BCH upbeats 1Q revenue from surging Covid-19 test traffic at 100-150 cases/day, firms on plan to open hospital in Aranyaprathet province in May.

Comment: I think that most hospitals outside of BDMS and BH are going to do quite well. Although if factories are closed then perhaps you’ll see a drop off in the hospitals located near the key IE areas in Thailand. 

BEM sees >50% drop in 1Q20 ridership, while BTS said passengers fell to 220K/day from 850K/day, as a result of state of emergency.

Comment: Even these “utilities” are suffering

CENTEL announced temporary closure of hotels in Thailand and 2 in Maldives in April.Comment: As have several other hotels

COM7 have temporarily shut down 256 branches, hurting revenue by 45%, while brokers cut revenue projections.

Comment: Will people finally stop wasting money buying new phones every year after this? Perhaps yes, but for how long?

SENA have no launch plan 1H20, aims to preserve cash & purge existing inventories, seeks opportunities to add landbank amid crisis

Comment: I have yet to hear of a bid for land in BKK 

TQM sees better than expected 1Q20 result on strong covid-19 coverage sales, exceeding 1 mil, to revise up premium sales target from Bt15b set earlier.

Comment: They are minting it at the moment but for how long will it last?

TRUE announced share buy back up to 500m shares or 1.5% of paid-up under Bt1.5b budget from April 14 till October 13, pays Bt0.09 dps, XD April 27.

Comment: A pittance amount, but they have no cash so….does this make sense?

Seven domestic airlines to propose MOF for Bt16b soft loans for short term liquidity, urges airlines emergency package effective back dated to March 1 instead of April 1 till Dec 31.

Tris rating downgraded BEC to BBB from A-, negative outlook for CENTEL, MINT, DTC and GRAND from weak hotel operation.

Comment: Well obviously and they’ll be the last to upgrade the outlook

  1. Pon, thanks for continuing to publish your newsletter. We investor expats appreciate it a lot! I agree wiith you abot BEM & BTS. Will a ‘utility’ like GIF suffer?

    • Yes, price is -25%, ridership #’s -50% from jan 2020 atm and falling still. But unless you think this is the situation forever then…?

      For DIF, its a different situation, less downside risk, unless people stop using their phones..

      • agree about the transit utilities – my BKK broker moved home. soon to be the city of a million stories, all the same 🙂
        for DIF, we’ll need to see what impact their refinancing of a chunk of bullet debt to amortiizd debt will have on their cash flows (and hence their distributions). hope you’re moving home too !

        • Did the work from home last week, felt ridiculous, back in my office. Everyone else is home. Arguably “safer” here and there’s zero traffic.

          I haven’t really done a deep dive on DIF for a while so I don’t know what the current situation/capital plans are.

          • My thought is that Thais, being one of the highest users of mobile internet/day will continue to do so, escpecially as everyone is very panickly about tuning in to the latest Covid news. I understand there is new competion for mobile services on the horizon from a Malazian conglomorate Edotro (sp?). The only number crunching I’ve done is the debt: dif has debt of Bt28bn with an average cost of debt of 5%. 15 bn is variable rate and 13 bn is fixed rate,with bullet terms, i.e. due in March this year. they will convert that into normal amortizated debt. no idea of terms. I’ve no idea what BOT policy will be. But my guess is – it has to be positive. dif’debt is a big unknown and a drag on the stock. Once it’s out of the way and, possibly at more beneficial rates; the distributed yield of approx. 6+% (tax free for now) should look very attractive.. SP is slightly below NBV.

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