When the IPO was first launched, it received much fanfare and hype. We can see that it was oversubscribed due to the great interest in a great brand name and that it is the 2nd largest IPO, $2.8B, ever.
The lure of a huge potential upside to growth in China with a good management behind it, [...]
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SGDividends asked a question that was very dear to my heart in his comment in my last posting. I’d thought it would be more worthy to put it up as a blog post to share with others as well.
As like most bloggers who have ventured into the blogosphere “just for the fun of [...]
Recently, NTUC has launched a promotion on a Free upgrade for their IncomeShield Plan. You can find more about it here.
Mike has also blogged about it briefly here with a summary.
Well, as with all good deals, it spurred me on to find out more so I emailed by financial advisor about it. This is what [...]
Traffic is like the blood of any internet marketing business.
Be it being used for direct sales, building a list for future sales, creating downline, earning more impressions for advertising, traffic is paramount to earning your way up. It is only when you have traffic then you can consider tweaking other parts to make it more [...]
When the IPO was first launched, it received much fanfare and hype. We can see that it was oversubscribed due to the great interest in a great brand name and that it is the 2nd largest IPO, $2.8B, ever.
The lure of a huge potential upside to growth in China with a good management behind it, I badly wanted to chase it as well. But learning from past mistakes, I decided to do some due diligence on research. Part of this is to allay my fears and feelings on making a decision on this stock.
I had some concerns as there’s a growing fear of an asset bubble in China. Such fears always accompanies high growth regions. Much hinges on how the countries manage growth. I’ve read through reviews and the IPO prospectus. Basically, Capitamall Asia is really spinning of a lot of money for its parent, Capitaland. No doubt, much of it will be use to fund growth. Based on its price, the P/B ratio is high (1.45 to 1.75) compared to similar stocks like REITs (Do not that Capitamall Asia is not a REIT). This makes me a little uncomfortable also. I’d rather go for those below NAV like Capitamall Trust? Basically, people are paying for the brand. P/B ratio is one of the key aspects in which i screen my stock selection.
The itch in me pushed me to bid for 1 lot, a sure get. But I promised myself that I would offload it within a week when the euphoric sentiment still exists.
So I got 1 lot at $2.12 and offload at $2.33. Today it rose to $2.4 and above. Should I pinch myself for it? I guess not. Let’s see how it performs in the long run.
I have been sinful these days.
Recently, in a bid to find out why some of my friends are heavily addicted to Facebook games, I decide to try out Zynga’s games in Facebook. It owns more than 10 games of which the more familiar and successful ones I know are Farmville, Cafeworld, Roller Coaster Kingdom and the relatively recently launched Fishville. The games are essentially based on economics and leverages on social networking to proliferate. The highly addictive nature stems from being able to “build up a virtual self worth” and how we can compare it with others. I thoroughly enjoyed myself playing the free aspect of the games, building my “empire”. I stayed clear of the paid side of the games (those allowing you to purchase virtual items to accelerate the building of your “net worth”).
I had a real shocker when Farmville published that they managed to raise more than half a million dollars for charity. How did they manage that?
So i did a little research and found amazing things about their business model:
1) Low cost
Creating an application in Facebook is relatively low cost compared to high capital investment industries like infrastructure and manufacturing. You’d just have to outsource the programming to an IT company or even individuals to do so. Moreover, the games are played on a repetitive basis so lesser development goes into building a complex game engine or storyline or graphics (unlike WOW).
2) High Margins
Games like Farmville sell items using a virtual currency. Items are sold on a per item basis. Having an intermediate currency disassociates the buyer from the real price of the virtual good/item bought but at the same time, creating the same level of joy of obtaining as a real item. Essentially, Zynga sells “happiness”.
3) Sticky games
Games developed by Zynga keeps you coming back for more and entrenches you deeper and deeper as you progress. No one wants to lose an empire after spending so much time invested in it. A
4) Customers are the sales force
This has become so much apparent that the feeds on profiles have become spammy in a sense. However, it is tolerable as it works on a permission basis and friends do not mind something if it is posted by yourself. In fact, with the trust set already, the friends looking at the profiles would tend to want to get involved as well. There isn’t a need to even place an advert on Facebook to get more customers. Users do it for Zynga by putting such ads on the highly demanded real estate on their profile page. Another indicator of a strong sales force is the number of reviews outside Facebook itself.
5) Repeat Customers
A facebook user does not only play one Zynga game but several of them at the same time. Essentially, Zynga upsells when they can as well as seen by the ads in the games.
6) Huge base of Customers
Not everyone will purchase something. Just like me. However, you can see that Farmville alone has about 60 million active users. There are more than 10 games and still more coming up I believe. To make a rough estimation. If 1 in every 600 people makes a regular purchase of $1 daily (really a pinch of salt for many of us), it is already a daily revenue of $100,000 for Farmville!
If there is a chance of investing in Zynga, no doubt I will put some $$ in it.
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Having had not much time these few weeks to analyze the stock market proper, I only managed to steal glances at EOD indices and at my portfolio.
I’m about 1k plus (less than 3%) away from my breakeven since the stock market peak in 2007. Gosh, it’s really a long time.
I am at this stage again looking at the penny runs similar to mid 2007 where so many people are punting smaller counters and doing rotational play. Just take a look at Channelnewsasia forum and you would know.
As today in my most traded account LimTan, you can see this in the home page:
Volume: 2,213,848,819
Value: 1,383,040,639
It averages about $0.60 a share traded?
At this point, I am pretty cautious on getting into the market at this time large scale. RSP as per normal. Work takes up most of the time anyway. Let’s see whether Oct holds up to the worst performing month as seen history.
The recent market rally seems to be pausing after a huge run up. Even Hang Seng has breached 20,000. Fundsupermart has an article on this level. It seems that valuation has been reached for the moment. Long term investors can still hold. Minor corrections seems to be underway while uptrend is still intact.
HSI is very dependent on US side as well as the China front. The former seems to be running up, lagging behind the asian markets while China seems to be running out of steam, correcting more and correcting to larger extent.
Have u seen SSE correcting nearly 5% at 2 points. It gives me a cause of concern. I’m watching the levels it might breach. S&P seems to be flirting with its resistance too.
I have trimmed my China Funds by half to wait at the sidelines.
BTW, have you seen this Henderson Horizon China Fund?
It is quite OMG. Might park some of my $$ in there to take advantage of the short/long play.
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Today SIA released its dividend of SATS shares. Just nice on my birthday. 
Chartnexus’ SIA chart looks funny they seem to have shifted the SIA chart prices by a quantum, hence making it look as though the price jumped up above the resistance level. Doesn’t seem true though. Maybe it is to properly reflect dividend payouts? hmmm…
SATS opened $2.35 today, meaning it gave SIA shareholders a dividend of $1.7155 per share today. SIA opened at $12.40, dropping $1.40 from yesterday’s close of $13.80. Looking at just the plain figures, people who bought yesterday would have earned $0.3155 a share, 2.3% return on a single trade day.
Given today’s market rise, where SATS closed at $2.44 and SIA closed at $12.70, certainly, one would have made quite a bit.
As per my last post, shareholder’s value is unlocked!
Oh ya, i forgot, did this share dividend come together with a $.20 cash dividend per share as well?
me2everyone is a website that i came across from a fellow investment blogger’s website.
I must say that me2everyone does look cool to some extent and seems “web 2.0-ish”. But what interests me most is that its business case is based on a stock market listing and ad revenue from a massive network of members (100 [...]
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My site is worth $2912.7.
How much is yours worth?
