Strong close today at another record high!

More to come next week.

Have a good weekend!

Good closing at RM1.40 today. With the strong close today, technical chart reading all turns positive.

The total trading volume of these 2 days is over 70 million, indicating that some funds have accumulated around 5% stakes in AEON just in 2 days.

Another record high closing! Congras to all who still hold on.

More to come in next few weeks.

It is a nonsense for certain parties to claim YTL is over-valued at current prices.

Based on annualised earnings of 20 sen for FY2024, YTL is trading at less than 19x PER. Earnings are expected to rise rapidly from YTLPower's AI data centre & Wessex, as well as Mcement and hotel business.

I forecast EPS may rise easily to 25 sen by FY2026, based on the projection from Macquarie on YTL Power earnings hitting over RM4.2 billion in FY2026.

Based on same 20x PER, YTL share price should rise gradually to RM5.00 by 2026.

Based on Q1 result, AEON registered operating cashflows (before working capital changes and capex) of RM133.3 million, annualised to RM533 million or 38 sen per share.

Setting aside say RM100-120 million for capex to renovate 3 shopping malls in FY2024, AEON will have free cashflows of RM420 million or 30 sen per share, which could well support a dividend payout of 12-15 sen.

At 7% free cashflow yield, AEON should be worth RM4.28 per share.
At 5% dividend yield, AEON should be worth RM2.40-3.00 per share.

Big funds have sapu the roadblocks at 1.39-1.40.

As the previous CFO Grace Lee has resigned, she was the one blocking my proposal then. Now the MD has been taken over by the founder's son, I hope the new top management will consider more options to enhance shareholders' value and capital structure of the company.

ya it is totally unfair to retail investors like us to suffer such a discount to fair value of the call warrant. Normally call warrants should be trading at most at 1% or fair value, often at 1%-5% premium given that it still has over 3 months before expiry

@Alex Kho, good write-up on KSL.

KSL is not only trading at PER of below 5x, but it has plenty of land in Johor which still carries at very low book value.

Looking at how land price in Kulai/Pulai being snapped up by data centre developers at prices as high as RM138 psf, I think KSL will see huge revaluation gains for its total 578 acres of land around Pulai.

Ya, YTL Power will release Q3 results next Thursday.

Expect decent set of results with net profit around RM800 million +/-5%, which will be inline with latest Maybank's revised projection for FY2024.

Major road blocks at RM1.39-1.40 but I expect these to be taken out soon after short term traders and insiders exit positions.

The big buying yesterday and this morning indicate big funds buying on AEON after the surprisingly strong Q1 profits which are re-rating the stock.

@mmk79, ya the issuing bank CIMB seems to be purposely setting the computer orders for C28 at a big discount to the fair price of RM0.240 at mother price of RM1.39.

I have filed an official complaint with Bursa, and expect Bursa to initiate actions against CIMB within 2 trading days.

Maybank research is the latest research house to upgrade YTL Power, raising target price from RM4.00 to RM5.40.

While the analyst considers that PowerSeraya's earnings are peaking in FY2024, he raises PowerSeraya's earnings for FY2025 and FY2026, conceding that the earlier downgrade was premature and PowerSeraya earnings will not drop as drastically as in previous reports.

But he is skeptical of the AI data centre busines, giving little earnings projection to YTL Power.

Yet, he concurs with my earlier view that YTLP's utilities businesses (PowerSeraya, Wessex, Jawa Power, Jordan Power) will be able to sustain a net profit of above RM3.0 billion every year for next 3 years.

Hence, I expect Maybank to upgrade further as YTLP's AI data centre business gains traction in coming months.

@Raymond, the AI data centre business model is a high tech business with reported payback period of 3 years, so as the pricing of AI chips get higher, the capex for building AI data centres will be bigger and AI data centre developers like CoreWeave and YTL Power will need to charge the customers higher, usually in terms of US$ per hour per GPU.

CoreWeave is charging its customers in the US at a rate of about US$4.50/hour per GPU for Nvidia H100 GPUs now, based on reported selling price of USD30k-40k per H100 GPU.

