Report: The Asia Investor Performance Report

This week I'll be reviewing the performance of the Asia Investor portfolio so far, picking apart the returns on our recommendations, and outlining where I plan to take the portfolio in the months ahead.

I intend to do portfolio reviews for Asia Investor roughly once a quarter, in a lot more detail than I can squeeze into a weekly portfolio table. I don't attach any signifwww.moneyweek.comicance to the actual quarterly performance, because in the short-term share price movements often have very little to do with company fundamentals.

But I would like to address exactly how my strategy for Asia Investor is developing. Today I'll explain why the portfolio is heavily weighted towards Singapore listed stocks. Why I think Southeast Asian stocks are seriously underappreciated. And I'll point to one very promising area that I am reviewing for my next recommendation.

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In the second half of the letter, I'll be catching up on earnings and dividend announcements from Eredene, Silverlake Axis, Hsu Fu Chi, Petra Foods and ARA Asset Management.

But first, let's see where we are with the portfolio

The performance so far

Overall the Asian Investor portfolio is showing a total average return of 6.72% so far. The table below shows a breakdown of that return. In addition to the usual share price return, I'm including total returns both just including payments and also factoring in the effect of reinvesting those dividends in the shares.

Although we're mostly looking at growth businesses in Asia Investor, most recommendations pay a reasonable dividend. While the difference is small at the moment, over time dividend payments and the growth of the dividends should make up a major part of our returns.

I've added returns on the MSCJ Asia ex Japan index at the bottom of the table for comparison. I'm always cautious about benchmarking: obviously I don't aim to track an index and the kind of companies I'm recommending are often quite different from those in the AxJ. But this is an easily tradable index that invests in a broad range of Asian markets and companies; while I don't expect to outperform it in every quarter, the Asia Investor portfolio needs to do so over the long run to be worthwhile. So it's only fair to have it there for long-run comparisons.

(Data as at 27th August 2010.)

The portfolio is notionally doing slightly better than the MSCI Asia ex Japan, but it's much too soon to read anything in to that. And of course, buying individual shares will normally have incurred more costs than buying a single AxJ-tracking ETF.

Given that the portfolio has only been running for a short while, I'd rather focus on the structure of it and what we're working towards. First, the table below shows the breakdown of the portfolio by country of listing. You can see that half my recommendations so far are Singapore listed.

As we'll see when we look at where they actually do business, this isn't very meaningful, except perhaps for one thing. You'll see that we have a heavy bias towards Singapore listings. This isn't deliberate, but valuations in Singapore tend to be a bit lower than in many Asian markets for example, the trailing p/e on the Straits Times index is currently 11.75 versus 13.2 for the Hang Seng. Since we're looking for good value, I think the portfolio is likely to continue to have a high Singapore element.

But what about where our companies do business? I've tried to summarise that in the chart below, which shows revenue (or assets for firms like ARA) by country, as disclosed in each company's financial filings. Some always give a lot more detail than others, so much of the allocation is approximate.

Obviously revenue share doesn't always mean the same as profit share, but revenue disclosure is much more consistent among companies than profit disclosure. So this is the most practical way to approach it and should produce sensible answers in aggregate.

As you can see, we are roughly evenly split between Greater China, India and Southeast Asia in business terms. I'm aiming to keep it this way as much as possible, since my strategy views these as being the three distinctive legs of the long-run Asia story.

China and India obviously need no explanation, but I think the potential of Southeast Asia and in particular the potential that comes out of greater regional integration is still underappreciated. Silverlake Axis is an unorthodox example of a firm that could benefit from regional integration, as we'll see later in the news review.

When it comes to sectors, I'm focusing mainly on a handful of key themes, such as consumer goods and services, education, healthcare, financials and infrastructure/real estate.

The largest group so far is food and beverages. This is a deliberate decision, since I think food and beverages and other fast-moving consumer goods such as toiletries are one of the most promising sectors. Top consumer goods brands should have an unequalled ability to earn excess profits over the long run from the growing spending power of Asia's middle classes and we're aiming to end up holding at least a couple of future heavyweight names.

I will be adding more to all sectors in the future, but for now, I'm focusing on getting a couple more themes represented in the portfolio. In particular, we have no weighting in healthcare, which is a very promising area; I'm looking over a few candidates and that may well be my next recommendation.

Finally, let's take a look at valuations. The table below shows the price/earnings ratios for the last financial year, forecast p/e for the current financial year and the dividend yields covering the last 12 months. (I'm showing consensus earnings estimates rather than my own in this table, since this is what the market is looking at.)

