For sure the recent price run up is not caused by company buy back since under its share buyback terms, Man Wah has to disclose to SGX the following day for market purchase and 2 days later for off market purchase - to date no such announcement has been made. Robson Lee said during the recent SGM the share buy back scheme and the share performance award scheme go hand in hand. I expect the Board to discuss the share award in the next Board meeting when they meet to receive the full year result. This meeting is going to be held next month in May. So my guess is share buy back will start sometimes in May at the earliest, if at all. The more important question to me is their decision on dividend. Provided that the order flow stays at current level (which I expect so), Man Wah is going to have increasing free cash flow over the next few quarters because they have announced that no major capex apart from minor maintenance spending. My wish is that they maintain the past years dividend payout ratio of 25%. Since they only paid 15% in H1, the H2 dividend will be substantially higher than 25%! If they can do just that, the stock price will quite easily climb back to the pre-crash level .
Morpheus, OCBC Securities and Daiwa, among other houses, have been rating Cacola a strong buy for the last 2 years, ahead of Man Wah. But I couldn\'t see its moats and its listing time is too short to judge the quality of its management. I\'m glad I didn\'t invest in Cacola. The current environment all over the world really favours companies with cost advantages and Man Wah stands to benefit. Yesterday\'s Xinhua news reported reasonable retail sales growth in China. Though furniture sales is not mentioned, the situation shouldn\'t be too different in which consumers are looking for bargain everywhere: Chinese retail sales up 9% during May Day holiday BEIJING, May 3 (Xinhua) -- China\'s retail sales climbed 9 percent from a year ago to about 12 billion yuan (1.76 billion U.S. dollars) during the three-day May Day holiday, the Ministry of Commerce said Sunday. The estimate was based on sales from May 1 to May 3 at 1,000 major domestic retailers monitored by the ministry. The ministry said robust sales were reported for gold, jewelry, home appliances and autos, as retailers launched promotion campaigns. Sales of gold and other jewelry rose 19.6 percent, the ministry said, without giving specific figures. However, it said the Beijing Caishikou Department Store, a major gold retailer in the capital, saw its sales nearly double to 14.3 million yuan on May 1 alone. Sales of appliances, such as LCD TVs, air conditioners, refrigerators and lap-tops, increased 11.4 percent, while those of automobiles grew 9.2 percent.
news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-05/03/content_11305249.htm
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