Sometimes I like to compare stock picking to say, dealing in art or precious stones. When you’re not looking for that special unique feature of something which makes it rare and sought after, you’re looking in places where you can pick the damn thing up for cheap. This is why real merchants in gems and rubies pick up them up in freshly dug from the mines and cut it themselves if they can. When they do so they are paying for just the raw value of the stone.
What is the equivalent of a company? The closest thing to that is the book value. That is the price of the total assets owned by the company minus any liabilities or debt. Its the price of things like its factories and whatever it has in its investment account, for example. Although you can work this out, it’s not always apparent from a company balance sheet because CFOs include a bunch of other things in there such as “intangibles” (which may consist of marketing costs) or other forms of payments which shouldn’t be there (like interest payments etc.) Financial analysts go to great pains to uncover what the book value really is. Nevertheless there are sites which can provide you with this figure and you will have to rely on them (like KLSETRACKER.COM).
The rationale here is that if you find a company with a low price to book value, you stand a very good chance of picking something up which is worth its true value because at the very least if things go really bad, the company may just get bought out by another company, or if its assets are really worth anything it can just sell something to generate cashflow to stay afloat. The caveat I would add to that is in Malaysia you have to discount the value of assets because it’s not as easy to sell a factory as it might be in another more efficiently run country. Therefore, investors out here discount the book value quite a lot - by as much as 50% in most cases. So when you pick a company it is always worth looking at how much it is priced not only compared to its earnings, but also its book value. Low ratios on both counts are a big plus!
Hi! What is your comment on Opus? Do you expect more upside on relisting on 19 Oct?
Unfortunately there isn’t much information out there in relation to the new corporate structure of Opus once they complete their internal re-organisation. More importantly Opus will now become a holdings company so their balance sheet will now consolidate other subsidiaries. Whilst I don’t believe that any value is being destroyed by the reorganisation (except for a potential loss of shareholder equity from the delisting on the UK board) I would wait until the next available balance sheet is out to properly understand any new risks facing the investor. Nonetheless I still think it’s a good company for the longer term.