ST Engineering on Nov 19 bought back 500,000 shares at a price range of between $3.95 and $3.96 per share, costing the company $1.98 million. This brings its total number of shares bought back under the current mandate to 5.8 million shares.
The most recent buyback before this was on Oct 28 when it paid between $3.85 and $3.86 each for 500,000 shares. On Oct 19, it had bought 500,000 shares at between $3.89 and $3.90 each.
The company on Nov 16 spelt out an FY2026 revenue target of more than $11 billion as it goes about capturing new opportunities across the board in smart city projects, defence and aerospace contracts. CEO Vincent Chong expects earnings to grow in tandem with the revenue.
For FY2020, the company reported earnings of $521.8 million and revenue of $7.2 billion. For 1HFY2021 ended June, the company reported earnings of $296.1 million, up 15% y-o-y, on the back of a 2% growth in revenue to $3.65 billion.
To capture new growth, ST Engineering has made a series of significant acquisitions including most recently, the US$2.7 billion ($3.68 billion) offer to acquire Transcore, a traffic management business in the US. If and when completed, this will be the company’s largest M&A deal ever.
Chong maintains that even with the hefty investments, the company’s balance sheet remains strong. “Our strong capacity for dividend payouts has been maintained,” he says. The company recently announced its order book hit a record $18.2 billion as at end September.
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On Nov 24, the Singapore Exchange (SGX) bought back 109,000 shares at between $9.31 and $9.32 each for a total of nearly $1.02 million. The exchange explains the buybacks fulfill their obligations under its share-based renumeration and restricted share plans. SGX has been buying back shares very regularly.
Just this month, SGX made acquisitions on Nov 8, 11, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19, paying as much as $9.59 each. Under the current mandate, the company has bought back more than 1.31 million shares.
On Aug 5, SGX reported earnings of $445.4 million for FY2021, down 6% y-o-y. Revenue in the same period came in at $1.056 billion, just a tad higher than FY2020’s $1.053 billion.
During the year, total expenses increased 8% y-o-y to $525.2 million, largely due to the consolidation of expenses linked to relatively recent acquisitions Scientific Beta and BidFX. If these items were excluded, costs would have dropped 4% y-o-y to $457.8 million instead.
Proposed merger
Asset manager Mondrian Investment Partners on Nov 17 bought 9 million ESR-REIT shares, bringing its total stake to more than 206 million units. The fund paid a total of $4.365 million, which works out to 0.485 cents per unit. Upon which, Mondrian has emerged as a substantial unitholder of ESR-REIT, with a stake of 5.14%, up from 4.91% previously.
On Oct 15, ESR-REIT and ARA LOGOS Logistics Trust proposed a $1.4 billion merger to create a REIT holding a heftier portfolio of warehouses, industrial properties and business parks.
To be named ESR LOGOS REIT, the enlarged entity will have total assets of about $5.4 billion across Singapore and Australia. It is expected to be amongst the top 10 largest S-REITs by free float market capitalisation and have greater representation on the FTSE EPRA Nareit Global Developed Index.
Under terms of the proposal, for every 1,000 ARA LOGOS Logistics Trust units held, the unitholder will receive $95 in cash and 1,676 new ESR-REIT units. On Oct 27, ESR-REIT announced that net property income for 3QFY2021 ended Sept 30 came in at $43.9 million, up 8.6% y-o-y. Revenue in the same period was up 7.2% y-o-y to $61.1 million.
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