From the looks of it, the management has no intention for aggressive expansion, so unlikely to see any strong growth. Quarter operations review confirmed that the increase in sales and profit are mainly because of higher average selling price, higher gross margin and forex gain. Sales volume remain similar, perhaps slight growth.

If management decide to go into plantation or doing something that foolish, im the first to sell.

The mgt has missed a great opportunity to execute their 10% share buy back now that the share price is trading very close to fair value, but i still believe increasing dividend or doing a lumpsum cash release or bonus issue is the right thing to do for the company and shareholders.

因为他们看到公司的未来，他们对公司忠心耿耿，并以公司为荣 - This reply reminds me of how Arul reply the public on 1MDB lol

If you are interested to study more about retail, Forbes has a good 3 parts writeup on Zara, Uniqlo & H&M

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregpetro/2012/11/05/the-future-of-fashion-retailing-the-hm-approach-part-3-of-3/

A summary
Uniqlo focuses on technological differentiation, using long product development cycles and offering basics that appeal to a large consumer base.

Zara has built a supply chain that allows it to follow fashion trends and deliver goods in near real-time, they refresh their merchandise once every 2 weeks. That explains why they can price their product so competitively while renting the most expensive places in city.

H&M uses a hybrid of the Uniqlo and Zara models. It manages to merge a commitment to longevity while staying responsive to fashion trends.

I think Padini is not about to disappear, the retail industry is enough to accommodate all these players.

But retail industry is inherently a challenging business in terms of competitions, fashion, trend and taste. So the key is to understand what is the defensibility of Padini. Is it price? The brand? The quality & design? Or maybe the supply chain?

Once you know their defensibility, you have to find out how much would they need to reinvest to maintain or grow that. Then you probably have an idea how much Padini is worth.

If you take the average of FCF over 9 years, which is 3.64 mil, or if you just take the positive only FCF of all 9 years, average is 7.76 mil. I would feel that EV of 55 mil is a fair price, nothing undervalued.

Depends on situation, putting FD makes sense when the stock market is overvalued.

But you won't be surprised many people willing to invest in shares with earning yield like at 0.1%

I dont think it makes sense to annualized the return, no matter how to slice and dice it, ure are not getting 49 cents back from $1 investment.

Free warrant when it isn't actually 'free'.

Johotin sell condensed milk, Dutch sell fresh and powdered milk so it is very different. I dont think baby drink condensed milk

if Careplus nta sits at 20 cents, why would glove companies pay them 60 cents, unless they have some patent or proprietary technology?

Yes acquiring is faster than building a new plants & equipment, but dont see how they want to pay such skyhigh price for it.

common sense right, if you can prove you are that good making 200% a year. it is easy for people to give you 10 mil easily. end of the year it will turn into 30 mil, you collect 20% , that is 4 million. You are a millionaire in a year, u dont need capital.

if someone can predict the stock, aka economy accurately, they will be worth 100 million, that is a conservative figure. Why would someone worth 100 million wants company car, and climb corporate ladder.

Well, if they can predict top gainers accurately, why would they want to work in institutions? Same for you, if you can do it consistently over the long time, why do you want to make RM3

I think you are underminig your own potential, charging people RM3.

You see, Genneva guarantee 3% per month or 36% per year, people are willing to refinance their house to buy their gold. Thats the power

Considered you can do more than 200% a year, I dont think Malaysia's top 10 billionaires can match you. Imagine all the individual investors, institutions will come to you.

wow D7zul you can make money everyday, 20 days a month since Jan 2015. If 1% a day, this is conservative, because top gainers cant be 1%, you are at least 200% gain right now.

1. This is the whole index, which is very different from individual stock movement
2. Past does not represent the future, especially things as superficial as using months to determine your decision
3. Dont be fool by randomness, these are all 'noises', that is one of the problem with back testing. It is just as easy to find the perfect hour (sell at 10am come back at 3pm) or the perfect day (sell on Mon come back at Thurs). Heck you can even use temperature or weather to prove a certain temperature or certain weather has positive return and maybe thunder day has negative return. Which has nothing to do with stocks at ll.

nah you dont need to apologize, thats too much to ask

Now dreampredator, let me explain. Firstly the book written by Marcus Aurelius has totally nothing to do with the meditation youre thinking.

So what just happened? You are bringing preconception and belief, you are making assumption without clarifying, now that is very dangerous when it comes to investing. Preconception is a psychological bias that can harm you in investing.

2nd. You do not seek to understand what is the purpose of meditation and you have already shrug off as something zen-like and only monk would do, or some hippie that wants to escape reality does it. So what just happened? You are carrying your ego into conversation thus you do not bother to ask what is meditation, that is very dangerous in investing. You have to constantly challenging your assumptions to minimize capital loss.

