I had been reading shares recommendation article from many bloggers. They taught us how to study, choose and value a company. I read many good companies’ researches from them. In fact, there are many good fundamental companies in Malaysia market. Somehow, I rarely read any articles pointing out a weakness of a not performing company or a profit making company with its price not moving up.

Today, I would like to share about how to point out a weakness of a company. I will use AYS Ventures Berhad (5021) as an example.

AYS’s business activities can be divided into two divisions:

•    Trading of steel products and all types of construction materials
•    Manufacturing of panels, purlin and wire and steel products

From the perspective of PE and D/Y, AYS is pretty attractive even though its ROE is slightly lower. In addition, its current price is lower than par value and NTA. By just looking at these indicators, I believe most of the investors will think that AYS is undervalued.

By looking at the quarter result, AYS is a profit making company even though it made losses on FY15Q3. It seems like AYS is doing pretty well on the latest quarter. However, things might not be the same as what we thought. 

Why a good profit making company with good indicator is always in downtrend? Three years ago, AYS was once at the price of RM0.60 but now it only RM0.22! 

Firstly, in the last quarter of FY15, AYS’s net profit had taken into account of fair value adjustment of investment properties of RM3.398m! That’s mean after deduct the fair value adjustment, AYS whole year net profit will only left RM3.66m. Its PE will suppose to be 22.93! AYS is actually doing badly compared to FY14; its net profit had reduced 70%! FYI, fair value adjustment is a method of revalue the asset and adjusts its price according. The gain in value of the asset will treat as other income in P&L. If a person just look at the figure without goes through the explanation, he/she will easily fall into trap. 

Secondly, the steel price is the major factors for AYS’s business. The depressed steel price is the main reason why it performed weaker in FY15 compared to FY14. In other words, steel price is directly proportional to AYS net profit if other factors are the same.

Thirdly,

One doesn’t need to be expert to analyze a company’s financial statement. We just need to simplify the data into something understand just like the table above. AYS net debt is increasing from year to year and now it was up to RM200m! It was a very huge amount for a company. FYI, AYS’s market capitalization is only around RM85m, which is 2x lesser than its debt! It is very risky to invest in such a high debt company.

Lastly, the company FY15’s net profit is only RM3.66m after deducting fair value adjustment, but AYS’s total director remuneration is RM6.28m. It means that AYS net profit suppose to be RM9.94m before deduct remuneration and 63% of it had been paid up as remuneration.  The Group Managing Director is collecting RM3.35m of remuneration a year! It was hilarious! 

Have a look with the following Managing Director’s remuneration. Any of the company is performing better than AYS and their remuneration is 3x lower than AYS.

HOMERITZ --> RM600,000                                            

HEVEA --> RM750,000

PERSTIM --> RM850,000

TASEK --> RM1,000,000

PADINI --> RM1,200,000

So, can I conclude that AYS’s director only care for their own welfare?

For all the reason above, personally I think AYS is not able to attract investor’s attention.

Feel free to comment and correct me if I am wrong, or you can leave me an email at richeho_92@hotmail.com

Just for sharing.

http://rhinvest.blogspot.com/2015/08/unfavourable-factors-of-company.html