Watch NCB but Fontana may break out

February 4, 2019 by

Jamaica Stock Exchange listed companies will start releasing the December quarterly reports this week. Results could move prices depending on how investors view their strength or weaknesses.  
NCB Financial remains on the Watch List with strong gains in operating profit for the December quarter, resulting in increased demand for the stock last week with the price rising to $152.90 but two big trades on Friday peg the price back to $145. The stock should continue to see buying interest around the current level that could well result in another attempt at the $150 level as investors find it difficult to get meaningful supply at the $145 level. There is currently over 210,000 units on offer at $145. The price is currently below near term resistance at $150. If it breaks through then it faces another at $170 with $200 level being the next big one.
Fontana now has a bid to buy 904,281 units at $3.50, with just 56,452 units on offer, for sale at $3.60. A relatively high degree of overhang of supply of the stock that that was on offer, was bought on Thursday. The reduced supply could now pave the way for buyers to be more aggressive in acquiring shares to benefit from the strong potential gains that lie ahead. General Accident enjoyed greater demand in the past week with the price rising to $4. With the 2018 results likely to come out in the region of 45 cents per share that will provide solid incentive for the buyers to pick up the stock.

Fontana upcoming Waterloo Road branch

Jamaica Stock Exchange shares hit new highs during the past week with increasing interest being shown in the stock. Exposed supply is current not high and with expected continued buoyancy in the market and a big increase in new listings this year investors seem more aggressive to buy into what should be another year of increased profit for the company. Supply of Seprod’s shares continue to decline after a period of high supply following the public sale of 91 million shares that satisfied the market and resulted in increased selling as some investors took profit. The price has been inching higher over the past week or two and seems poised to move higher again in the coming weeks. Wisynco’s directors met last week and announced a 7 cents dividend. Most likely, the second quarter results would have been approve at that meeting and should be released this week. Last year results were posted on the JSE website on February 7. The second quarter results, are expected to be better than the first quarter. Revenue in the September quarter was negatively affected by some disruption in sales due to commissioning of new equipment.
The three Lasco companies should be releasing results for the December quarter by the end of the week and the prices could see some movements as a result.

Filed Under: Stock Market, Stocks to watch Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

iCreate IPO oversubscribed

February 2, 2019 by

The ordinary shares of iCreate is set to be the next Junior Market listing that will bring the total companies to listed to 38 and the total securities to 40.
Sagicor Investments advised the Jamaica Stock Exchange that the public issue of shares in the one-year old company was oversubscribed with the issue closing on February 1 at 1:00 pm a little less than two days after it opened.
ICreate initial public offer of shares, sought to raise $70 million from 74,062,500 ordinary shares offered to the public at $1.01 each to help fund expansion. The offer opened on Thursday, January 31 and was originally scheduled to close on February 14.
Financial statements for the company showed that they were close to a break even in 2018.
The company is a creative learning institute developed with the aim of providing skills training and development of creatives in the Caribbean and North America.

Filed Under: Initial Public Offers, JSE Junior Market, Stock Market Tagged With: , , , ,

NCB the stock to watch

January 25, 2019 by

NCB tis the stock to watch with big jump in profit from continuingh operations.

Investors in aggressive buying of NCB Financial shares in late 2018, pushed the group’s shares up to a record high of $161 on last day of November last, following full year’s results that were released earlier in the month.
If investors reacted so strongly to results that were telegraphed previously by the nine months results, it will be interesting to see how they react to the 29 percent hike in dividend and a 40 percent rise in profit before one-time income and taxation.
With profits from ongoing operations seeming set to rise to the $14 region this year, NCB Financial is clearly the stock to watch today.
The results could spark the start of the 2019 rally in the main market and push the price well beyond resistance around the $160 market and unto the next resistance around $200.
In pre market activity, the indication is that the stock will move higher than the $145 it last traded at on Thursday. With just over ten minutes to the start of trading, there are 20,300 units on the bid at $147 and ten at $145 to $145.01.

Filed Under: Breaking News, Stock Market, Stocks to watch Tagged With: , , , ,

NCB hikes dividend 29%

January 25, 2019 by

NCB hiked dividend to 90 cents from 70 cents in 2018.

