Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Book - The Singapore Blue Chips : 3 Key Reasons Why I Snap It From Library

Today, while casually browsing at the National Library during lunch time, I chanced upon a local book, The Singapore Blue Chips - The Rewards & Risks Of Investing In Singapore's Largest Corporates [2017] (authored by Nandini Vijayaraghavan and Umesh Desai). After flipping through a few pages, I immediately decided to loan it for further reading. 

Reason? 

#1 - This is the first financial book that I've chanced upon covering the Singapore Blue Chips. Even though it covers only 16* out of the 30 companies in STI (Straits Times Index), it is still a good compilation. On top of the 16 companies, it covers 4 more non-STI companies i.e. Temask Holdings, Fraser & Neave (F&N), Marina Bay Sands (MBS) and Olam International. 

#2 - The book is written in a very layman term, good for newbies like me. 

#3 - It has plenty of graphs/charts showing the trends of industry-specific key business parameters of the companies. For example, for Singapore Telecommunication (as I am vested in this company, so this is the chapter that I zoomed into first :-)), it shows the 12 years trends (2005 to 2016) of:
- Cellular Subscribers 
- Cellular ARPU (Average Revenue Per User)
- Postpaid SAC (Subscriber Acquisition Cost)
- Broadband Lines subscribers etc...

Even though it doesn't provide many statistics/ratios related to investing like EPS, P/B etc... it does provide very easy to digest narrative of business/financial review, challenges faced and key takeaways for each of the company covered.  

If you are interested to know more about the corporate milestones and evolution of the business of the key Singapore Blue Chips, you can definitely consider this 300+ pages book.

Cheers!

*16 companies covered under the book:
1. Golden Agri Resources
2. Wilmar International
3. Singapore Exchange Limited
4. Keppel Corporation
5. Sembcorp Industries
6. Singapore Technologies Engineering Limited
7. SIA Engineering 
8. CapitaLand
9. Global Logistic Properties
10. Starhub
11. Singapore Telecommunications
12. ComfortDelGro
13. Singapore Airlines
14. DBS
15. OCBC
16. United Overseas Bank
Plus 2 REITS:
1. CapitaLand Mall Trust
2. Ascendas REIT

6 comments:

  1. Does investing in blue chips made sense after you have read this book?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. CW8888 : I am just starting, but don't think the book provides the answer.It just make the readers understand more about the company, from business/financial perspective as well as the challenges they are facing. :-)

      Delete
  2. Hi Richard,

    Is it encouraging us to buy the individual stock or STI ETF? Do let me know a I am a newbie too :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jes : it doesn''t encourage either.. :-) it is for understanding more of the individual blue chips, their tailwinds and headwinds etc...

      Delete
  3. Hello everyone. Thanks for your interest in our book. The final chapter of the book does provide the P/E, P/BV, capital gains, dividend yield etc for the companies covered and discusses whether you ought to engage in stock picking or invest in the index. Happy to discuss with you....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Ms nandini,

      It's my honor to have the author of the book herself to leave a comment on my blog. Thanks for developing such an informative and easy to digest compilation of Singapore blue chips.

      Thanks for highlighting as I am still at early stage of the book and didn't notice the provision of ratios in final chapter.

      Delete

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