(26-04-2012, 10:08 PM)d.o.g. Wrote: [ -> ]Starhill did a rights issue in Apr 2009 which was totally unnecessary as their debt was not due for refinancing until Sep 2010, one and a half years later. They then sat around and waited ONE YEAR for the market to recover before buying assets... from their own Starhill REIT in Malaysia. It was a massive misuse of shareholder funds as they could have waited one year before raising money. Instead they took money at the bottom of the market, when that capital was most precious, and sat on it. In that one year shareholders could have bought a multitude of other stocks that doubled.
That one exercise demonstrated very clearly that the Yeoh family has little or no understanding of shareholder value. IMHO it is no accident that Starhill Global trades at a discount to CMT and FCT.
I went to do some internet searches and came up with the following timeline (dates may be out a couple of days),
23 Jun 09 : Annc 1-for-1 Rights @ $0.35 to raise $337.3M
13 Jul 09 : Book Closure for Rights Allotment
18 Nov 09 : Annc Acquisition Plan - A$115M (~S$148M) for Aussie assets (Expected Completion Jan-10) + RM1030M (~S$423.3M) for Malaysia assets
19 Apr 10 : Agreement signed between both Starhill. Funding by Cash (31%) + Debts (32%) + CPU (39%)
2 Jun 10 : Shareholder gave approval for assets sale (Malaysia Starhill)
My comments
1. It does look like it took them >1 year from announcement of rights issue to the acquisition of the Malaysia assets
2. But, to be fair, from the date of actual funds raised to their acqusition plan was ~4mths with the Aussie assets acquisition completed in ~6mths
3. For whatever reasons, it took ~5mths from announcement of Malaysia assets to signing of agreements + 1mth+ to get shareholders' approval from Malaysia side
4. The balance of funds from the rights issue was insufficient for the Malaysia assets and they had to raise additional funds from debts and issuance of CPUs
5. YTL holds ~63% of Starhill (Malaysia) + ~26% of Starhill Global (Singapore) prior to the rights issue and in terms of S$ value at that point in time, their Malaysia assets (Strahill REIT) was ~ double that of Singapore assets (Starhill Global)
6. Post rights, the above % holdings is still about the same but in S$ value, the Singapore assets holdings is now slightly higher
<Not Vested> but kind of remembered making some $$ when the market punished Starhill Global share price when they announced the rights issue during bearish times ie. Lessons learnt and applied was that there're always such market opportunities around (too bad I missed the recent KREIT one)