NCB Financial hikes dividend 29 percent, to $2.2 billion or 90 cents per share, as profit from ongoing operations jumped 40 percent in the first quarter to December last year to $5.7 million before taxation.
Profit after taxation and one-time gains, resulted in net profit of $7.4 billion for the first quarter of the 2019 financial year, slightly lower than the prior year’s results that included a gain (negative goodwill) of $4.4 billion relating to the acquisition of Clarien Group. Profit for the latest quarter, includes a gain of $3.3 billion from the disposal of 326,277,325 JMMB Group shares at $28.25 per share.
The strong improved results climbed on the back of 24 percent in net income, to $20.7 billion from $16.7 billion in 2017, offset by a 21 percent increase in expenses. Included in expenses is loan loss provision of $1, up from just $146 million in 2017 and seems tied to the need to adjust loan provisioning in line with new Accounting Standards. Depreciation and amortization cost almost doubled to $1.3 billion, from $667 million in 2017. Other operating expenses jumped 29 percent to $6 billion from $4.7 billion in the prior year. The big improvement in revenues flowed from increases in net interest income from $7.55 billion to $9.85 billion, an increase of 30 percent, while exchange trading delivered a third more, at $4.2 billion.
Retail and Small Business Banking segment profit grew a strong 36 percent to $1.34 billion, but Payment Services fell just 2 percent to $1.2 billion. Corporate Banking jumped sharply by 76 percent to $1.25 billion, Treasury and Correspondent Banking was up by just 14 percent to $1.65 billion. Wealth, Asset Management and Investment Banking, grew attractively by 39 percent to $1.2 billion, Life Insurance & Pension Fund Management rose 29 percent to $1.3 billion while General Insurance moved from a loss of $107 million to a profit of $227 million.

NCB giving back to the community.


The Group’s loans and advances, net of provision for credit losses, rose 16 percent to $373.5 billion. NCB stated that “the growth was driven by our Jamaican that increased by 22 percent or $50.4 billion. Non-performing loans totalled $18.5 billion as at December 2018 (December 2017: $15 billion) and represented 4.9 percent of the gross loans compared to 4.6 percent as at December 2017.”  Customer deposits grew just 7 percent to $461 billion. The varied growth rate between loans and deposit is a strong positive for profit as the revenues climb faster than cost.
The group re-launched a revised take-over to acquire up to 32.01 percent of the outstanding shares of Guardian Holdings which, when combined with NCB’s existing 29.99 percent holding will bring the total to 62 percent. The profit of the group will get a further boost from this acquisition. IC Insider.com has updated the earnings per share for 2019 to $14 from continuing operations and with the stock price at $145, the PE is just over 10 times earning making the stock BUY RATED with a 2019 target price of $225.

Filed Under: Buy Rated, Company News, Company Results, Dividends, Feature Stories Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

JSE – directors cannot override AGM decision

January 24, 2019 by

Palace Multiplex in Montego Bay.

Palace Amusement shareholders approved a dividend of $2 per shares at the annual general meeting held in December last year with the record date of January 7 and payment to be made on January 18.
IC insider.com was informed that the Jamaica Stock Exchange stopped the payment. In discussion with the JSE they indicated that the company did not comply with the rules of the exchange to inform them of the dividend. Accordingly, the change in dividend payment was to allow for the public to have notice of the ex-dividend date.
That of course is only partially true, while the company did not advise the exchange when the directors were to meet to approve the dividend and what was the outcome of the meeting. The exchange had adequate notice of the payment from October 31. The exchange JSE staff did nothing about the information that they got and approved for posting on their website.
The company’s directors’ report clearly states that the dividend had an xd dividend date of January 4 with the payment to be made on January 18. The annual report was posted on the JSE website from October. The directors, report along with the audited report were put to the meeting for acceptance which was done.

Andre Tulloch, head of the JSE regulatory arm.