Now if Nvidia is selling its latest Blackwell GB200 GPUs at USD70k to 80k per GPU, then these costs will be passed on by AI data centre developers to the users like big clouds. Assuming other operating costs (electricity, water, manpower, admin overhead) remaining the same, the pretax profit will get an outsized lift. For instance:

H100 GB200
Price 30-40k 70-80k
Revenue US$1.0b US$2.0b
Opn costs US$0.3b US$0.3b
Depreciation US$0.5b US$1.0b
Pretax profit US$0.2b US$0.7b

Good closing for AEON after reporting a good set of results yesterday.

The massive insiders selling has been well adsorbed with total volume exceeding 40 million.

Another record closing for MCement today. Congratulations to those who still hold on.

@KeepLearning, we cannot compare like to like. Cement is a commodity business, and the profit margin depends a lot on the input costs especially coal costs. Each cement company has different purchasing strategy for coal, but over time when coal prices stabilises (over a period of 6 months or more), each cement company should have similar cost structure and profit margin level.

It also depends on each cement company's total production capacity, i.e. any spare capacity and the initial sunk in costs (and hence depreciation charges). MCement has become this big by acquiring Lafarge Cement, so there is some legacy cost from the acquisition that takes time for Mcement to consolidate.

We shall see from Mcement upcoming result next Thursday whether its profit margin has caught up with peers.

I think analysts will need to revise up YTLP's AI data centre capex and revenue line accordingly, as most are pricing in US$30k to 40k per GB200 GPU.

This would mean an almost 100% uplift in revenue line and pretax profit from AI data centres.

wow Nvidia GB200 GPUs are priced at US$60k to 70k each, doubling from its earlier H100 chips

For those who have decided to take profit on YTL or YTL Power, you can take a look at other under-valued counters: AEON, Genting, IOIPG, KSL, Mcement and PBA.

I won't write too much here, but you can refer to my analysis on each stock in their respective forum. Happy investing!

Mr. OTB, congratulations on being the champion in the competition. You should just thank yourself for having the faith in the YTL group of companies and for having the patience of holding on for so long.

The important thing is everybody who got in at around RM1.30 last March 2023 has made some good money from this counter, whether you decided to take profit at RM2.30 or RM4.20 or RM5.00.

For those who choose to hold on, I am confident this counter will reward you with another 30% to 50% upside by 2026 and 80%-100% upside by 2030.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear dragon328,

The above article, I extract it from Sslee's blog : 6 months, 12 months and 18 months ROI contest. https://klse.i3investor.com/web/forum/forum-thread/608595869

I remain the champion in this competition because I selected YTLPower.

Please note that the share price of YTLPower moved past 5.00 before Mar 2025.
You have done a good job to benefit all readers in YTLPower forum.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.

If you read the Macquarie report carefully, the projections show that YTLP EPS will rise to over 50 sen in FY2026 then over 62 sen in FY2029. Even if I apply a PER of 12x, the share price should be rising to RM6.00 by FY2026 and RM7.44 by FY2029.

I am arguing for a fairer PER of 15x for a blue chip with growing earnings, so I expect the share price should be trading at RM7.50 by FY2026 and RM9.30 by FY2029.

Had you sold off at RM5.00 after earning a RM4.00 profit after holding for 30 years or so, then you would miss out another RM4.00 gain in next 5 years. Nobody could guess it right and sell at the peak. Long term investment gives you the certainty of returns with compounding effects.

@freedomfund, you sold off your holdings of YTL Power thinking that it is over-valued at RM5.00. But we do not think so. YTL Power is one of the cheapest blue chips in Bursa, trading at forward FY2025 PER of just 11x based on my estimate and also Macquarie/Hong Leong analysts' projections.

It is perfectly fine for each side to express own views here, but please support it with facts and figures.

Show me how you arrive at the view that the counter was over-valued at RM5.00. Simply based on the fact that the share price has gone up 7 times in past 1 year??