(Data as at 27th August 2010.)

On a forecast p/e of 16.3, I don't think our portfolio is expensive given the growth potential in most of our stocks. But it is higher than the index average, which reflects the fact that investors are starting to recognise the potential of consumer sectors.

So far, I've avoided the most famous names in the Chinese consumer story such as noodle giant Tingyi and personal products manufacturer Hengan. I think they're good companies but I struggle to justify the high valuations they command (currently a p/e of around 35), which reflects both their high profile and the fact they are among the few Asian consumer plays that are large and liquid enough for big funds to take a meaningful position in. I'm hopeful that at some point we will get a chance to buy into them more cheaply; if we have a large market sell-off, they're right at the top of my list.

Our portfolio's trailing yield of 3.22% is higher than the index (and this includes Eredene which is currently not dividend-paying but should begin to deliver a very good income stream in the next 2-4 years). This includes some special dividends, which several of these firms pay frequently. The figures don't include dividends declared but yet to be paid, which I'll run through in the updates below.

Unlike Western firms, which tend to aim to increase dividends slightly each year, Asian firms typically aim to pay out roughly the same percentage of earnings each year. This makes dividends more volatile but should ensure they rise strongly if earnings do.

And now, let's take a look at recent news from some of our portfolio stocks

Eredene gets ready for next phase of expansion

Eredene Capital, our Indian infrastructure play, released its full-year results a few weeks ago. The details are shown in the table below, but at this stage are meaningless. The company is in the process of setting up its projects and most of the accounts reflect asset value changes rather than trading sales and profits.

Source: company reports

I caught up with chief executive Alastair King a couple of weeks ago for a detailed update on the company's progress. While there have been some delays and issues as you'd expect when trying to do work of this kind in an environment like India generally things seem to be going well, at least on the infrastructure side.

At the time we spoke, four projects were generating revenue: the MJ Logistic warehousing and distribution centre near Delhi, the Vichoor Container Freight Station (CFS) in Tamil Nadu, the Pipavav CFS in Gujarat and its new investment in a port services firm, Ocean Sparkle (of which more below). Two of these Vichoor and Ocean Sparkle are dividend-paying.

The Haldia logistics park in West Bengal and the Kalinganagar logistics park in Orissa should begin commercial operation soon. The Conware CFS near Chennai is scheduled to be operational by March 2011, while construction on its container terminal at Baroda in Gujarat should start by the same time.

The two non-core projects the Sribha IT office in Bangalore and the Matheran low-cost housing project near Mumbai have suffered bigger issues. Eredene has made its full investment into Sribha and construction is almost complete. However, its development partner and future anchor tenant is dragging its heels on fulfilling its further funding commitments; the company's owner is concerned about the cost of occupying this new office space at a time when his outsourcing business is weak, says King. Eredene's risks here should be limited, since it has a pledge over the partner's holding company and if he fails to meet his obligations, the firm can enforce that.

Eredene's intention is to offload this project within the next year or so. Because of the problems, the project has been heavily marked down: Eredene's total investment has been £2.1m, but it's carried on the balance sheet at £0.49m. However, King hopes to achieve a price closer to or even above cost.

The firm is also now looking to exit Matheran sooner rather later at a good profit. To recap, this is a potentially very large low-cost housing development in an area that has a severe shortage of blue-collar housing. It has plenty of potential, but is a legacy project from several years ago when Eredene was initially focused on real estate and many investors felt that it didn't fit into the company's revised ports and logistics strategy.

Construction is ongoing and the first families should be moving in relatively soon. However, progress has been slowed by a dispute with the former CEO of the subsidiary, who retains a stake in the business and has secured an injunction preventing the development using debt, obliging Eredene to fund construction from equity and sales deposits.

Previously, Eredene had considered spinning off the development in an IPO once it was large enough but now the plan is to sell the project as soon as the dispute is resolved to free up capital for new projects such as the Ennore port development (of which more below). King says that the firm has received a good offer for Matheran with the dispute in-situ and is confident of earning about the target rate of return on its £12.7m investment.

Overall, I see the decision to exit these two projects as a positive. While Matheran could have been a much larger project in the long run, it makes sense for Eredene to divest non-core developments. Apart from freeing up time and capital, it also makes the company appear more a more focused pure play on infrastructure to potential investors.

As I said before the firm was part of the winning consortium for a project to develop a 1.5m TEU/year container terminal at Ennore port at Tamil Nadu. This is a high-profile, credibility-building project for Eredene and it should also be a valuable complement to the Conware CFS nearby, since Eredene will be able to use to direct traffic towards Conware. The total investment will be up to £23m.

