Forex rate from 30/09 RM3.28 (Outstanding hedging contracts, RM369,976,000)
Forex rate 31st December RM3.49/USD (Outstanding hedging contracts, RM216,469,000)
Forex increase of 21 cents, from previous close = -17million losses.

Assume all things equal, guessing Notion's next Q results.

Now forex at 3.60, 11 cent increase but outstanding position reduced by 1/3.
If March 31st RM close at 3.60 = (Half the forex loss 11cent vs 21cent, * 2/3 outstanding position) = forex losses of 5.28 million, profit of 10million = net profit 4.7million

March 31st RM close at 3.70 = (Loss 21cent, * 2/3 outstanding position) = forex losses of 11.28 million. 10-11.28m = net loss of 1million

Where the forex goes, notion goes.... the most ironic part of it all is, if RM strengthen after March/June... :S

Q result is out, supposed to be profitable 10 million, but the forex lost 17 million, overall 1st Q lost 5 million.

Electricity tariff reduction will make for an interesting march-june Q report.

Oil price is projected to stay low for the next few months. Gonna be interesting to see the impact on their Q results.. but have to wait til 25+ feb I guess..

But the AL says their current forex position as of Sept 2014, so I'm also not sure.
But somewhere in the last 2 Q results, I don't know which d, even when USD keep rising, that quarter they did made forex gain from their hedging.. which means they hedge the other way already. Anyway, will we c their Q result b4 or after CNY?

Interesting... seems like they did hedge the other way now... USD gain, means they gain more, page 84. The figures on the right is for 2013

If this is true, they'll gain a lot from the forex then.. we can only confirm by end of Feb when they release their 1st Q result.

United States Dollar:
- strengthened by 5% 869 (965)
- weakened by 5% (869) 965

I'd rather senior management/directors to spend their efforts on getting their CNC utilization up. I really believe their hp business will be a wasted effort. It's really really not easy. Even if each phones costs RM100, that'll be 5million.
And once your phones don't sell within 6 months, they're obsolete, and you have to write them off. I'm speaking from personal experience, and really don't feel good about their intentions on this. Risk reward is just not there.

I'm not too fancy into their smartphone selling business. Again, they're going into a totally different segment which has its own headache. Actually, I'd rather if they cancel their intention to do that. It's NOT EASY, and I foresee a lot of headache over it. 1st of, which market segment you want to penetrate? Also, do you have the support lines for warranty, or the firmware update issues? A lot of challenges. I've personally been in a company who did rebranding/resale.. not good story.
Actually, I will email them to don't do it.. But I doubt they will listen.

On to better news. WD has just announced their Q results yesterday.
QoQ, their enterprise HDD sales increased from 7.763m to 8.041m abt 3.5% increase.
So with this info, we can safely say their HDD segment will at least maintain their sales, if not grow by 1-2%

This is done for my personal review of my holdings of notion, and I believe is well balanced, supported with numbers, and also highlighting worst and best case scenario, I'm still accumulating and plan to continue accumulate during this 4x period. Selling now, is similar to selling at bottom, and you will only make other people gain money on the upside.

Disclaimer, I've been and still is Notion shareholder, so read it with bias :P

Overall, here's what my educated/informed guess is.
Assuming there's no external factor like, sudden big finance collapse like 08.

Year end result for 2014, Notion loss RM25,639m,
Please note the 25 million write off for their silver investment.......
If you take that off, notion only loss RM639 operationally, to put it in very very simplistic math.

So, assuming all things is equal, no growth from existing business (automative, HDD, [very unlikely SLR rebound]), no forex benefit (good USD to RM for 2nd half), no new business (glass), it's gonna be RM639 loss.

That's the worst case scenario I believe. So Lee, to answer you, Notion will survive.

A more likely one is

1st Q
Breakeven, or slightly profitable around 500k-1mil? This depends on if they counter hedge again or not to balance their existing RM3.20 to USD hedge, which I believe they did previously, although I must say this hedging thing is like betting that I don't like.

2nd Q
Shld be the same with 1st Q, maybe better as it goes along.