FYI, great company stocks like McDonalds, Coca Cola and Microsoft shares had gone up 50 times or 200 times in 10-20 years. Had you sold off after the share went up by 7x, you would have missed out on the subsequent bigger rally.

I would just hold onto a stock as long as its fundamentals are intact, valuation is still cheap and earnings are still growing, irrespective of how much the share price has gone up before.

3b) YTL Power share price was trading at below RM1.00 for several years before 2022 as the main asset PowerSeraya was making losses then. Now PowerSeraya has turned in hundreds of million dollars of profits every year, I expect skepticism from all angles especially those who had missed out on the share price rally. I think you may not have a good understanding on how the electricity market works in Singapore. It has always been a competitive market, so I do not understand what you meant by "With competitive biddings, the margin will soon be conservative again." The Singapore electricity has always seen competitive biddings for many years, in fact each genco needs to submit competitive bids for every half an hour for their generating capacity. The margin does not depend on competitive bidding itself, or the bidding behaviour or pattern, it depends on demand and supply. I have explained this for "n"th times, but many just choose to ignore the fact. That's not my problem. The electricity supply is tight now and will get even tighter in next 2 years. What I expect to see is increasing bigger margin for gencos in coming quarters due to the tight supply, as more demand comes in from new data centres, EV charging and offices' & households' air-condition usage due to heat waves.

It is a cyclic kind of thing. When the supply becomes bigger as new generating capacity comes online, eg. the new 600MW unit from Keppel and Sembcorp in 2026, the reserve margin becomes better and gencos' profit margin may come down. But as the current electricity demand growth is very strong at over 4% p.a. (or peak demand growth of over 300MW per year), the anticipated increase in demand in 2024 to 2026 will be almost 1,000MW and the new capacity of 1,200MW from Keppel and Sembcorp will be just enough to cater for such demand growth, as each 600MW unit will need to reserve some capacity for internal consumption around 3%, spinning reserves about 2-3% and contingency reserve of another 5% (so the net supply will be about 1,200MW x (100% - 10%) = 1,080MW.

For this reason, I do not expect gencos' retails margin will drop a lot in 2026 as the new capacity will be well absorbed by the demand growth. Furthermore, the new capacity from Keppel and Sembcorp will not be brought in a way that will destroy the generation margin for all gencos, otherwise Keppel and Sembcorp themselves will also suffer low margin for their existing 1400MW and 1800MW capacity.

The upcoming Q3 result will show how much PowerSeraya has "normalised" after the TPC was implemented from July 2023. This "normalisation" of earnings in PowerSeraya has been exaggerated and overplayed by some local analysts.

As for the selling of 2.2m shares by Dato' Seri Michael Yeoh in Dec 2023 was just a very small portion of what he had. For what purpose he sold is not up for us to speculate, but time has told that the selling was premature as the share price has since more than doubled up.

It is perfectly fine if you have sold off your holdings in YTL Power, some more as you said after holding them for 30 years or so. I will not comment on nor speculate why you chose to sell off, it is your choice.

But when you chose to talk bad on the company prospects just after you sold off the holdings, it does not look so good on your intention. It will jeapodise the interests of those of us who choose to hold on.

Please go and enjoy whatever profit you have made from YTL Power, and go invest in other counters you feel more comfortable.

@freedomfund, congratulations on your fat gains from investing in YTL Power for last decades!

I have slightly different views from what you spelled out up there:

2) on Yes, it is too early to call it a failure. When YTLP started the telco business, it got into the wrong technology of LTE while the incumbent telcos were raking in fat profits from 3G voice business. We can see that Green Packet which got the same LTE licence went burst, but YTLP Yes survived due to tight cost control and also 1bestariNet project which gave steady cashflows to the group for several years.