It also took an 8.2% stake for £7.3m in Ocean Sparkle, which operates 82 tugs and other service boats in 18 of India's ports. Despite the odd name, this looks a very solid business and Eredene believes it got a good price from the seller, a Swiss private equity fund that had to exit because it was reaching the end of its life.

This is by far India's largest private sector operator in its field (the next largest has 14 boats) and should have good growth potential in its own right, as well as the strategic value of providing Eredene with access to and information about other ports. King expects the firm to list in India before long it tried to do an IPO in 2008 before the bottom fell out of global markets.

The pipeline of potential deals is over £100m and Eredene will need to raise more capital to fund these, including funding for the Ennore development. Previously, the firm was considering raising money into external infrastructure funds that it will manage, but for at least some of the deals, it's now planning to incorporate these into the company.

This reflects the fact that the raising external funds from new investors is still difficult in this environment, while Eredene's major shareholders have said they would prefer to put new money directly into the company. The fact that Eredene now trades at a discount to net asset value of about 10% (compared to around 50% some time ago) means that the problem of destroying value for existing shareholders by raising money directly has gone away, while a larger Eredene should also hopefully see a higher profile and more liquidity in its shares.

The next round of fundraising is likely to take place within a year. It may aim to bring in a new shareholder with shipping associations to reinforce its credibility in the ports sector King says that it has a possible investor in mind.

Overall, things appear to be going well at Eredene. My initial valuation was very rough and ready, and I plan to refine it soon to take account of project progress and the changes to its strategy discussed above. For now, I'm confident that my buy limit of 22p remains an underestimate and I'm keeping it unchanged. (For comparison, the net asset value at end March was 23p and accountants tend to be very conservative in these situations.)

Eredene is not yet paying a dividend. I'd expect this to begin in a couple of years. Maintain BUY up to a limit of 22p.

Yearly change: (listed February 05) 2005 -24%; 2006 +3%; 2007 -29%; 2008 -29%; 2009 +12%; 2010 (to date) +23%

A very strong year from Hsu Fu Chi

Our Chinese confectionary investment turned in a very strong set of full-year results. Earnings of RMB0.76 were not only some way above my expectations for FY2010 (RMB0.68), but also well above my RMB0.69 base case for the now-current year and not far behind what I'd hoped for in FY2012.

It's especially encouraging that the company turned a fourth-quarter profit of RMB27.5m, against a small loss in the same period last year. That's notable because Hsu Fu Chi has always been heavily dependent on sales earned at Chinese New Year and the last quarter has then recorded a loss as sales drop off.

You can clearly see this pattern on the chart below, which shows the contribution of the first three, six and nine months' profits to the full-year profit. This year, for the first time since listing, the final quarter made a positive contribution.

That may partly reflect a slightly later-than-usual Chinese year, pushing back the peak season a bit. But I think it also reflects the firm's progress in trying to increase snack sales outside its traditional peak season; as I mentioned in my initial analysis, higher year round sales and capacity utilisation should have a real impact on its profitability.

The firm continues to expand its distribution network, with sales offices rising from 97 to 110 over the year. Remember that Hsu Fu Chi is the leader in its segment but only has a market share of around 6%; there's enormous potential for long-run growth as it uses this national reach to take market share from other firms.

Clearly there's a very good case for upping my FY2011 base case and looking at my buy limit again. However, Hsu Fu Chi has benefited from some favourable commodity price movements in the past year, while it's now guiding that it "faces challenges of increasing raw materials cost and employees' salaries in the coming year", so margins which gave expanded recently - may come under pressure.

I think it's likely that it will be able to pass these added costs on and maintain or increase its current level of profits. But to be conservative, it makes sense to see what happens over the next quarter before adjusting any numbers and perhaps increasing my valuation.

Hsu Fu Chi declared a regular dividend of RMB0.38 and a special dividend of RMB0.37 (against a regular dividend of RMB0.29 last year). That amounts to around 15 Singapore cents or a yield of 5.4% on the current share price. In this case, I don't have any reason to expect the special dividend to be repeated, so we're looking at a recurrent payout of around 2.6%. Maintain BUY up to a limit of $2.85

Yearly change: 2005 -31%; 2006 +165%; 2007 -18%; 2008 -85%; 2009 +261%; 2010 (to date) +13%

A big contract win for Silverlake

Full year results at Silverlake Axis, the banking software systems developer, were more mixed. EPS of 3.02 sen was broadly in line with my base case, but I had hoped this would prove pessimistic and that sales would have picked up more strongly in the final quarter.

