shares.
According to the annual report, Ho was previously a lawyer in private practice based in San Francisco. He is now in the broadcasting and multimedia industries, and is the chairman of Hong Kong Commercial Broadcasting Company.
DFI, part of the Jardine family of companies listed on the Singapore Exchange, runs supermarkets, restaurants and convenience stores of various brands across multiple markets in Asia.
In Singapore, the company operates Cold Storage, Market Place, Jason’s, Giant, 7-Eleven, Guardian and Maxim’s. In its home market of Hong Kong, it operates Wellcome, Market Place, 7-Eleven, Mannings, GNC, IKEA, and Maxim’s.
Just like many Hong Kong stocks, DFI did not have a good year. In FY2019 ended Dec 31, 2019, the company suffered a 10.4% y-o-y drop in earnings to US$321 million. Even so, the company plans to maintain its full-year dividend payout of 21 US cents.
DFI is now in a multi-year restructuring process, where it is shutting less profitable store formats and expanding those with better prospects. CGS-CIMB Research analyst Cezzane See is cheered by the progress of this restructuring. “However, the near-term uncertainties in HK (the company’s main earnings contributor over the past three years) are still too large to ignore,” writes See in her March 6 note.