3a) The tie up with Nvidia is just at the starting stage now and time will tell if it is a lucrative business or not. Analysts like CLSA, Ambank, Hong Leong and most recently Macquarie appear to be very bullish on the AI data centre business of YTL Power. I believe they have done relevant research into data centre business in the US and Australia and in the region to make them convinced of the good prospects. The tie up with Nvidia gives a very strong competitive advantage to YTL Power in doing the AI data centre business, as Nvidia GPUs are the most powerful with dominant market share of over 80%. And Nvidia is not any other company, it is the 3rd largest company in the world with market cap of over USD2.3 trillion. Analysts are giving target prices of USD1000-1,350 to Nvidia, meaning that its market cap may test USD3.0 billion in coming months. Why are all these big name analysts are bullish on Nvidia? It cannot be just a hype to make a USD2.3 trillion company. Nvidia is putting in tremendous efforts in coming out with even more powerful GPUs every year, in order to pull him ahead of competition. Why all the biggest tech companies like Microsoft, AWS, Google and Meta are spending tens of billion dollars every year on AI data centres? Because they see it as the future growth area for their business. These are the biggest names in tech, you cannot say all of them are just jumping into the hype.

AI is the future growth, no matter how you think and whether you want to face it or not. Those in the stage of denial will be replaced. I cannot tell how long this AI data centre will remain hot, but I believe the pie is large enough for YTL Power to at least secure 200MW of AI data centre deals from these big techs. That would be enough to drive the earnings to explosive growth in next 3 years. You just have to believe in the ability of YTLP management and the chieftain to deliver in coming months, I do.

AEON reported superb set of quarterly result for Q1 with net profit of RM57 million.

If this momentum continues into Q2, I think the share price can break RM1.50 within this year.

We cannot compare the share price of YTLP directly with TNB's as YTLP has a share cap of 8.2b while TNB has a smaller share cap of 5.8b.

It is more appropriate to compare the market cap of both: YTLP at RM41.0b, much lower than TNB's market cap of RM71.9b.

Tenaga is forecast to make a net profit of RM4.5 billion for Dec FY2025 while YTL Power is expected by Macquarie to make a net profit of RM4.2 billion for June FY2026.

Compare the PER of both:

YTL Power at forward PER of just 9.8x FY2026 earnings
TNB is at forward PER of 16.0x FY2025 earnings

I expect the valuation of YTL Power to close the gap in coming 2 years to at most a 5%-10% discount to TNB's valuation of 16x PER. So, come 2026, I expect YTL Power to trade up to 15x EPS 51.2 sen = RM7.68.

Johor land is very hot now due to booming data centre development in the state. Accordingly land prices have been going up and up. YTL Power had the far-sight 2 years ago to have bought the Kulai's 1640 acre of land at just RM6.00 psf. Now land prices in the vicinity has gone up by 4x to 23 times!

If we use the recent transaction prices of land in Johor recently, ranging from RM26 psf (KSL land acquisition of 183.33 acres at RM211.6 million on 30 April 2024) to RM138 psf (AME land disposal of 34.91 acres for RM209.8 million on 13 May 2024), YTLP's 1640 acres of land in Kulai is worth RM1.8 billion to RM9.8 billion.

On the other hand, that also shows the competitive advantage that YTL Power has in terms of developing new data centres in Johor as its land is large and relatively cheap.

According to RHB research, IOIPG is the second largest land owner in Johor with 5,448 acres of land in Johor.

If we use the recent transaction prices of land in Johor recently, ranging from RM26 psf (KSL land acquisition of 183.33 acres at RM211.6 million on 30 April 2024) to RM138 psf (AME land disposal of 34.91 acres for RM209.8 million on 13 May 2024), IOIPG's 5488 acres of land in Johor is worth RM6.0 billion to RM33.0 billion.

If revalued, this would add a valuation of RM1.10 to RM6.00 per share to IOIPG.

Macquarie research initiates coverage on YTL Power with a target price of RM7.30 per share.

Expect Macquarie and other analysts to upgrade YTL correspondingly to beyond RM4.00.

@cgtan2020, pm the report to you

Macquarie places a lot of weight into YTLPower's AI data centre business with forecase net profit contribution of as much as RM1.5 billion in FY2026 from 100MW of AI data centres, rising to RM2.4 billion net profit contribution in FY2029 from 200MW AI data centres and to RM3.5 billion in FY2029 from 300MW AI data centres.

