· Financial services – Top net buy sector among local retail investors, has been a net buy sector since the start of 2021. · Consumer products – Second largest net buy sector and has been a net buy sector for the past three weeks.
· Local institutional investors turned weekly net buyer after 18 weeks of net selling They net bought RM116.7m of Malaysian equities last week, making them the largest net buyer of Malaysia equities. Retail investors were relegated to the second largest net buyer spot last week. Foreign investors were the only net seller last week and their net sell flows jumped 202% wow to RM235m.
Volpara Solid 4Q trading update as expected VHT released a solid 4Q trading update. The 4Q is traditionally the strongest quarter and we were not disappointed. Of most interest was the increase in ARPU to US$1.40 (from US$1.22 in 3Q), however importantly ARPU signed during the quarter on average was US$2.50.
· Bursa Malaysia splits the 918 companies listed on the stock exchange into 13 broad sectors. · The performances of the companies listed on the main market in same-sector classifications are captured under the Bursa Malaysia Sectorial Index Series. The inclusion of a company in a sector depends on the company's main source of operating revenue.
■ Wider PE-ethane spreads should lead to EBITDA margin expansion. ■ PTT Global Chemical should see more tailwinds from strong prices for propylene derivatives. Asian PE prices supported by strong demand Asian polyethylene (PE) prices were still on the uptrend in early-Apr 21, especially low density polyethylene (LDPE), the price of which increased sharply to US$1,575/t on a supply outage in the Middle East and resilient demand in Asia.
■ SCC’s Vietnam-based olefins plant of 1. mtpa should be the company’s long-term EPS growth driver, thanks to feedstock cost competitiveness. ■ Asian PVC-EDC spread was at a 10-year high in Apr 21, which should support SCC’s chemical EBITDA in the near term. Expanded ethylene capacity right on time to capture strong demand SCC’s project to expand ethylene capacity by 300ktpa achieved on-spec production in Mar 21 and started commercial production in Apr 21F.
Livehire Healthy pipeline needs converting A largely inline quarterly with slightly higher revenue from the direct sourcing (DS) business and lower cash burn, offset by underwhelming customer growth in DS. Livehire Healthy has detailed a rather healthy pipeline in both business units.
■ 1Q21 net profit of THB10.6bn (+44% yoy) was 40% ahead of our estimate from lower-than-expected provisioning and strong recovery in fee income. ■ In our view, concern is likely to turn towards asset quality in the near term, as credit cost is likely to rise in 2Q21F, as borrowers exit its relief programme.
More heart surgery cases to boost margins As heart surgery cases are considered high intensity, they provide higher gross margins for CHG. Therefore, even though CHG suffered from lower inpatient revenues in FY20, it still achieved higher gross margin in FY20 as shown below. Note that the ramp-up of CHG’s two greenfield hospitals, Chularat 304 and Chularat Ruampat (RPC) which were opened in 2018, also improved margins in FY20, in our view.
■ We believe that CHG will benefit not only from performing Covid-19 tests but also from more heart disease patients referred from public hospitals. ■ We raise our core profit forecasts by 6-7% yoy for FY21-23F on the back of more referral cases and revenues from Covid-19 tests.