3rd Q.
If RM still same exchange rate, serious upside gonna happen here just from forex gains alone. Forex gain at least 8% can be expected? If not more.
Assuming their glass business kicks in, again as i suspect they are loosing money from idle machines through depreciation of CNC machines/workers salary. Even if their net profit margin on glass is low, most important is, able to cover the depreciation losses, and salary of workers. Overall, I think the profitable Msian operations is covering for the depreciation loss in their Thai operations which has their main Nikon assembly line, thus the RM629 loss. Even if the glass business is done at 0% net profit, if they are able to at least cover the depreciation, rental, workers etc of their Thai operations, that should be significant.

4th Q.
More of the same with 3rd Q.

Overall outlook.
Pros.
Potential to gain new HDD customer.
Windows 10 to bring excitement for PC industry?
Forex gain.
Automotive segment is growing nicely, being a new segment, trend will continue, as car gets more safety features.
They're in talk with another HDD customer, which is great news.
(unlikely >> some minor peanuts gain from alcyone? hehe.. just say for fun)

Cons.
My main concern as shareholder is still on a 08 type of financial crisis.
Otherwise, as long as notion management is actively seeking new customers to put the idle CNC machines to use, I do not see any issues.

I always see people say Buy buy buy, or sell sell sell. Or die die die, or huat huat huat in the forums... makes me wonder how many % are actually klse gamblers, who don't make informed decisions...

Hi, Lee you will need to dig deeper for more info on that. It's because of their forex hedging when RM was stronger against USD like 2-1 years back. Back then they hedge USD to RM3.20 when RM was stronger.

HOWEVER... If you followed their Q reports, and do your own studies. They did made a contrary hedge last Q iirc, there's one Q which saw a spike in hedge amt, and it was profitable, suggesting they hedged the other way. And as the Kenanga report also states, their hedging position will only be fully exited in 3 -4 more months, assuming they didn't counter hedge again.

It's quite surprising people will jump into conclusions and I think your posting is very uninformed. It's not gonna be perfect for this Q and next, but it's not as bad as you say. YoY, and QoQ on a yearly basis, I'm quite certain Notion will be profitable, but as I always say, the 1st and maybe 2nd Q's result will only be slightly profitable.

TH buying in, maybe Notion management made some investors briefing to them. Who knows, something maybe cooking up. TH bought about 800,000 shares that's about 320k, small change to TH i guess, but it's still sizeable amount.

again, the glass business, don't expect too much from it. It's more like "since we have too many CNC machine sitting there doing nothing, might as well do some glass machining" I don't expect it to be on high margins, BUT...

Rather than having machines doing nothing, and workers idling, at least using them for 1% margin AND to cover depreciation of those assets will help a lot.

No la, it's just a proposal.. I think proposal will normally be approved, but it doesn't mean they will buy back their shares.
Previously Notion did buy back A LOT of shares, but that was when they cash rich. The Silver ex-investment, can actually be better used doing share buy back... too late for that now. I think technology stock will have some news to push it up, with Win 10 gaining more attention. But, realistically, I think notion 2nd Q results only we will see the effect of their glass business?

1st Q result, since alcyone is completely written off, expect notion to return to profitability, but maybe not by much.

No la, unrealistic expectations for RM2. It may go to 100 but i doubt more than that. Only thing im certain is, it's totally undervalued now.. But that's also true with other shares

Like i always say, when you cut loss, you're making someone else gain...
I'm still holding on :P

for all the notion bashing going on here, anyone read the latest announcement? Tabung Haji buying in... :)

Im not gonna be SO optimistic, although i must say, it's crazy to sell at this price. I wonder who's the background of the sellers though.... make no sense to sell at a loss at this stage seriously... and yes, im still here, i'm still accumulating :P

who's PPI anyway?

What's the truth you saying, who delete your comment? I'm still collecting.. oh well :/

whats wrong today,? MEGA sales again?

You can slowly wait Angel, I q-d 44.5 last night too hoping for some panic sales. No luck until now :/

As I say, there's a point where it's RIDICULOUS to sell anymore. Selling below 48 is a ridiculous price, and a move that'll just make the seller lose $.

The Alcyone I did follow up on, from what I can see, functionally, there's just something wrong with their 'leaching' operation, whatever they mined, they can't extract the silver out. Maybe inexperience, or there's a serious design flaw in their extraction process.. Anyway, we would expect them a senior management with years of being in the 'shares' business to be more prudent especially with 15 million bucks.

