What I am doing is to bring RATIONALITY to this counter.

I am a considered a long term holder of iCap, entered around 8 yrs ago at around price of RM2.30. Just before the div announcement a few days ago, iCap traded at 2.35. Tell me, is this return rate of 0.27% pa rational? Other than a 9sen div years ago, it is only a 5 sen gross gain. Over 8 years!

But to be fair, NAV has performed with some reasonable return (compared to the many normal equity funds out there). Hence, the problem is the NAV-mkt price big gap.

Why? New investors will not come in because when they see
a) the big gap always there for years
b) half of the funds are held in cash for over 8 years, they will NOT buy since they want reasonably fuller exposures to equities.

Old investors can only trade among ourselves and after being "educated" over and over again by the doctrine of "margin of safety", we also will NOT buy close to NAV because of this margin of safety in mind. Hence, the big GAP.

To close this GAP, only doable solution is to push for fund closure. Yes, many technical obstacles there but not impossible. The very act of pushing for fund closure will close the GAP because new investors will come in to arbitrage. Can you see it? The act itself it GOOD enough.

Therefore I need all of you to spread the words that we are working to close this fund. Do it for your own benefit!

Despite many requests, no action was shared by TTB on how to narrow the NAV-mkt price gap. Also the Board is like a rubber stamp, only TTB is the person who answer questions. Meaning he is the de-facto controller in ICap. As I have asked in yday AGM, I will proceed to initiate fund closure. I will contact City of London and also a group of other shareowners to work together to have this fund closed. This is to turn the gap of 3.76-2.45=RM1.31 into a realised gain which is a +53% arbitrage gain. But I also need more shareowners to support this. I know some of you have great sentiments for this counter, have been holding long term etc. But let me assure you, this is just another mutual fund and NEVER get sentimental in ANY investments. Take the profit and invest in another fund. Simple.

The 20sen dividend is just a small sweet to placate complaining shareowners as this round the wave of feedbacks/criticisms are too heavy to ignore. Anyway, after ex-div, the share price will be reduced by Bursa by 20sen. Meaningless for those who do not need this money.

Good to read KYY articles because this gives a good indicator of how investors with no consistent/disciplined methods lose money. Smart investors will read and take advantage of them.

@cnman53 Regarding shareholders' right to call for an EGM to wind up iCapital, since you have done so much homework, can you kindly share with us if this can be done as per M&A or Article of Association?

@observatory, don't mention it. I think you are much more experienced in investment.

Since you ask and also for the benefits of young investors :

Financial counters like banks and insurers/takaful operators are usually traded more efficiently ie close to their fair value as these companies are highly regulated and supervised by BNM hence more institutional and more informed individual investors in them. Some are traded at the higher end of the spectrum like Public Bank or LPI because of high quality management and assets. At the other end of the spectrum will be the likes of Affin etc.

Then which stock is good to invest for long term? (Short term trade will have a different strategy).
Growth companies. How to identify them? Look at their KPI results like

Life/Family takaful : new business growth, persistencies, quality of distribution channels...
General/Takaful am : new biz growth, claims ratio, distribution channels...

Current outlook in some listed Bursa insurers (my own opinion only):

ALLIANZ - good quality management, steady and sustainable top line growth. Once life revenue is more significant than general side, valuation will increase faster. At current price, it is fairly valued. This counter has a lot of long term holders, hence low liquidity. I attended their agency sales gathering before, thousands of agents there, the energy level is super charged. True enough, their top line numbers grew year after year. Fairly valued, but can accumulate long term hold.

MANULIFE - management expense is high, agency size stagnant, bancassurance with Alliance Bank costly and not much growth. For trading ok, I will not buy this counter for long term hold.

MNRB - management quality is a big question mark. Plenty of operational issues. Hence, share price is deeply undervalued by normal measurements such as BV or PE. The retakaful portfolio usually carries a lower PE valuation due to volatile earnings. If management overall KPIs are improved (such as life good persistencies), the share price will fly. If a new aggressive CEO is appointed to drive real changes, I will focus on this counter.

