Singpost's quiet rise

Singpost's shares had been climbing up steadily, but especially so after the announcement of the new thompson mrt line. At least it seems so to me. The volume of the shares transacted daily also rose up appreciably, whereas in the past, this is usually a quiet counter. Out of curiosity, I went to dig up some figures to see how much the postal building at the affected Thomson Road Post Office located at 246T Upper Thomson Road is worth.



From commercial property guru site, a mall shop, 99 yr leasehold located at Upper Thomson Road is selling at $1.5 million for a 31 sq m space (built in). This works out to be around $4.5k psf. The Thomson Road post office is also a leasehold property of 99 yrs (since 31st March 1992), occupying a land area of 2753 sqm and a building floor area of 1793 sq m. Just as a ball park figure, this works out to be around $86 to $130 mil, depending on which area you multiply with the psf figure. The weighted average number of ordinary shares is 1,900 million shares. So if they are going to distribute out all the money from the property transaction, it'll work out to be around $0.045 to $0.068 per share.



Of course, this figure could be way way off, because a lot depends on the fair value of the property, which is hard to determine. I only know the comparative value based on another property which is trying to sell at this price, meaning that the price is not even the actual transacted price. So let's give and take - we'll take 50% of the lowest price of $86 mil, and that works out to be $43 mil and see what's the dividend like. It turns out to be $0.0225 or 2.25 cts per share.



Compared to the usual quarterly distribution of 1.25 cts and final distribution of 2.50 cts, this can be quite a bounty. Is that what people are buying up this quiet counter for?


(You do realise I'm not a qualified surveyor or property guru for that matter. The figures are just numbers plucked from a certain number of key assumptions that may go all wrong. If you buy the counter based on what I wrote here, you're nuts. Either way, the disclaimer at the bottom of the blog applies.)