For the non-AI data centre business, Macquarie forecasts for 72MW of capacity in FY2026 with EBITDA contribution of RM161m in FY2025, rising to RM251m in FY2026 and RM461m in FY2029 from a total of 208MW of non-AI data centres.

Patience rewards.

Macquarie research initiates coverage on YTL Power today with a BUY call and target price of RM7.30.

This is the highest among all analysts' tp

Cryptolover, it is never easy for corporates to invest a lot in ESG, more so when ESG issues have been weaponised by certain parties against others, a good example is our palm oil products.

Genting Singapore has done its parts in ESG as highlighted by the sustainability statements given in its Q1 FY2024 quarterly report:

The Group published its FY2023 Sustainability Report, highlighting our achievements and progress towards
our Sustainability Master Plan 2030. In 2023, we achieved a 29% reduction in carbon emissions intensity
against a 2015 baseline and over $1.2 million in community investments. Equarius Hotel became the first
hotel in Singapore to achieve the WELL Certification at the Gold level, alongside WELL Health-Safety Rating
for the ten properties in the resort. The WELL certifications recognise our commitment to enhancing occupant
well-being through our buildings and practices. In March 2024, Hotel Ora was certified as BCA Green Mark
Platinum Super Low Energy in recognition of our efforts to consciously integrate sustainability principles in
our business.

https://klse.i3investor.com/web/blog/detail/dragon328/2024-05-11-story-h-181779531-Genting_Snigapore_Sentosa_IR_Driving_Growth

For weekend reading

https://klse.i3investor.com/web/blog/detail/dragon328/2024-05-11-story-h-181779531-Genting_Snigapore_Sentosa_IR_Driving_Growth

Patience rewards

If the revenue increase is as high as RM146m as hng33 stated above, and most of the topline increase flows through to the bottom line, then net profit could increase by RM110 million a year and this upcoming Q1 FY24 may see net profit jump to:
RM15m + RM110m/4 *2/3 = RM33 million

It will be interesting to see how much profit PBA can achieve after the water tariff hike.

If there is no more provision for deferred tax charges, my estimation is for RM15m (normal quarterly profit before tariff hike) + RM60m/4 *2/3 = RM25 million net profit for this coming Q1 FY2024

The recently announced 13% pay rise for civil servants from Jan 2025 will be positive for AEON.

Hopefully the share price will soon go back to RM1.50 level when I first bought in some two years ago.

@William Wang, thanks for the inputs. Ya we are looking at easily 30% to 50% energy loss in extracting hydrogen out of water in electrolyzers, in compression, in storage and transportation. If the green hydrogen is produced with solar energy, then the cost of producing green hydrogen may be 50% higher than the levelised cost of solar energy, i,e. up to 150% x RM0.22/kWh = RM0.33/kWh.

When LNG becomes higher than US$9.62/mmbtu, then the cost of generation using green hydrogen may become cheaper than burning LNG in Singapore. That's what everybody in Singapore energy sector including EMA is looking at for next few years.

You guys should read Hong Leong research report on IOIPG if you want to know more on its potential earnings explosion in next 2-3 years.

Net profit is projected to exceed RM1.0 billion by FY2026.

@cktay, yes when the green hydrogen production technology matures in the next 10 years or so, the cost of producing green hydrogen will be lower than LNG, and PowerSeraya will be able to reap the tremendous benefits of the cost advantage.

Just for simulation, if cost of green hydrogen becomes 10% cheaper than LNG in Singapore, then PowerSeraya's new 600MW hydrogen-ready CCGT will be able to generate additional profits of SGD37 million a year.

@Raymond, what you said about solar power up there is right to some extent. Solar power generation is intermittent and in Malaysia solar panels generate electricity for about 4 hours a day, so it cannot replace gas or coal-fired power plants entirely, unless you have massive battery or other forms of energy storage.