I rather they buy physical gold with the 15 million as a hedge, at least it will still be there physically or something. Oh well, rant's over.

Up to now, there's still no panic sales. Only a small group sold at 45.5, this is expected I guess.

Disclaimer 1st and foremost. At this stage, if you're not in, better don't buy, and wait to see how it goes next Q.
If you're already owner, not much point selling your share too. Since it's pretty much bottom already. And you'll sell at steep discount, that any good quarter will shoot the share price.

Basic earning per share depends on revenue. Notion should be profitable if their quarterly revenue is at 52-55 million, by right this last Q operationally they should be profitable (But, their higher cost of sales is a serious question mark at the moment... Maybe they putting in the costs of the so called handphone business into this Q?)

Again, if you exclude the 15 million writeoff, notion's operational loss for this year is 1 million only. Operationally, they're not far off from breakeven, if you consider the 1st two quarter sales results were horrible average of 42 million per Q. Their last 2 Q results average about 52 million.

To me, the maths is quite simple, they project growth in HDD and Automotive in future Q. And assume camera is stagnant.

As a safety measure, I predict their HDD and Automotive and camera all 3 segment no growth. If they can just maintain this 55 million sales, they should be profitable already with EPS of 3-4 cents.

Any potential growth in sales, or their so called handphone glass business, that's a potential bonus.

However, yes... the senior management track record is not good already to me.
Bad decision on Alcyone, announcements of glass business starting and then announce it delayed, overall I'm a bit more cautious of them now, and will price in a negative management bias overall.

Let's see how it goes then, I'm already in the boat.. oh well.

If you value the share on NAPS, you're selling a 110 cent share for 48 or less cents.

If you value the share on a very humble/conservative earning of 4 cents for 2015, at 12X PE, it's still valued at 48 cents, if any quarter it manage to outperform, we're easily talking EPS of 5 or 6 cents at least, which at 10x PE, is worth 50-60 cents.

No matter which 'method' you wanna use to calculate the 'fair value' selling at below 48 is as I say, sure lose and makes no sense at all. But I ADMIT, strangely enough, some people will do sell! Good chance for me to buy I guess :P

How to say leh, if you're already an shareholder now. I don't understand the logic to sell at this rate. Which is definitely just realize your losses. Especially, if you're someone who have hold the share past all the Q of losses n stuffs. The final silver writeoff, is a kitchen sinking exercise, there will be no more 'share of loss of associate' in the future Qs reports... Forex is at its peak already for USD as well. If you're a holder of notion when their sales is 47, 44 million per Q, why would you sell when their revenue per Q is now back to a relatively healthy 55 mil per Q?

But sadly, I believe there will be seller as previously mentioned. A lot of the worst news is already over, to sell now, again, I believe is gonna be a severely misguided choice, unless you have a sure win buy elsewhere. Well, who can guarentee you won't buy another lemon? There's just no more bad news (I hope :P ) to continuosly propel the share price down anymore. Any significant drop, to me is a purchase at what I believe is the bottom already.

Q results is out. The silver investment is written off d, at least that won't keep bleeding their next Q results.
Silver writeoff 9.8 mill partially offset by insurance gains of 3.7mil

If you say up or down is likely I'll say definitely down, since surely, there will be people who cut loss.

Still, now that the silver thingy is off the books, the net assets figures of 1.10 is still nice. Revenue is increasing to 55million per Q. Considering the year end net loss of Notion is 16million, you can actually see that IF NOT for the 15 million silver investment, Notion actually lost just 1 million. Of topic, but if the directors of notion also can get scammed from investment in 'shares'.... ahem. This just goes to show how dangerous it is. Any wonder why most of us lose money in the share market?


Ok, moving on. Shares is about forward looking right?
Assuming revenue of 55mil per q can be maintained for the next 4 Qs in 2015. And assuming their costs can be brought back down to the average ~sub 50mil per month. (I'm interested to know the sharp jump in Cost of Sales for this Q vs prior Qs..)
Assuming again their handphone business is talk for fun only.
Potential earnings for FY 2015, should be at least about 10 million. Around 3.5-4 cent EPS.

