SINGAPORE (Apr 30): Simco, a private investment holding company, has raised its stake in work placement agency HRnetGroup by acquiring shares from the open market. Simco is owned by the Sim family which controls HRnetGroup. The owners include chairman Peter, his brother JS and Peter’s daughter Adeline who is also an executive director in HRnetGroup.
On April 17, Simco bought 200,400 shares at 48.5 cents each, increasing its stake to some 753.2 million shares, or 75.316%.
Recently, HRnetGroup has gone through a few rounds of share buybacks on the open market as well. The most active buybacks were made throughout March as well as early April.
On March 23, the company’s share price hit a 52-week-low of 40.5 cents. On April 17, the company bought back 200,400 shares at 48.5 cents each while on April 23, the company bought back another 29,600 shares at 48.86 cents each. Including the latest transaction, the company has bought back some 7.59 million shares under the current mandate.
On Feb 27, HRnetGroup reported earnings of $51.6 million for the FY2019 ended Dec 31, 2019. This was 7.1% higher than the preceding year. Revenue in the same period was $423.1 million, down 1.3%.
HRnetGroup warns that the Covid-19 outbreak is hurting its business. “The uncertainty in the business environment is certainly affecting our 1QFY2020 operations in terms of our clients’ decisions on the hiring and start work dates of selected candidates as companies are taking time to re-organize logistics, processes and flow of people within their organisations.”
HRnetGroup says this might impact the recognition of revenue arising from cases where candidates have already signed the letter of appointment but are pending the confirmation of the date to start work.
“It appears that the pipeline building for our 2QFY2020 may be affected, depending on how the Covid-19 pans out in 1QFY2020,” the company said in its earnings commentary on Feb 27. The company plans to pay a dividend of 2.8 cents per share for FY2019 — unchanged from FY2018.
GSS Energy
The oil market has been hit with unprecedented turmoil, with sellers willing to pay buyers to take the product off their hands. This has negatively impacted the stocks of both upstream and downstream players.
Amid this backdrop, Sydney Yeung, CEO of GSS Energy, which holds interests in oil fields in Indonesia, on April 17 paid $1.41 million for 23.5 million shares in a married deal.
This works out to an average of six cents per share. The name of the seller was not disclosed.
Besides the 23.5 million newly acquired shares, Yeung holds another separate tranche of 92.675 million shares via an entity called Roots Capital Asia. Altogether, he now holds a total stake of 23.38%, which consists of a direct stake of 4.73% and an indirect stake of 18.65%.
On Feb 28, the company reported earnings of $2 million for the FY2019 ended Dec 31 2019, down 12% from $2.3 million recorded in FY2018. Revenue came in at $97.6 million, down 3.3% from $100.8 million in FY2018. Despite its name, the bulk of GSS Energy’s earnings are from its precision engineering subsidiary, Giken Sakata. The oil fields in Indonesia have yet to contribute earnings.
Back in Jan 23, Yeung offered to buyout Giken Sakata from GSS Energy. However, on Feb 26, he informed the company he would be withdrawing the offer. “The company understands that Mr Yeung intends to focus his efforts to manage the two sectors of the group’s business in view of the challenging macro environment arising from the Covid-19 virus,” said GSS Energy in its SGX announcement on Feb 28.
