DAILY MORNING NOTE | 14 June 2023

Singapore stocks slipped lower on Tuesday (Jun 13) even as most regional markets climbed higher following overnight gains on Wall Street. It fell 0.2 per cent or 6.67 points to close at 3,189.40. Units of Keppel DC Reit led the decliners, slipping 2 per cent to close at S$2. The trio of local banks were also among the losers, with DBS falling 1.1 per cent, UOB slipping 0.4 per cent and OCBC declining 0.2 per cent. Elsewhere in the region, markets ended higher ahead of the release of US inflation data later on Tuesday. Japan’s Nikkei 225 led the gainers, climbing 1.8 per cent, and closed above the 33,000 mark for the first time since 1990. Other key indices in Hong Kong, South Korea and Australia also rose between 0.2 and 0.6 per cent.

Wall Street stocks rallied on Tuesday after data showed cooling in US inflation, bolstering expectations that the upcoming Federal Reserve monetary decision will be benign. Consumer inflation in the United States eased for an 11th straight month on an annual basis in May, reaching its lowest level in around two years. Following the data release, futures markets showed that traders overwhelmingly expect the Fed to hold steady on interest rates at the end of its two-day meeting on Wednesday, not hiking for the first time in more than a year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 0.4 per cent at 34,212.12. The broad-based S&P 500 advanced 0.7 per cent to 4,369.01, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index jumped 0.8 per cent to 13,573.32. Expectations for a Fed pause on Wednesday has generated talk that the market could be primed for a broadening of the equity rally beyond the tech sector, which has led stocks in 2023.

SG

A subsidiary of Koh Brothers Eco Engineering and its joint venture (JV) partner have secured a S$186 million contract from the Housing & Development Board, the company announced in a bourse filing on Tuesday (June 13). The contract is for the construction of the Kallang Integrated Development. The Koh Brothers Eco unit and JV partner LBD Engineering will be involved in the building of public housing, a covered linkway along Lorong 1 Geylang, and road expansion works. The contract also includes the construction of a childcare centre, future communal facilities and a bus interchange, as well as landscaping works. Koh Brothers Eco has a 10 per cent stake in the JV. The contract will lift the company’s order book to S$703.2 million, from S$684.6 million as at end-2022.

Medical technology company INEX Innovate has agreed to fully acquire Taiwan genomics business, Yourgene Health (Taiwan), from its UK-listed parent company. INEX, a Singapore-based company specialising in fetal and women’s health, will pay up to S$5.4 million including related milestone earnouts over the next two years. The acquisition is subject to approval by the investment commission of Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs. It is expected to complete in eight to 12 weeks and contribute between S$S4.7 million and S$5.4 million in additional revenues for INEX in 2023. Yourgene Health (Taiwan) is a genomics company with sales in Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan.

Total securities turnover value on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) rose 23 per cent on the month to reach S$23 billion in May from S$18.6 million the previous month. On Tuesday (Jun 13), SGX noted that activity in the commodities and equities markets was “buoyant” versus April levels, while total derivatives traded volume in May rose 16 per cent month on month to 20.5 million contracts from 17.7 million earlier. Commodity derivatives volumes registered a 13 per cent rise from April to 3.8 million contracts amid growing demand for risk management. This was supported by a 9 per cent month-on-month increase in iron ore derivatives traded volumes to over 3.2 million contracts in May – bringing the iron ore daily average volume on-screen to a new record as the raw material gains prominence as a “proxy for industrialising Asia”, said SGX. China’s reopening also led to increased activity from market participants, as evident in a 20 per cent month-on-month surge in the volume of SGX Sicom rubber futures. Over on SGX FX, the total traded volume of forex futures grew 20 per cent on the month to reach 2.9 million contracts.

Cinema businesses Golden Village and The Projector will set up shop in Cineleisure, while Cathay Cineplexes – operated by entertainment group mm2 Asia – will move out, said Cineleisure on Tuesday (Jun 13). Cathay Cineplexes will hold its last day of screenings in the mall on Jun 30, it added. Mm2 Asia declined to comment on the matter. Meanwhile, Golden Village x The Projector at Cineleisure (GVxTP), an entertainment hub conceptualised by the cinema businesses, will start screenings by the end of 2023. The entrance of GVxTP comes amid Cineleisure’s plans to rejuvenate the mall experience with a new tenant mix. Apart from film screenings, GVxTP will also hold live performances, talks, festivals, exhibitions and pop-up markets, noted Cineleisure.

