Wednesday, May 04, 2011

Ramunia- a smaller ambition could be a good thing

Overall market tumbled today. The drop is especially sharp among the 2nd & 3rd liners, in particular those in the Oil & Gas sector. I believe two factors contributed to this sharp fall. Firstly, weakness in the price of crude oil. Some analysts believe that crude oil prices may drop due to lower risk premium after the demise of Osama bin Laden. I do not subscribe to this argument. Like many commodities, crude oil has risen substantially due to easy monetary policy pursued by the US Fed which led to continued weakness of the USD. The deluge of funds searching for assets to invest in, has driven up the prices for many investment assets, from Asian equity (in late 2010 to early 2011) to commodities & now back to US equity. Since Goldman Sach issued a bearish call for commodity on April 12 (here), we have seen correction for many commodities, the most notable being the selldown of silver.

The second factor is the news of the classification of Sumatec under PN17 on April 29 (last Friday). Sumatec is not an exception in the Oil & Gas sector which includes many financially weak companies. Some can barely stand on their feet while others are marginal companies that are not well-managed. A good example is Ramunia- a company that had to sell off the biggest fabrication yard in Malaysia (Teluk Ramunia yard) & its entire business to the Sime group for RM530 million in order to pay off its heavy borrowings (go here). The sale of its entire business was an admission that Ramunia had failed even after the hiring of the former head of Hyundai Heavy Engineering.

Over the past few weeks, Ramunia has been bravely talking to the media about acquiring new assets to start all over again. Bursa gave it a dateline to submit a regularization plan by March 2011 (which was later extended to July 2011). Yesterday, Ramunia announced the plan which includes par value reduction, Rights Issue & Business Rejuvenation Plan. The rejuvenation part of the plan calls for Ramunia to acquire the Pulau Indah yard for RM83.8 million. This is a case of rejuvenating by downsizing. However, the acquisition of the Pulau Indah yard was not something new. It was actually announced in January (go here). It took the company 3 months to work out the financial numbers & come out with this regularization plan. That's very slow work, indeed.

Chartwise, we can see that Ramunia has broken below its medium-term uptrend line at RM0.56. Its next support is the horizontal lines RM0.50 & RM0.46.



Chart: Ramunia's daily chart as at May 4, 2011_9.45am (Source: Quickcharts)

Based on the poor technical outlook, I would rate Ramunia a SELL.

Note: Ramunia suspended its shares from 2.30pm to 3.30pm today to announce an amendment to the proposed Regularization plan again (go here). The amendment is so insignificant that it shouldn't warrant a suspension. One can just announce the amendment after the close of trading rather than causing a disruption in the normal trading of a stock.

8 comments:

Azizul Rahman said...

The yard had to be sold off as TH and RHB didnt want to support financially Ramunia during the 2008crisis.
Ramunia had an order book of rm 800m then.

Alex Lu said...

Hi Azizul Rahman

That's the point. You may recall that MISC Bhd, via unit MSE Holdings Sdn Bhd, has aborted a proposed RM3.2bil reverse takeover (RTO) bid for Ramunia Holdings Bhd “due to unsatisfactory due diligence findings” in 2008 (for more, go here ).

To me, Ramunia is one of those companies that talk the talk but never walk the talk.

jeremy tan said...

CIMB and LTH has invested heavily in Ramunia. Besides, their license to lubricate the yard does not come along easy. The government does not give out these licenses that easily anymore.The license is similar to the license held by MMHE.

I am pretty sure Ramunia will be out of PN17 soon enough.

Anonymous said...

Hi Alex

Can you comment on two recent listed property counter that are now trade its IPO price: Ivory RM 1.00 and Tambun 70.5sen.

jeremy tan said...

hi hng: Ivory is indeed trading at a huge discount to its RNAV.

The reason why that it is trading at this level is because of the management.

I am from Penang. They have launched numerous projects throughout these years but yet they haven't started ground work at the site. A very good example would be the Peak. They have been selling it for almost 3 years and not until recently they asked the purchasers to sign the S&P.

The same goes for their Times Square project, it is a another white elephant.

The way they do things is very chinaman alike

Tambun Indah has a very bad track record in the past in Penang. Most of their projects are either delayed or incomplete and the quality is questionable.

Just my 2cents

Anonymous said...

Jeremy tan

Thanks for your sharing. Financially, both Ivory and Tambun are currently trading at <5.5x. Downside could be limited as both are at IPO price, unless investor like to trigger around round of selloff even at lost

Anonymous said...

Jeremy tan

About the Peak, in the ivory website, it only commence in 2010. It could probably have pre-launch in much earlier to test market response and could only secure sufficient pre-booking order then it will start to kick on the project.

About the Penang Time Square, according to management, all the retail lot already fully sold and its condo component was 85% sold. Even the shopping mall already open, some of the retail owner still trying to secure tenant.

Alex Lu said...

Hi Jeremy tan & hng,

Thanks for sharing. The chart for these stocks are not bullish. Ivory is in a pronounced downward channel with support at RM0.90 & resistance at RM1.15. Tambun is trading sideway, with a downward bias. If we plot a downward channel onto the Tambun chart, the support would be at RM0.61 & resistance at RM0.75.