Sunday, February 10, 2008

G7 expects continued volatility

Group of Seven policy makers said the U.S. economy may slow further, eroding global growth, and officials forecast more financial-market turmoil.

``Downside risks still persist, which include further deterioration of the U.S. residential housing markets'' and tighter credit conditions, G-7 finance ministers and central bankers said in a statement in Tokyo yesterday. U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said ``we should expect continued volatility'' in markets as risk is repriced. (Bloomberg)

Local news...

PJDev going regional

PJ DEVELOPMENT Holdings Bhd plans to build sizeable properties in Vietnam and Thailand with reputable local partners to further expand its real-estate operations. "We have a few plans to grow but we will do it carefully to seize the best topportunities. This will be the first time we are going overseas to build properties," chief operating officer Lim Lian Seng told Business Times.

KAF giving TSH a glowing review

KAF, in a report, noted that TSH was seeing growing earnings from upstream plantations due to its aggressive expansion of its landbank in the past two years, maiden contribution from its palm oil refinery operations under a joint venture with Wilmar International and sustained earnings from its biomass power plant. The group has a 50:50 joint venture with Wilmar for an annual 800,000 tonne palm oil refinery in Sabah.

TSH remained “a relatively under-appreciated growth story” given its projected 32% compounded average growth rate between 2007 and 2009, KAF added. Furthermore, the group had good leverage to rising CPO prices as every RM100 a tonne increase would result in 5.7% improvement in earnings, the research house said.

Despite the bright prospects, the stock has yet to fully recover from the recent market sell down.
Based on Wednesday's closing price of RM3.26, the shares are trading at a price/earnings ratio of 9.2 times on KAF's estimated EPS of 30 sen for FY08.

Asian currencies at risk

ASIAN currencies, which have held up well to a weakening US economy so far this year, are expected to see a correction in the second and third quarter this year as markets refocus on economic and financial re-coupling, said Standard Chartered Bank.

"To some extent, aggressive Fed easing may postpone the 'day of reckoning' of the US recession. However, no matter how far the Fed cut rates the US recession (and an increasingly bleaker outlook for Eurozone and Japan) will have an economic and most likely also a financial impact on the Asian currencies," it added in a report.

"Asian currencies and local markets will not remain immune from this volatility in the US. In line with the trend in the region to encourage capital outflows (partly to mitigate the upward pressure on their currencies), the changes in basic balances in a number of countries like Malaysia and South Korea are increasingly driven by portfolio flows."

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