Keppel Telecommunications & Transportation

[propertyinvestor]

1) KTT gets 46% of income from investments in M1.
Considering that M1's business moat is being threatened, and might not be able to protect its profit margins, how do you think this will affect KTT's earnings?

2) While data centre is a very attractive source of growth, it currently only makes up about 17% of KTT's income. Could this suggest that a P/E of 8 plus is justified?

1) The M1 investment has given KTT money to embark into the Data Center business for the past 4 years. It has also given it cash to grow the existing logistic and warehousing buisness. If necessary, KTT can launch its own industrial property trust to unlock value from their warehousing assets to acquire more data centers

2) Revenue from Data center investments is expected to treble within these 2 years as the Securus Data fund actively pursues opportunities around the globe.

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Declared 3.5 cents dividend, the same as last year. Good. Use the cash to expand business.
Business is expanding. Profit at record high. Share price near 52 low. Interesting.

Vested.

If we remove the Exceptionals, Earnings are flat, in fact EPS is lower. The next few Quarters will be interesting as we start to see the impact of their Data Centre new biz plus smaller Logistics biz.

Its inaccurate to say that. As Wuhu Anto Logistics was considered an associate of KTT, their profits and revenues were consolidated in line with the equity accounting method (35%)

So if you remove the exceptionals, you also have to add back 35% of the divested company earnings to get the full picture. You'll find that the results are slightly better than last year.

[Jared Seah]

Interesting!

2 technicians looking at the same chart have 2 different opinions - pretty much like looking at ink-blots.

2 fundamental investors looking at the same financial statement - one see dragon; one see snake.

Makes sense. How else to get any trades done if everyone has the same view?

Now, anyone still believe Market is "efficient"?

Not vested

[egghead]

Anyone here care to elaborate on the business model of data center? Given the high computing hardware becomes obsolete rather quickly (3 years?), what level of capex is required to maintain data centers?

[propertyinvestor]

If Keppel Corp feels the need to buy over STXOSV, you can be sure that M1 will be divested in due course

[KopiKat]

1) The M1 investment has given KTT money to embark into the Data Center business for the past 4 years. It has also given it cash to grow the existing logistic and warehousing buisness. If necessary, KTT can launch its own industrial property trust to unlock value from their warehousing assets to acquire more data centers

I had a quick look at their latest FY11 financials and was wondering why their Debts had gone up so much,

FY11 : $255,696,000 (NCL) + $46,010,000 (CL)
FY10 : $147,214,000 (NCL) + $22,506,000 (CL)

Its inaccurate to say that. As Wuhu Anto Logistics was considered an associate of KTT, their profits and revenues were consolidated in line with the equity accounting method (35%)

So if you remove the exceptionals, you also have to add back 35% of the divested company earnings to get the full picture. You'll find that the results are slightly better than last year.

OK, as long as you are happy. I'm not vested and only had a quick look. I was turned off by the seemingly high debts (increases) required for their biz and didn't look into it more in depth.

[propertyinvestor]

1) The M1 investment has given KTT money to embark into the Data Center business for the past 4 years. It has also given it cash to grow the existing logistic and warehousing buisness. If necessary, KTT can launch its own industrial property trust to unlock value from their warehousing assets to acquire more data centers

I had a quick look at their latest FY11 financials and was wondering why their Debts had gone up so much,

FY11 : $255,696,000 (NCL) + $46,010,000 (CL)
FY10 : $147,214,000 (NCL) + $22,506,000 (CL)

Its inaccurate to say that. As Wuhu Anto Logistics was considered an associate of KTT, their profits and revenues were consolidated in line with the equity accounting method (35%)

So if you remove the exceptionals, you also have to add back 35% of the divested company earnings to get the full picture. You'll find that the results are slightly better than last year.

OK, as long as you are happy. I'm not vested and only had a quick look. I was turned off by the seemingly high debts (increases) required for their biz and didn't look into it more in depth.

Their debt level increase reflects the slight increase in debt from M1, but yes, they mentioned before they are gearing up to invest heavily in the data center buisness. Their interest should be manageable thanks to healthy cashflow from the dividends paid by M1.

[touzi]

Anyone here care to elaborate on the business model of data center? Given the high computing hardware becomes obsolete rather quickly (3 years?), what level of capex is required to maintain data centers?

I think there is a difference between a Data Centre provider and a web hosting company. Keppel is a Data Centre service provider. Providing computing hardware may not be a big part of its business. I would expect its main capex, besides real estate, to be utility related ( air condition and power supply system ).

[KopiKat]

Anyone here care to elaborate on the business model of data center? Given the high computing hardware becomes obsolete rather quickly (3 years?), what level of capex is required to maintain data centers?

I think there is a difference between a Data Centre provider and a web hosting company. Keppel is a Data Centre service provider. Providing computing hardware may not be a big part of its business. I would expect its main capex, besides real estate, to be utility related ( air condition and power supply system ).

Found a detailed description of Data Centre at good ol' wiki. Looks like a very high CAPEX biz, unless the main equipments inside the Data Centre belongs to the end customer.

[Image: 640px-Datacenter-telecom.jpg]

[mrEngineer]

Was once vested in this stock but sold off after I got nasty treatment from CEO. Nonetheless touzi is right, a data centre is essentially a warehouse of servers and backup systems. These servers usually operate in highly air conditioned environment and will sound off alarm once the CPU hits a certain temperature. So data centre is very much like their original logistic business. They will need to acquire buildings or office spaces, rent out the space to companies to put their server, charge them a fee to look after their servers, ensure optimal temperature and data security.

I learnt from a feedback from HP manager that servers are often not replaced frequently and usually have a lifetime of more than 5 years. For e.g. The server in my office was only just recently replaced after using for 8 years or more. And it's is unlikely to shift the server unless the office gets relocated to other countries. The development of cloud computing will only spell more business for data centre businesses as more servers and backup systems will need to manufactured and placed in data centers.

In my view, keppel tt is only a good for it's high ROE but the current pe is too much above my personal target so I will not touch it for now.

[KopiKat]

Nonetheless touzi is right, a data centre is essentially a warehouse of servers and backup systems. These servers usually operate in highly air conditioned environment and will sound off alarm once the CPU hits a certain temperature. So data centre is very much like their original logistic business. They will need to acquire buildings or office spaces, rent out the space to companies to put their server, charge them a fee to look after their servers, ensure optimal temperature and data security.

Extracts fm AR2010 (pg20),

CO-LOCATION PROVIDERS

There are three segments in the data centre space:

(1) asset ownership,
(2) data centre facility management or co-location service and
(3) IT managed services.

Given the huge amount of capital expenditure and technical expertise required to maintain an in-house data centre, corporates are shifting towards the outsourcing of data centres. The data centre arm of Keppel T&T is Keppel Data Centres Pte Ltd (Keppel Data Centres). They are riding on this outsourcing trend as co-location service providers while giving their customers the option of maintaining the integrity of their servers. This also means that Keppel Data Centres are able to serve IT managed service businesses that focus on
providing managed services.

KEPPEL’S SOLUTIONS IN DATA CENTRES

Today, Keppel Data Centres have more than 10 years track record in owning and managing Tier III+ data centres, providing blue-chip customers, IT managed service providers, corporates and government agencies with one of the highest levels of availability in the industry. Through involvement in designing and building the data centres they manage, Keppel Data Centres offer bespoke data centre suites to customers who require co-location services and manage them in accordance to customers’ service level requirements.