Shareholders after approving the directors’ report, approved the resolution for the payment of the dividend, effectively agreeing to ex dividend and payment dates as set out in the directors report.
In the wisdom of the Jamaica Stock Exchange, they ignored the supremacy of the AGM and forced the company to submit information to change all the dates relating to the dividend. They failed to understand that the directors have no powers to change what the shareholders approved, and if a change is to be made, then the directors would need to call a general meeting to get shareholders to make the change. The correct remedy would have been some reprimand not a call for a non-legal action.
The requirements of the JSE is that any meeting at which a dividend is to be consider should be communicated to the JSE no later than 7 days before the date of the meeting and within 48 days of the meeting the decision taken. This was not done by Palace, but the JSE who had notice of the declaration from the end of October, did nothing about it for more than two months.
On 17 January, a posting on the JSE website showed that the record date was changed to January 31. The posting stated the “Palace Amusement (PAL)  has advised that following decision made at their Annual General Meeting in December 2018, to pay a dividend of $2 per stock, the payment will be made on February 8, 2019, to the shareholders on record as at January 31, 2019,  The ex-dividend date is January 30, 2019.”
The added problem is that shares were traded in January after the xd date of January 4. The seller would have expected to collect the dividend that was approved. It also means that cheques already drawn, may have to be redone, to record the new record date.
The JSE has clearly, made a huge error in this matter and should immediately correct it, to prevent a messy situation from getting worse. You cannot correct a wrong by another wrong.

Filed Under: Company News, Dividends Tagged With: , , , ,

ICreate prospectus is here

January 23, 2019 by

The prospectus, for ICreate initial public offer of shares, is now out. The company seeks to raise $70 million to help fund expansion.
The offer opens on Thursday, January 31 and scheduled to close February 14, with 74,062,500 ordinary shares offered to the public at $1.01 each. The company will list on the Junior Market of the Jamaica Stock Exchange, if the issue is successful. Applications are to be made for a minimum of 1,000 shares and multiples of 100 thereafter. If the issue is successful, the share capital will be 197,592,500 units, with 123.5 million units owned by EMedia and Sagicor Investments.
iCreate says “it is a creative learning institute developed with the aim of filling the gap in skills training and development of creatives in the Caribbean and North America. We provide students with a wide range of career opportunities in the Creative Economy while being a key partner of the Advertising Industry, Film Production Companies, Animation and Gaming Companies, and Creative Outsourcing initiatives.”
Existing locations are Kingston, Montego Bay, and Miami. Kingston is currently the only location that offers the full suite of courses. In Montego Bay, the company currently offer our flagship course (Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing) with the remainder to come on board once they built out the infrastructure required to deliver the courses based on our iCreate standards. “Our projected timeline for this is by or before the end of the first quarter of 2019. Miami is in the early business development stage,” the company stated in the prospectus.
The company reported a loss of $4 million for the six months to September from revenues of $18 million and projects profit of $8 million from revenues of $147 million for the year to December 2019 with profit of $62 million from revenues of $250 million in 2020.  Shareholders equity is negative $1.3 million dollar at the end of September.
The company is small, has only recently started business and is at a risky stage of development. Investors need to bear this factor in mind. While the forecast for 2020 appears attractive, the income generated in 2018 does not show a trajectory to support the high income growth, that the above forecast reflects. The business will benefit from the exposure that the IPO and listing will bring and that could help drive revenues. The positive is that current operations show signs of profit with at least two quarters last year, enjoying a profit.
The board is extremely large with nine members for a small company when seven seems more appropriate. The board comprise, Sandra Glasgow, Chairman, Tyrone Wilson, Rhys Campbell, David Wan, Mischa Mcleod-Hines, Sheree Martin, Devon Lawrence, Dr. Jennifer Bailey and Kenneth Benjamin.
The majority shares are owned by EMedia Limited, with Sagicor Investments, holding a minority position. Broker to the deal is Sagicor Investments.

Filed Under: Breaking News, Initial Public Offers Tagged With: , , , , , ,

ICreate ipo opens January 31

January 22, 2019 by

The ICreate initial public offer of shares will open on Thursday, January 31.
The issue is scheduled to close on February 14, with the prospectus set to be released this week, word reaching IC Insider.com reveals.
The issue is a sale of 74,062,500 ordinary shares to the public at $1.01 each. The shares will be listed on the Junior Market of the Jamaica Stock Exchange, if the issue is successful. Revenue is said to be running in the region of just under $50 million per annum with prospects for strong growth going forward. Already the company is making a small profit, IC Insider.com gathers. The business is the training of students in graphic designs and animation.
The majority shares are owned by EMedia Limited, with Sagicor Investments, holding a minority position. Broker to the deal is Sagicor Investments.

Filed Under: Breaking News, Initial Public Offers Tagged With: , , , , ,

Barita rights issue closes in March

January 21, 2019 by

Barita Investments – 2018 best performing JSE stock.