Takaful family market - yes, it is true that at around 14-15% penetration rate, it is still a virgin market. The last time I attended the MTA (Msian Takaful Assoc) annual dinner, the BNM governer talked about increase in penetration rate from 14% to 14.2% after one year (lebih kurang figures). Cannot be so small after all we have 11 family takaful operators. Then I realised the penetration rate formula is based on number of inforce certificates/total population. Note the word "inforce". Meaning, sell 1m certificates but if lapsed certificates are 700K, then the net inforce gain is only 300K. No wonder penetration rate grow so slowly and lapses affect profitability. Therefore to see if a takaful operator is doing well or not, quality of business needs to be known. Unfortunately, quality business in our Muslim market is still very far behind the conventional life insurance.

In short,
For growing good quality insurers esp life - buy and hold long term.
For poor quality insurers esp with more exposure to general - avoid or trade only.

Again, my 2cents...

Sorry I was a bit long winded above. For those who invest based on gut feelings, no need to read la...

@observatory, sorry forgot to mention AIA and Ping An in HK.

AIA share price co-relates closely with their VONB - Value of New Business (the present value of all the future premiums payable by customers). VONB increases a lot during the earlier listing years due to real growth and tweaking (like fine tuning our car engines for peak performance) various variables that add up to VONB. Once tweaking is close to perfection (there is only that much that you can tweak your car engine), real growth in sales will be the main focus. AIA has good branding, added with high visibility being a component of HSI, and top talents in management driving all 15 or 16 countries, make it a high growth player. The regional management's job is to ensure annual top and bottom line grows say, min 15%pa. And the drive is very very focus. Of course, China now is a huge contributor among them with its gigantic middle income group.

Ping An in China is also considered a well managed life insurer (this is relative, better quality compared to say, China Life - also listed in HKSE). Hence it carry good valuation in HK. The current Group CEO of AIA, Lee Yuan Siong was formerly from Ping An.

@observatory, most of my working years was in training and sales/marketing. I am not a figures guy but I try to explain a bit here in simple terms.

Of course PB ratio also depends on ROE, top and bottom line growth rate, asset and management quality etc. STM should command a higher PB ratio but maybe not nearing 3x hence its management is constantly selling. The other way to measure is PE. For EPS of 43.75sen pa historical, RM5.00 trades at PE 11.4. Generally, for general insurers the PE is usually not high, maybe 8 to 10. (Other than LPI which has a very lucrative captive market in PBB loans fire insurance portfolio ie you take a PBB loan, you must take their fire insurance). For life insurers, 10 to 15. Assuming the STM life: general ratio is 5:2 (based on latest quarter result), the weighted average PE shall be :

5 x 13 (mid of 10 to 15) + 2 x 9 (mid of 8 to 10) / 7 = 11.8 which is very close to current traded PE. Hence, fully valued by PE valuation.

If I am in STM senior management and I can see that life sales has stagnanted, then the PE for life side should be lower, say 10 only. Then current price is over-valued, hence I will sell.

Other insurers?
Allianz Life (ex-MBA) : high growth in life portfolio. Once life profit outgrows general, valuation will grows exponentially. But as @observatory said, beware of ICPS shares when counting PE. Accounting wise, they don't count ICPS but valuation wise, we need to count, just by assuming all ICPS are converted to normal shares. In reality, not many will convert as they get 20% more dividends and there is no expiry dates ie perpetual. But still, valuation wise, need to count them in. So do not let the current low PE shown mislead us.

Manulife : life side, poor management quality and weak sales channels esp agency force. Agency force is aging (full of uncles and aunties). Sales hovering around 40-60m in new business premiums for many years. Hence, share price hovering around RM2++, not growing for decades.

Just my 2 cents. Hope, read by younger investors. My little contribution to them...

@ Papayashot, yes u r right, more biz in life than general. My error. From latest report, it seems that life revenue has stagnanted. STM also paid a new "dowry" to RHB Islamic Bank for the renewal on bancassurance arrangement. Not sure how this amount is accounted for. Such fees can run into hundreds of millions RM and it can stunt profit growth. e.g. ING (now merged with AIA) once paid to PBB something like RM300m for the ING-PBB bancassurance partnership. At one time, I used to run a bancassurance team on the insurer side. Can you imagine the work pressure from the regional bosses to regain back the hundreds of millions investment within 5 to 10 years?