Forex is at an all time high of 3.35 to 1USD. I think there's only one way for the forex to go in the future, which is down. Or at worst, USD to RM ratio should stay at 3.35. Think overall their hedge position is for the USD to weaken right. So, a lower USD will be beneficial as they go along.

Short term, I'll see people will still sell. But if you look at the longer term, I think there's opportunity to make a buck here.

Again Unduk, at which point you think people are really crazy to sell? I'll be honest my AVG price is at abt 55 cents, but I'll be more than happy to buy more as it drops, which I believe, as most people dont have holding power, will definitely happen. However, I still believe that sellers are 'making' their paper loss into real loss. Might as well keep the shares at this rate, which is approaching the 'ridiculous' to sell price.

Whens the Q report coming out.....

Let's do a review of it together, I like to know what u think of ILB too. Personally, I look at things on a longer time frame once I identify a share that is profitable to me. So my views and opinions is need to be understood in 6months to 1 year timeframe.

Yupe, slow recovery. Need to test your Warren Buffet level of patience with this share. Its all depends on their dubai op now. Unfortunately still need to wait a long time until annual report before we know Dubai warehouse utilization %.

let's hope for a good Q results. I think they mostly will announce latest by friday?

Busy today, just Q at 75.5

Bohmiah, computer sales are not directly related to notion's business somehow... I did try to track notion's sales vs jcy's about 9?-12 months ago, when JCY got a big increase in sales. Notion's HDD sales remains the same. There's no correlation. There's actually an anti correlation in some quarters where JCY sales up, notion's HDD sales went down. I'll say they serve differenet segments. Notion, on enterprise disks, like SAS in servers I guess.
Good news is, enterprise storage is still growing, and will continue growth with the cloud buzzword now.
Also, in consumer HDD, assuming Notion can benefit, Win10 is showing some good promise, for those who want to consider this as good news. (HDD Neutral, it's been a steady revenue stream for a lot of quarters now. No up, no down, no surprise here)


SLR sales, well, for once, Nikon's not cutting their forecast anymore! So, that's a good news in its own I guess. (Neutral-sunset for now, with some potential moving forward. Depends on how Nikon positions themselves actually. One potential that unfortunately Nikon dont seem to be tapping or slowly try tapping, is 4k video recording. They will need this feature in their SLRs to give an edge vs phones.)

Automotive.
This is Notion's sunrise business, from their aggressive growth in the past few quarters. The industry trend for automotive is active safety measures now in Europe/US. So, definitely a lot of potential growth, if Notion serve their customer well. see how fast they can grow their automotive business.

Silver.
No surprise there for now, expect continuous writedown of ~2mil per Q over the next 4 Qs until the investment value in alcyone is approximately valued at ~RM5 mill. One surprising thing is, actually, if you exclude the silver investment writedown, IIRC, notion's FY2014 is actually profitable/very very small loss.

Again, if you're an investor, you will want to buy a company that can turn around, instead of getting stuck and dying when their business fundamental changed.
With Notion, I think up to now, it's fair to say we can see from HDD > SLR and now > Automotive.

I'm being passive in my assessment here, and purposely exclude their handphone/oil&gas business.

price wont drop indefinitely. I think you can see we're already reaching a stage where there's no seller joh, and ANY buying interest will jump it back to 81+. Those who're selling at 7x-80 ranges are what I'll consider the same 'LOT' of shares being ping ponged around ppl with no holding power. I think it's just under 1000lot that's actively being 'passed among each other with no holding power' each trying their best to lose money by cutting loss every 1-2% down I guess. I'll do my best to stabilize things with whatever small amount that i have available.. haha

Why up again, stay at 77 cent ma...
:/ always like this....

Yes yes... will buy.
Q results coming up in this next few days i guess?

But, won't have much new things, however, I'm expecting higher revenue for their dubai operations, with much less loss, and potentially turning profitable by next Q.

Well, we can always still hope for a special dividend announcement :P

I think if you want to quietly accumulate, there's of course ways to do it la.
If you buy with your name, you need to do bursa announcements. So lets say, if they have someone trusted maybe 5 people (who signed a legal contract with them), each 1 of them buy like 6%.
It won't trigger any announcements to bursa.