But if you calculate the levelised cost of generation, solar power has become much cheaper than gas or even coal-fired power at current prices. Based on LSS4 bid results, the winning bids show that solar projects can provide decent returns at just RM0.22/kWh.

In comparison, at current crude oil prices of about USD80/bbl and current LNG prices, an efficient F-class CCGT has a generation cost of US$9.82/mmbtu /1.05506 GJ/mmbtu x 3600/50% GJ/GWh = USc 6.7/kWh or RM0.317/kWh.

CCGT generating cost was almost double last year when LNG spot prices went up to as high as US$18.30/mmbtu.

LSS4 bids were based on solar panel prices of around US$700/kWp then, now solar panel prices have dropped by almost 80% to US$120-150/kWp. So the levelised cost of generation for solar power will drop from RM0.22/kWh to below RM0.20/kWh.

As for rooftop solar panel installation, it has been selling like hot cakes among industrial factories and commercial buildings like shopping malls, as the payback period is as short as just 3 years, with the green tax allowance. For residential houses, the payback is about 6-7 years without the green tax allowance. I know this well as I was selling solar power solutions to industrial factories before. And the quota allocated by the government every year was snapped up within months by factories that consume a lot of electricity.

@Raymond, YTL Power has got sufficient land at Kulai to install solar power to power up the 500MW data centre it is building. For the first phase of 48MW with SEA Ltd., YTL Power is getting power supply from Tenaga as it does not make sense to install solar power just for 48MW. When the next data centre is ready, YTL Power shall install sufficient solar power for all the data centres.

Then YTL Power will be able to save a lot of electricity costs as the mean generating costs of solar power are in the range of 22 sen/kWh to 27 sen/kWh, while Tenaga is supplying electricity to all data centre operators at 59 sen/kWh.

It is now an opportune time for YTL Power to install solar power as solar penal prices have dropped by almost 80% since last year.

Some funds bought over 4.5 million shares of YTL Power at RM5.00 and above today, but retailers sold it down to 4.95 in the last hour or two. What a pity!

The data centre game is real as can be seen from so many news flows recently on big tech companies pouring in billions into Johor/Singapore on new AI data centres to be built over next 4 years.

YTL Power has all it takes to be a big player (up to 500MW) in the data centre business in the next 2-3 years. If all 500MW of data centres are taken up in next few years, potential earnings from data centre segment will be larger than earnings contribution from power generation and water segments.

The smile on our face will get even broader once we see explosive earnings from Mcement and YTL in following quarters

https://klse.i3investor.com/web/blog/detail/rhbinvest/2024-05-08-story-h-181895661-Trading_Stocks_IOI_Properties_Group

IOIPG's strong fundamentals and explosive earnings growth from Singapore and hotel division will definitely push its share price to a breakup above RM2.36 very soon.

@RJ87, correct, KSL is the property company that made the most profit in 2023 with net profit of RM416 million, followed by SimeProp RM408 million and SP Setia RM298 million.

But KSL market cap is only a fraction of the other property companies like Mah Sing and SP Setia.

Google will be another potential customer for YTL Power's AI data centre park in Kulai.

In fact, all the big clouds such as Microsoft, Google, Meta and AWS are potential customers who could contract for YTL Power to build new AI data centres for them to operate for their AI cloud computing business.

This is good news, AWS planned investment of US$9 billion in AI data centres and infrastructure in Singapore region will add more AI jobs to the already competitive landscape in Johor-Singapore.

As Singapore has a limit of 50MW for new data centre builds per year, the headline figure of US$9 billion implies an investment of US$2.25 billion a year for max 50MW of AI data centre, which is deemed very expensive.

It costs about half the figure, or about US$1.2 billion only, to build a similar 50MW AI data centre in Johor.

I am sure when AWS team carries out due diligence, they will realise how much they could save by having YTL Power to build the AI data centres for them at the Kulai park which has a fibre connection to Singapore to reduce latency to minimum.

The proposed 13% hike in salary for civil servants will likely benefit KSL a lot as the company targets to sell a lot of affordable housing to this group of buyers