Personally I worked for AIA for many years before retirement, bought LTIP at around HKD20 in 2012 (AIA shares are public listed in Hong Kong). Now 9 years later, AIA HK share price is now around HKD100 ; 5 baggers! I keep as the company was growing year to year. Whereas not sure what's happening in Takaful Msia. If it is good, like AIA, the CEO will keep. If he (and his other senior management members) keep selling, something is telling...

CEO Hassan Kamil is a qualified Actuary. Obviously he knows what is overvalued or undervalued.

This is only my 2sen thoughts since I worked in insurance industry for past 34 years...

Takaful Msia at 5.00 is priced at 2.75 book value. Usually banks and insurance companies' prices are around 1x book value. This is way too high. Life insurers book value is more whereas general insurers are less as general insurance businesses are rather matured compared to life which is still in high growth stage. Takaful Msia business has more general biz. Therefore its value should be lesser.

Guys, take note that insiders ie senior management esp CEO Hassan Kamil has been selling aggressively since late Feb2021. See Bursa notifications! This is similar to AMMB where senior management also selling aggressive a few weeks before the big fine.

AMMB Q3-2020 is exposed to Round 1 moratorium ie Jun to Sep 2020. Q3 result will be announced soon in late Nov, will be lower because of lower loan growth and thinner NIM - Net Interest Margin due to lowering of OPR.

Recent good vaccines news will slowly die off in short term as more trials needed and months of time lag to implement. Banks will not immediately benefit from it. While non-performance loans may surface soon even with targeted moratorium.

https://www.msn.com/en-my/news/national/announcement-on-loan-moratorium-epf-soon/ar-BB1aVn2i?ocid=msedgntp

UMNO-BN only support Budget 2021 if 2 conditions taken in ie banks continue moratorium Round 2 till June 2021 and EPF withdrawal. DAP also said the same for bank loan moratorium. To stay in power, Mooh may need to accept. If Round 2 moratorium, then haircut again for banks' profits. Better sell now.

If need pay another RM1, then when listed this ICPS may trade below RM1 and has an expiry date of 4 to 5 years. Like a warrant with coupons. Who wants to buy a warrant expiring in 4-5 years with a downside of almost RM1 ?

I am checking with Bursa if this conversion from ICPS to ordinary mother share, need another payment or not. If need another payment, then this PR is vastly out-of-money ie pay RM2 vs current mother price of RM1.23

If conversion from ICPS to mother share is free, why need to amendment to Conversion Price?

There is confusion on CONVERSION PRICE from ICPS to mother share. Some say free conversion, some say need RM1. But look at page 78, it says "The Conversion Price shall be subjected to amendments from time to time..." Is this not a price that need to be paid when converting ICPS to mother share? Confusing isn't it.

Something is very wrong with this counter. Every other counter drop sharply, including REiTs but this AxREiT is holding steady. OPR rate may have dropped but it is far outweighed by the general meltdown. In deep recessions, industrial tenants also can default on rentals, meaning dividends can drop.
I sold all my long-held holdings yday before the big boys like EPF or KWSP start unloading when they too realise that the current price is way above the NTA of 1.45
Better to cash out before this counter drop like a stone. Can always buy back later. Downside is far more than upside now.

Heard from internal sources that some key tenants will default due to current market crisis. May fall below 50sen

EPF sold around 1.15 which is close to 1x book value.

Even EPF sold close to 8m shares recently.

I stop loss by selling all my balance holdings at 1.19. Last week sold half at 1.29. Valuation of MBSB :
a) Book value of MBSB at 1.16. Given 1x book value which is very generous, price = 1.16 Even with merger with AFB, valuation still should not be over 1x.
b) PER on FY16 = 24 too high
Biggest downside is poor quality of assets and low capability of management. Better to take profit now.

As proven in Spore and Msia, China companies listed here have highly questionable accounting numbers. The RM735m cash purported cash outlined in its 2016 annual report is highly questionable. That's why dividends are not declared. Another typical case of Enron or Transmile. Exit while you can, cut loss although at penny stock prices.

Those who believe in this better buy even at today's price. Still a lot of upside.

City of London may be accumulating it for objective of closing the fund just like what CIMB did to Amanah Smallcap fund or FMPT.

Unitholder can anytime call for meeting to close fund. But need majority support. City of London can be a key support. Once fund liquidated, can have immediate gain of over 20++ %.