Digging into the detail, the core business seems to have done slightly better than headline suggests. For example, around RM6.1m of losses were contributed by its share of associate e-Petrol Silverswitch; this is part of a Malaysian start-up that aims to tie a cashless payment system to the national identity card. My instinct is that this company is not going anywhere, but there's nothing riding on it; Silverlake acquired a stake in 2008 in return for licensing some software to it.

Meanwhile, the Japanese credit-card processing business is now a full subsidiary after Silverlake bought out its partner late last year. This division has plenty of potential and seems to be going in the right direction, but is still in its early stages and loss-making, which depressed reported profits compared to a year ago (since its full results weren't consolidated into Silverlake's while it was just an associate).

Nonetheless, there was little to catch the eye overall, with perhaps the most important number being the breakthrough in SIBS licensing revenue in the last quarter. SIBS is Silverlake's core banking system and the cornerstone of the company. Licensing revenues tend to be lumpy from quarter to quarter, but were rising strongly before the global crisis hit, as the chart below shows. Since then, SIBS revenue has been almost non-existent, so it was encouraging to see sales coming through again.

But the big news on this came out just after the results. Silverlake has been hinting for a couple of quarters about "a major core banking software upgrade by a large Southeast Asian bank". This always sounded like its existing client CIMB, Malaysia's second-largest bank and the fifth largest from Southeast Asia, and we finally got confirmation of that last week.

Silverlake is to provide the core banking system for a new IT system that will tie together CIMB's operations across the region, which currently include major subsidiaries in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. You may remember from my initial report that banking consolidation in Southeast Asia and the resulting IT investment needs is one of the key reasons I think Silverlake's business is attractive, so this is a very good win on a contract that reportedly had plenty of interest from other providers.

Details are confidential, but CIMB's overall investment programme is on the order of RM2.1bn over the next five years, while the banking platform that Silverlake's software will help to power will be cost around RM1.1bn in total. CIMB's CEO said that the deals signed so far with the four key suppliers Silverlake, Accenture, IDS Scheer and IBM signed last week account for around 40% of that RM1.1bn.

Silverlake says it's also in advance discussions on further SIBS licensing deals, has signed a strategic relationship with Chinese conglomerate HNA Group and recently agreed to collaborate with Hitachi Information Systems to provide software development and outsourcing services in Japan. So I remain confident that business is poised to pick up and I'm keeping my estimates for next year unchanged.

The company declared a regular final dividend of 0.6 Sinapore cents and a special dividend of 0.5 cents, following an interim dividend of 0.5 cents and an earlier special dividend of 0.1 cents, taking the total payout for the year to 1.7 cents (against 0.6 cents the previous year) and giving a full-year yield of 4.7%. Although the special dividends were a one-off to pay out excess cash following the group restructuring earlier this year, Silverlake's pre-crisis dividend policy makes me think we'll receive a similar-sized regular payout next year if earnings are as solid as I hope. Maintain BUY up to a limit of S$0.4.

Yearly change: (listed November 06) 2006 +35%; 2007 -6%; 2008 -21%; 2009 +153%; 2010 (to date) +26%

Stronger margins at Petra Foods

We also had a couple of half-year results, which are worth reviewing quickly. Chocolate and cocoa specialist Petra Foods reported strong first-half EPS of 3.32 US cents. In particular, profitability in its cocoa processing division was better than my base case, with an six-month average Ebitda/ton margin of US$198, up from US$156 at the first quarter. This suggests that the newly upgraded European plant is making quicker progress than expected.

Meanwhile, the branded consumer products division saw sales in Indonesia and other regional markets up 31% year-on-year in US dollar terms and 13% in local currency terms. Gross margins expanding by 1.9 percentage points. Since it's the consumer aspect of Petra that we're interested in, I regard this as more significant.

There's no strong seasonality to Petra's earnings, so this suggests the firm is well on target to beat my EPS base case of 5.3 US cents for this year. But it's worth being cautious given the recent volatility in cocoa prices.

The processing division operates on a cost-plus basis and hedges cocoa prices to minimise the impact on margins from cocoa volatility; hence there's no close relationship between prices and margins, as the chart of margins for the Asia and Latin America plants below shows.

But at the same time, cost-plus businesses can sometimes get a boost from higher prices by raising their own fees in line with the higher materials (ie, their rates are less flat-fee' and more percentage of costs'). This extent of this depends on the industry and their processors' pricing power and I don't know enough about cocoa processing to have much idea if that's going on here but it strikes me as possible. In which case, the fact that cocoa prices are showing signs of weakening suggests that Petra's high margins could come back a bit later in the year.

