Hyflux

Alamak was writing my post halfway,  and didn't save a draft. Now had to restart again.

Oh well...

Recently Hyflux made the headline as they found a Savior who could inject funds to save the ailing company.

I thought to myself,  as I read the news. What could have caused a once starling blue chip company with a enviable business,  to fall from grace to it's current state.

how could we learnt something from this and Noble group? Although I did not buy either Hyflux nor Noble group,  I thought how could I prevent myself from buying such companies.

I went through my checklist to see if my checklist would be able to help me.

The fall that caused hylfux to be in this mess,  was the fact that the company had took on too much debt. Whereas Noble overstated it's assets.

One common signal is that both companies did not generate positive cash flow consistently. And even though there were profits,  the profits did not translate into positive operating cash flow over the years.

I went to relook at keppel and sembcorp industries that I bought. Although both companies are not in great shape,  it's operating cash flow is still positive. And it had enough cash on hand to handle loans that are due in one year.

Should I downgrade or upgrade?

Recently the topic of shifting places, cropped up again as there were many cockroaches that flew into our house the past 1-2 weeks.

I am very terrified of them and each time, had to rely on my husband to kill them.

We are living on the 6th floor but somehow cockroaches love to fly into our house. We had one night where 2 cockroaches flew into our house! Eew...


We looked online to see what are the HDB prices at Teban, Pandan Garden. We sort of missed Teban (where we rented a flat for 2 years in 2013/2014). Though the neighborhood was not big,  it had everything we needed.

And it is very accessible to Jurong East. And if we feel like going to Chinatown, we could easily hop on bus 143 to get there. My mother's place is at clementi, so it is very easy for us to visit her every sunday night.

Now at our current place at Bukit Panjang, it is abit hard to get anywhere. Nonetheless, in terms of size, you can't get a size so big at such a low price anywhere else.

My husband spoke to his agent friend and she said to wait out the 5 years TOP and buy a private properties. She was referring to the landed properties that have less than 40 years lease left.

The loan quatum for such properties is at most 60% and if the lease is less than 30 years, CPF monies cannot be used to pay for the properties. This is definitely not for me.

what i envision is for us to sell the flat after another 4 years, downgrade to a smaller flat (4-room) flat at a high level. The new flat should be cheaper, I definitely do not want to take on a heavy loan when i am 40 years old. I hope by the end of 4 years, my CPF monies could have grown to 100k in my OA and my outstanding loan is left with 250k.

I bought my house for 422,000, spent 15,000 on renovations. As we also took the HDB grant of 30,000, we must sell the house 470,000. Even after selling at this price, we won't have much size proceeds.



Assuming this is the case, after selling the house, i should have 160,000+100,000=260,000 in my OA. On hand, i would have 17,000 cash. All i need to do is to find a property that is 260,000 and less (Pandan and Teban has smaller units that fall in this range). I could potentially be debt free.

Though my OA would be zerolised, I still have some leeway to build up my retirement nest nonetheless.

New yearly goal

I realised investing fresh 10k a year is not enough.

Will aim for 30k a year. Wish me luck!

New pickings

The year 2018 is drawing near to a close.

This year I sold off Hong Leong Finance, and Capital and,  bought 10 lots of Singtel. All using CPF.

I bought 9k shares of sembcorp industries using cash.

Am scouring to look for a new stock to buy in 2019.

Aimed SIA and ST engineering.  Both had consistent dividends.  SIA eng had very little debt.

Initially I had wanted to compulsively conclude SIA eng is a better buy but when I dug further.  Its core business is dwindling....that is a red flag.

As Warren Buffet had said,  no matter how good the management is,  a company with bad economics will outlive the management.

So SIA eng is out for me.  Will study St eng in details.

Stocks slipping lower

With the China US trade war raging,  stocks are jittery.

Keppel corp has dropped to 6.36, sembcorp 2.83, singtel 3.1, still waiting for them to drop further.  Meanwhile am trying to save money so that can be prepared to go into market.

Keppel corp - waiting for it to drop to $5plus.
Sembcorp - $2
Singtel - $2

World cup fever over

Most of the stocks that I currently am holding had made some regains after the world cup ended.

Stocks that I currently holds
Singtel
Keppelcorp
Sembcorp
Boustead

Though they had made some regains in the prices,  the prices had not gone back to their prices before the world cup.

Singtel