Now Stephen Hawking would be disappointed because considered that your intelligence is way above him. Making this kind of mistake is considered a grade 1 mistake. Scientist always challenge their own assumptions, they are not to be treasured.

Told you you wont be interested. and by the way, the book writes nothing about meditation.

And while we are on the topic of meditation, there are US soldiers fighting in Iraq that uses meditation to deal with the burden of war and the probability of death at anytime, talk about escaping into unreal perfect world.

Meditation by Marcus Aurelius is a start. But dont think ull be interested. Written more than 2000 years ago

I dont know bro, i think you can get more crap in your head on forum and magazine then reading a great book though

oh wow fck u beat Stephen Hawking too, he havent figure out the theory of everything, u must have beat him to it.

Dreampredator, good on you. Now i realise gut instinct, read magazine is the new 'smart'. You blew everyone out of the water bro, not just Superinvestors but Einstein, Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Newton etc. What a legend

There are actually quite a few US companies that have performed as well as Berkshire in the long run, for example Leucadia and Markel

DreamPredator, im very impressed with your record, by the sound of it, 200-500% is easily achievable by the predator. All the more impressive when one just need to go forum, check magazine, feel ppl psychology and gut instinct.

Most of the superinvestors read 500 pages or 8 hours a day only managed to perform 20-30%, so i must give it to you. You are beyond superinvestors. Rarer than superman

ks55, one being 22sen, another being 1.20, what does that have to do with the probability of losing?

To stretch your logic, so something that is priced at $100 has greater chance of falling than one at 10 cents?

Hi Angie, something you might be interested. Deep value case studies but based on UK companies. There's a link for Jeroen Bos and appendix.

http://csinvesting.org/2015/10/13/deep-value-investor-and-case-studies/

oh yes please reread my title. My title says - is Latitude cheaper now comparatively to before USD appreciation. If you kindly reread it again and again, you will know it has nothing to do with valuation, merely a comparison against currency level. And if you can reread again, this article is for you to think, i never say anything about Latitude being expensive, so not sure why you are so piss off duh.

erm in case u didnt read properly, this post talks about currency only, nothing else

And im not sure why you are using EPS to compare with currency. EPS can go up or down depends on how many logs they export, nothing to do with currency.

www.gurufocus.com is a good place to find those info.

Normally what i do is i google say 'focus lumber ev/ebit' you will see gurufocus results show up. they got virtually all the metrics in there. Can't say they are 100% accurate, by my experience is very reliable.

nevermind, you can google if ure interested.

financial term? so PE isnt a financial term?

EV/EBIT is a replacement of PE, not an addition to PE.

Well, seems like you dont like to listen to different opinion, is that how you invest? You just want to listen what is nice to your ears?

I rank it by EV/EBIT, so who is cheaper?

Latitude 7.50

Homeritz 10.18

Pohuat 9.17

Hevea 10.87

Shh 11.97

Flbhd 5.53

Jaycorp 8.30

well to me buying their share is to be a shareholder, to be a shareholder means to own part of the company.

are you buying company with biggest revenue or cheapest company?

so FLBHD has 40% of the market cap in cash, who is cheaper?

Hi Growthinvestor & iiinvestsmart, if you are switching in between ID please just say so, no need to behalf here and there.

Good long term holding is relative understand bro? You can buy something at overvalued price and in the long term earn CAGR 5%, it is still called 'good' if besides FD 4%, you can't find anything that can deliver 6% in this universe, get it bro?

I believe current price isn't fair value because historical ROE level does not justify current multiples over book value; 10 years historical record shows poor FCF, low barrier to entry thus does not justify multiples over BV, power of buyers will surpress margin and reduce return.

I never say that they can't grow from here, but rest assured at the current price you are 50% speculating the future of VS 50% anchoring to present value of the business. The bet is yours. If you want to earn avg 5% in the long term, this is probably a good price to buy now. If you want to earn avg >30% a year in the long term, this is not worth the chance.

Growthinvestor, i dont see how it is contradicting. First, KC intrinsic value is his own, nothing to do with mine. 2nd, his IV is at RM3+ and i say RM3+ is good for long term, whats wrong with that? Buying it at fair value, if you want.

If stock A will go from RM1 to RM2 in 10 years, means if you hold for 10 years, you will earn average of 10% a year. IF you buy at fair value, you will earn 10% in long run, if you buy at overvalued, you will earn less than 10%. Simple as that. This is a scenario considered you dont sell but hold for long term.

Alpha, from the sound of it, 200% per year shouldnt be that hard for you, and more so irony when you say 'if you are so active here, you shouldnt looking for safe shares', considered that to achieve an outrageous return like 200% consistently year in year out, one must need a lot of knowledge and skills, and i believe being active on forum has no correlation with making 200%, if indeed you can achieve that consistently for 10 years, you should have 2000%.

