Stretch you dollars series: Preferred Banking Standard Chartered Bank

Just receive the preferred banking package. The package sent was quite delightful, considering that I only applied for a credit card and current account.

The card comes with 25,000 points upon first transaction.

There is an overdraft facility that is interest free (without processing fees) for the first $3,000 drawn upon. The current account comes with a debit card that comes with 2% cashback on mastercard spending.

Spending gives 1.5x reward points for $1,500 of spending and below; 2.5x reward points for purchases above that.

Different account categories earn points monthly. For example, a current account, time deposit and investment account earn 250 points monthly or 750 points in total. Online payment of credit card also yield 250 points.

The package comes with some 1-1 vouchers.

I have enquired that there is no termination fees AFTER 6 months for preferred banking account. Before that there is a $30 early account closure fee.

Not a bad deal.

Qualifying criteria: Earn more than $6000 monthly or have $50,000 with SCB. If you have a mortgage with more than $600,000 in value, you also qualify.

Mapletree Industrial Reit (MIT)

I was rather pissed off when I was only allocated 3 lots for GLP. MIT seems the next best alternative as the market is still flushed with liquidity. The balloting results of GLP suggest that many retail investors applied up to $2M for GLP. A few others applied with $1M. I salute them, though they earned about $1.2k profit immediately in 3 days. Given the response for GLP, I expect MIT to rise at least 6% on day 1. That said, I playfully applied for a few lots. I think it was about 60 lots. Not expecting to keep it for long, perhaps to earn just a bit of kopi money for Oct.

I got 0 lots allocated this time. Wow, my guess is MIT will rise 10% on debut.

GLP IPO

Just applied IPO for GLP. Applied for 79 lots. Yes, it is overpriced, but at current market I am sure I can strike a winfall even if I am just allocated 4 lots. It will be part of STI index in time to come, similar to Capmalls Asia. Index funds will be mandated to purchase it, from us. :)

Eventually I was only allocated 3 lots, a paltry $600 paper gain on the first day. Oh well, its free money anyway.

SPH 2010 Final Dividends Prediction

Given that Sky Eleven has ceased contribution for 4Q10, I believe management will be cautious in dishing out dividends. Management is unlikely to cut dividends and have a higher tendency to increase dividends to signal growth and support share price. Hence I expect final dividends to be raised from 18 cents in 2009 to 19 cents in 2010.

Print expenses are expected to decrease due to cheaper US$ and lower circulation demand.

Total profits are expected to be much higher than 2009 due to SPH portfolio and advertising revenue recovery.

Final contribution from Sky Eleven will definitely help to propel SPH profits to near record high.

I predict FY 2010 profit to be in the region of $580M, EPS of 32.5 cents.

Of course I am striking a balance to be optimistic and objective, since a large part of my networth is determined by SPH. I do hope that SPH can deliver 21 cents of final dividends. This would likely propel it to breach the $4.60 mark by Dec 10.

Results will be out after 6pm on Oct 12. Let's see how far my prediction is away from actual results.

Post script: SPH delivered 20 cents of final year dividends, EPS 31 cents. Operating profit of $539M, circulation down by 2.4%, printing cost lowered by 29%. Final contribution from Sky@Eleven of $154.2M. Investment income recorded $39M, a turnaround from last year's loss of $6.2M.

Surprisingly, my projection was the closest than all the reports available in the market.