EC World Reit has received a waiver from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to complete its proposed divestment of two Chinese logistics assets by the deadline of Jun 16. The Reit was originally required to complete the divestment six months after it was approved by unitholders on Dec 16, 2022. This requirement has been waived by MAS, but on the condition that the deal be completed by Oct 31 instead and that unitholders’ approval is obtained for the extended timeline, the Reit manager said in a Tuesday (Jun 13) bourse filing. The manager will also need to obtain two independent valuations for the current market valuations of the properties. Back in October last year, EC World Reit said it would be divesting its indirect interests in Bei Gang Logistics and Chongxian Port Logistics for 2.03 billion yuan (S$392.7 million), but the deal’s completion has been delayed. EC World Reit’s board noted that the purchasers “have yet to secure the requisite financing” for the divestment. It believes that the extension is in the “best interests” of the company and unitholders, but will review its assessment if there are revisions to the deal terms.

US

US consumer prices rose moderately in May, leading to the smallest annual increase in inflation in more than two years, though underlying price pressures remained strong, supporting views that the Federal Reserve would keep interest rates unchanged on Wednesday while adopting a hawkish posture. The consumer price index (CPI) increased 0.1 per cent last month as petrol prices fell, the Labor Department said on Tuesday (Jun 13). The CPI had gained 0.4 per cent in April. In the 12 months through April, the CPI climbed 4.0 per cent. That was the smallest year-on-year increase since March 2021 and followed a 4.9 per cent rise in April. The annual CPI peaked at 9.1 per cent in June 2022 – which was the biggest increase since November 1981 – and is subsiding as last year’s large rises drop out of the calculation. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the CPI gaining 0.2 per cent last month and increasing 4.1 per cent year on year.

Boeing delivered 50 jets in May, 13 fewer than European rival Airbus, but a 43 per cent improvement on the same month last year. Deliveries of the cash-generating Boeing 737 MAX increased to 35 jets in May, Boeing said on Tuesday (Jun 13). The company handed over only 17 MAXs to customers the prior month, when Boeing found a bracket installation defect that forced it to fix aircraft before delivery. Boeing also delivered eight widebody 787 Dreamliners, three 767 freighters, three 777 freighters and a 737 that will be modified into a P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft for South Korea. Boeing’s monthly orders and deliveries snapshot comes a week before aerospace executives gather for the Paris Air Show, where both Boeing and Airbus are expected to cement new deals. At the same time, both airplane makers are struggling with supply chain challenges that threaten to curb deliveries – a closely watched metric for Wall Street analysts, as Boeing and Airbus receive the bulk of payment for aircraft after handing over jets to customers.

Amazon.com’s cloud-computing arm is working to resolve an outage that disrupted a swath of websites and services, including the New York transit agency’s status updates. Amazon Web Services (AWS) said it began investigating “increased error rates and latencies” in one of its data centre clusters shortly after 3.00 pm New York time. The failures affected the company’s US-EAST-1 region, which is centred in northern Virginia and is Amazon’s most important data centre hub. AWS is the world’s largest seller of on-demand computing power and software services, which it delivers from a network of vast server farms. That means its outages can ripple across the internet, creating headaches for a range of companies and industries. The Verge news site, for instance, said on Tuesday (Jun 13) that the disruption left it unable to update its home page. On Twitter, technologists reported not being able to log into the AWS console, the portal they use to manage AWS services. And the MTA took to the social media site to report that train service information on its website and MYmta app were unavailable because of the AWS outage. AWS’s status health page reported that the failures stemmed from an issue with the company’s Lambda service, a product that spins up computing power in response to events. Dozens of other AWS services were affected, the company said.

Oil prices climbed over 3 per cent on Tuesday on hopes for growing fuel demand after China’s central bank lowered a short-term lending rate for the first time in 10 months, boosting crude prices after steep losses the previous session. The rate cut is aimed at adding momentum to a hesitant post-pandemic recovery in the world’s second-largest economy and biggest crude importer. Brent crude futures settled up US$2.45, or 3.4 per cent, to US$74.29 a barrel. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude gained US$2.30, or 3.4 per cent, at US$69.42 a barrel. On Monday, crude prices fell by about 4 per cent, in part because of concerns about the Chinese economy after disappointing economic data last week. Brent’s six-month backwardation, a market structure whereby shorter-dated futures trade above longer-dated ones, fell to its lowest since March at around US$1.10, indicating faltering confidence that demand will exceed supply over the year.

Source: SGX Masnet, Bloomberg, Channel NewsAsia, Reuters, CNBC, WSJ, The Business Times, PSR

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