If you believe jumping in and out can easily net you 100-200% per year, let's just say everyone outside your fence is trying to do that as well. Whether you can achieve that or not, only you know your own record. Superinvestors making 20-30% in the long run is considered rare breed. Maybe you're the rare breed so rare you can do 100% in the long run.

Let's be honest, there is no winner. If you buy something at an 'overvalued' price, considered that you hold it for long term, you return will just be lower than those that buy something at an 'undervalued' price.

What needs to be hyped about VS has all already been build into the price, if you buy it right now, it is very likely your return will be poor in the long term, if you buy it from where it is 50% before, then you are likely to do well in the long term. Simple as that.

hi iiinvestsmart, i dont think uve answer my question.

How do you define winner? Do you declare winner for everyone that buy IFCAMC when it was at RM1.80, or when it is sitting below RM1 now?

How about DKSH? Do you declare winner when the price is on track to hit RM10 last time? or you declare it now at RM4?

Hi Alpha, I had scientex since Sep 2012, i bought it at RM2.47, the dividend return is 8.9% of my original investment capital per year even if the share price never move.

I like this sentece "Whichever you follow you could make money, you just have to know what majority of the people like in this kind of environment " - Everyone know who are the majority. So does the majority make the most money, or the minority?

growthinvestor, growth companies has nothing to do with great investment, if investing is as easy as identifying growth and no-growth companies, we will all be rich lol

growthinvestor, i never say growth investors didn't make any money, did you see any 'growth' in my writing?

All im saying is, call whatever yourself you like, if you are following people blindly, i dont even need to ask how much you have made over past 5 years, because very likely you wouldnt have a clue, cause you didnt keep a record.

I dare to put it out there, those that followed KYY or anybody out there without a firm understanding what theyre buying, following blindly and enjoy themselves in those feel good stories of growth, close to none of them would have made any money if you look across a 5 years span.

In the short term, everyone looks like a hero. In the long term, you can differentiate who has real caliber and who doesn't

I dont get it why people considered looking at cash flow as academic, if business isn't build to generate profit and in turn generate cash flow, then i dont know what it is for.

William Thorndike wrote in his book - The Outsiders, featuring 8 unconventional CEOs all focus on cash flow generation. I am more than happy to send you a link to have a read.

The conclusion is - The job of a CEO is to allocate capital to generate high return. Looking at VS past, their ROE/ROIC had been mediocre, would that improve from now? Report card is still being return. Does that mean you can't make money from it? Nope you still can. Does it mean you are a failure if you miss it? No ure not.

Tom Murphy - Capital Cities Broadcasting - 29 years - Total return 20,400% or CAGR 19.9%
Henry Singleton - Teledyne - 27 years - Total return 18,000% or CAGR 20.4%
Bill Anders - General Dynamics - 17 years - Total return 3,000% or CAGR 23.3%
John Malone - TCI - 25 years - Total return 9,000% or CAGR 30.3%
Katharine Graham - Washington Post - 22 years - Total return 8,900% or CAGR 22.3%
Bill Stiritz - Ralston Purina - 19 years - Total return 5,700% or CAGR 20%
Dick Smith - General Cinema - 43 years - Total return 6,840% or CAGR 16.1%
Warren Buffett - Berkshire Hathaway - 46 years - Total return 626,500% or CAGR 20.7%

koonthebest, why dont you get a life

KYY, like buffett says, if he doesnt know something, he will put it in the 'too hard' pile. That doesn't mean it is a bad investment, it just means he do not understand it enough to value it.

He doesn't buy Amazon, Netflix, Tesla etc, does that mean they're bad business or investment? Not at all.

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so" - Mark Twain

Same theory, you buy VS base on your yardstick, doesn't mean anyone that doesn't follow you is ignorant or dumb.

If someone, with his own competencies, skills, capabilities came to the conclusion that he has found another stock that offered a better upside and lower downside at a higher probabilities than VS, he is already making the correct decision.

All investments are based on opportunity cost and optionality.

Because they are 'non-operating'. As Toby said, just like those excess cash, something that can be redeployed if necessary without jeopardising daily operations of the business.

Hi Angie,

Ill breakdown your formula, I will exclude minority interest and preferred to make it cleaner.

EV = Market Cap + Borrowings - [Excess cash]
EV = Market Cap + Borrowings - [Net working capital]
EV = Market Cap + Borrowings - [Current assets - current liabilities]
EV = Market Cap + Borrowings - [Development cost + Inventories + Receivables + Cash & bank balances - Borrowings - Trade payables - Dividend payables - Tax liabilities]

You see your formula is adding borrowings and minus borrowings again. Another thing is EV = Operating assets when you refer to the pictorial above. In some ways, you are double counting many things and canceling things off like borrowings.

Nothing wrong with debates, assumption are to be challenged, not treasured.