Wednesday 1 May 2013

Dividend Chaser on SMRT not a stock to own?

(From Article)

SMRT Corporation - Not a stock to own

What is the news?

SMRT (Sell Target Price: $0.93) reported losses of S$12mn for 4QFY13. The losses in the quarter were driven by an S$17.3mn impairment charge on Shenzhen Zona, significantly higher staff cost (+28.5%) and repair & maintenance expenses (+41.6%).

With significantly lower profits for the year, SMRT cut its final DPS to 1.50cents, representing a full year payout of 2.50cents (45.6% of FY13 PATMI).

Outlook statement remains negative as management highlighted continued increase in operating costs and expects profitability to be impacted in FY2014.

How do we view this?

With the company’s earlier profit warning, the quarterly losses were well expected by the market.

However, the magnitude of the dividend cut surprised us (and probably consensus), reflecting a dividend yield of merely 1.7% at the current price.

With operating costs trending north, we expect SMRT to report structurally lower profits in our forecast years.

Investment Actions?

Despite a sharp decline in recent months, we believe that the stock of SMRT had not bottomed out.

We maintain our Sell recommendation as the unsustainable business model, structurally lower earnings, rising leverage and poor dividend yield support gives investors little reason to own this stock.

Unless there is a radical change in the business model, we expect a multi-year de-rating of this stock.

With poor cashflow visibility, we switch to our blended valuation method to a simple P/E model pegged to 15X FY14E.

Source: PhillipCapital Research - 2 May 2013

Share price falls to 1.435 on 2May2013.

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