Barita Investments held an Extraordinary General Meeting on January 17, 2019 and passed the Resolution to issue up to 262,280,484 ordinary shares as a Rights Issue to Stockholders and gave the power to the directors to set the other terms.
Subsequent to the meeting, the directors agreed the terms of the issue with offer opening on February 25 and closing on March 18 to shareholders on record at February 5 at a price of J$15.50 per share. Shareholders will be entitled to ten shares for every seventeen shares owned on the record date. Shares not taken up by existing shareholders will be available to other shareholders who apply for excess shares. The deadline for applications for any excess shares is March 25.
Barita’s stock has been trading in the $50 region for sometime, spurred partially by announcement of the rights issue plus other positive developments for the company, including new business.
Barita’s share was the best performing on the Jamaica Stock Exchange in 2018, with gains of 593 percent.

Filed Under: Company News, General Business News Tagged With: , , , ,

Case against hanging on to stocks

January 14, 2019 by

Many stocks listed are undervalued based on projected earnings but many offer attractive potential gains but the likely gains are inadequate to put them into the TOP 15. So attractive is the market that many below the TOP 15 have potential to gain in excess of 50 percent in 2019.
Not all growth companies will deliver the same level of returns, a feature of markets that investors need to bear in mind to optimize return on investment. Expansion of smaller companies can have a far more telling impact on profit that larger ones. For example, Grace Kennedy would need to acquire a large entity to make a big improvement to its profit than the typical Junior Market company that are vastly smaller but could acquire a business that will make a big impact on profits.
The 80/20 Rule in the market suggest that only around 2 out of the Top 10 stocks repeat in the subsequent year, this is the results from nearly 40 years of tracking the market. The data shows that around 40 percent of the worst performing stocks in a year are likely to enter the TOP 10 in the subsequent year. What the data suggest is that investors need to be careful in identifying top performing stocks and that top performers with above average growth are likely to come from the worst performers of the prior year.  The year 2018 was unusual with three stocks repeating their 2017 top 10 appearance from the Junior Market and four in the main market. The Junior Market had C2W renamed SSL Venture Capital repeating and in the main market 5 repeated including Pulse Investments and Palace Amusement.
Half of the Junior Market TOP 15 list have either acquired new businesses or actively expanded operation in the past year or plan expansion in the coming year and a boost in revenues and profit is expected. The average PE ratio for the Junior Market based on 2019 projected earnings is 12 but the market closed out 2018 at 16.5. This is an indication of how far the market may rise as well as the extent to which the top 15 stocks are undervalued.

Filed Under: Investment 2024, Stock Market 2019 Tagged With: , , , ,

CMP flouting law – no AGM for 11 years

January 13, 2019 by

For the nine months to December 2007 CMP Industries reported profit of $5.2 million representing an improvement over the results for the similar period in 2006. The company had $23 million in cash and no interest bearing debt.
From all indications, CMP was generating rental income from property owned at Marcus Garvey Drive that been rented successfully since. By now, the company should have piled up a large amount of cash with several years having passed, are those funds been well managed? That is a big question. Shareholders have no way of knowing since the company has not presented any new financial information nor held a general meeting to update them.
The 2007 results are the last that minority shareholders have received, when the company was listed on the Jamaica Stock Exchange. Apparently, Cash Plus owned entity acquired the majority shares but the Trustees in Bankruptcy has taken control over the company but has supplied no updates on the company finances nor called a general meeting of the company. That leaves the company in breach of the companies Act that require annual general meetings to be held annually.
Recent contact with the Trustees in Bankruptcy indicates that they are controlling the company to realise funds to pay off debtors of Cash Plus. If that is true and it can’t really be so unless they sell the shares of the controlling interest, as the company belongs to all shareholders and any cash inflow if distributed has to be done equally to all shareholders as CMP is not indebted to Cash Plus debtors.
CMP Holdings Limited, was incorporated under the laws of St. Lucia, and which owns and controls approximately eighty percent (80%) of the shares in CMP Industries in 2007 sold the shares to Castelo Holdings, was said to have acquired 80 percent interest in CMP.
CMP shares were suspended from trading on the JSE in 2008, pending an offer to minority shareholders that never came. Minority shareholders need to know what is happening to their investment in the company and the Trustees in Bankruptcy cannot continue to flout the law.

Filed Under: Company News, General Business News Tagged With: , , , , , ,