So I think Petra's earnings outlook may well be stronger than my base case, but I'm not rushing to raise my target. That's especially because it's the consumer division that we're really interested in and I don't want to be tempted to overpay on the basis of extra strength in the processing division, which is not central to my investment case.

The interim dividend was 1.6 cents, up from 1.48 cents the previous year. Including the previous final dividend of 1.43 cents, Petra is now on a trailing yield of 2.1%. Maintain BUY up to a limit of S$1.6.

Yearly change: 2005 +31%; 2006 +67%; 2007 -14%; 2008 -75%; 2009 +171%; 2010 (to date) +36%

Slow and steady at ARA

ARA Asset Management, which is our proxy for the potential of the investment management industry in Asia, turned in first half results of 3.59 Singapore cents, putting it in line to match or just beat my base case for this year.

There was little dramatic in the results, but there rarely is with ARA. The Asia Dragon Fund (ADF), its main private fund, is now around 70% invested. Management guided elsewhere that ADFII should launch in the next few months with a target of raising US$1bn in assets under management.

The company has also taken a stake in APN Property Group, an Australian fund manager with A$2.6bn in assets under management. This investment should have substantial strategic value, giving ARA a partner in the Australian real estate funds sector, which includes the second-largest real estate investment trust market in the world, after the US.

ARA declared an interim dividend of 2.3 Sinapore cents, in line with last year. Including the previous final dividend, ARA is on a trailing yield of 3.9%. Maintain BUY up to a limit of S$1.35.

Yearly change: (listed November 2007) 2007 -14%; 2008 -63%; 2009 +138%; 2010 (to date) +57%

Finally before I go, an important risk warning

I've had a few questions from readers about how much they should invest in Asia Investor shares. Unfortunately, I can't give you any guidance on this because under UK investment regulations I'm not allowed to give individual financial advice.

I can't even suggest a minimum amount that would be reasonable given the dealing costs you will incur, because the appropriate minimum investment doesn't only depend on costs but also on the amount that you can safely afford to invest (and potentially lose) in higher-risk investments of this type. This can only be determined from detailed knowledge of your financial circumstances and constitutes individual advice.

So if you have any doubts about whether shares like those in Asia Investor are suitable for you and how much you should invest in them, I very strongly recommend that you consult an independent financial adviser (IFA). For UK readers, you can search for a local IFA through this website: https://www.unbiased.co.uk/

Please also make sure that you have read the general Asia Investor risk warnings document here {link} and that you fully read and understand each recommendation (including the specific risk warnings for each stock) before taking the decision to invest.

While I obviously believe that the Asia Investor portfolio will produce profitable returns over the long term, there is no guarantee of this. Furthermore, it is almost certain that we will lose money on some recommendations. And please remember that Asia Investor recommendations are only intended to be held as part of the higher-risk portion of a balanced portfolio that contains other, less risky assets.

That's all from me this week. I'll be back in a fortnight with a new recommendation, but until you email me on asiainvestor@moneyweek.com.

Regards,

Cris Sholto Heaton

ASIA Investor

(Singapore tickers vary between brokers. The three common ones are listed for each stock.)

Sources used in preparing this report: Eredene Capital annual report 2010

Eredene Capital full-year results presentation 2010

Interview with Alastair King, chief executive, Eredene Capital

Silverlake Axis full-year results 2010

Silverlake Axis announcement 10th August 2010Silverlake Axis announcement 9th July 2010

"CIMB invests in RM2.1b banking platform system" Malaysian Star,

24th August 2010

CIMB Group press release 23rd August 2010

Hsu Fu Chi full-year results 2010

Petra Foods half-year results 2010

Petra Foods first-quarter results presentation 2010ARA Asset Management half-year results 2010

ARA Asset Management announcement 22nd July 2010

Research report by DBS 13th August 2010

Historical price and company data from Bloomberg

Your capital is at risk when you invest in shares - you can lose some or all of your money, so never risk more than you can afford to lose. Shares recommended in Asia Investor may be small company shares. These can be relatively illiquid and hard to trade and there can be a large bid/offer spread. So if you need to sell soon after you've bought, you might get back less than you paid. This can make them riskier than other investments. Some may be denominated in a currency other than sterling. The return from these may increase or decrease as a result of currency fluctuations. Always seek personal advice if you are unsure about the suitability of any investment. Profits from share dealing are a form of income and subject to taxation. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and may be subject to change in the future. Editors may have an interest in shares recommended.

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