After they have finished buying in total 30%, they then do an off market transfer (direct sell), back to the directors, giving them just over 50% of the company. The off market transfer will be declared to bursa, but by that time, the takeover is almost complete.

They could in theory spread this out to 6 or more people each holding a smaller %....

Don't think they can. Their total shareholding just abt 25% max? Unless they make use of 3rd party to accumulate on their behalf n then one shot off market transfer back to them. Quarter results coming in a months time. Hope for good fubdamentals, n profits. Especially their Dubai ops.

the japanese director still buying in. Wont surprise me on monday to see another director purchase... dropping below 80 cents really crazy price.

Still one more week before i get my salary~~~ dont go up yet...

Timing the market? :P Dow's pretty green now... hard to say.. One thing's for sure, those who cut loss, just made someone elses gain

Now is super bear correction time, gonna drop la of course, but it's more because of fear rather than anything else. All drop, no matter which sector which company u buy.

Just very bad correction... now all fear and panic d.

Director is buying in at 80-84cents. This selling is again, becoming ridiculous now. Hope you guys keep sell until I get my salary :P

Market cap is 132m, assuming the directors have abt 30% in total now? Didn't check for real actual holding % still need abt 90 mil, which does seems a bit far off.

Selling seems to have slowed down a bit though, we're still talking about a NAPS company of Rm1.19, at this point I think the selling is becoming ridiculous, and since it's 52++ weeks low, the sellers at this point is totally selling at a loss I guess. Don't understand their mentality at times. While the director is selling, as I mentioned above, it seems someone was waiting for him to sell on the other hand of the Q. *or it could be a coincidence...

Mmm, Nikon's new cameras is a hit at least among the enthusiasts/pros with the 810, 750.. will need to see nikon's next Q results to see if there's any improvements.
HDD, expect same revenue.
Camera, can't be lower than last Q's 15mill right(iirc)
Automotive, (should still be higher)
Forex, closed at 3.29, so will have some forex lost as Mark to Market rule, is higher than last Q's forex exchange.
Silver... Now.. this is something else I want to discuss. Is the share of loss of associate a recurring theme (that will continue drain abt 2.x mill per quarter forever), or are they writing off their initial investment on a quarterly basis? I dont seem to see Notion valuing their Shares in Alcyone in their quarterly/AL.. need to dig back and have a look.

*Totally off topic, and speculative gut feeling talk* Is there strategies where a company purposely drive their share price down and then to privatise it while it's down? Generally the consensus is to follow the directors' shareholding movement.
But, if you're following their movement and sell without any reasons, won't you be setting yourself into whatever their long terms plan maybe?

I just notices some strange trading patterns, which is later verified from the directors sales notification.... there was a point few weeks ago when 'someone' kept place a queue for 5000 lots at 0.56 (avg price at that time was 57-58), and I was wondering who would sell to him. He kept queue at that price for a few days, to 1 week I think, until finally 56 hits. Any others Notion watchers noticed this 5000lots Q at 56 cents?

Later only I found out that when his 56 cents Q is matched, that's also the time a director sold.

Again, it's just gut feeling discussions based on what I saw in the market. Not suggesting anything. It could be just a coincidence only.

Hi Unduk.. your Samsung news is more towards JCY I believe.
JCY is mainly on consumer HDDs..

Back then I'm not sure when already, read up my older post here in Notion vs JCY.

While JCY was receiving good revenue increases, I tried to compare and see if there's any correlation between them, but there's NONE. JCY n Notion's HDD business seems to be on a completely different segment.

The way to explain it is, Notion's HDD is more focused (90-100%?) on the enterprise HDD sector, which is not related to JCY's gains in the Desktop/Consumer HDD sector.

I could be wrong though... TBH. Please advice if anyone can confirm otherwise..

Yes, share price drop is ugly, but it's a general market panic now. Tell me which share is still shooting up? There's a lot of good fundamental stocks that's taken a beating as well. Good opportunity to top up (not only notion).. plenty of fish on sales now.

Weiyi, may I ask why did you buy the stock in the first place? And at what price?

Thoo Chow Fah sold 2mill at 55-56 cents.
Mmmm.. interesting.