Daily Morning Note – 4 April 2019

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YOUR PHILLIP SUMMARY

The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.15% rose 39 points, or roughly 0.2%, to 26,218.13, but had been as high as 26,282. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.21% gained 6.16 points, or 0.6%, to 2,873.40. The Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +0.60% added 46.86 points, or 0.6%, to 7,895.55. The S&P had been up as much as 18 points, while the Nasdaq rose roughly 90 points at its peak. DJIA, +0.15%. U.S. stocks followed the lead of global equities, which rallied on a report over progress with trade talks between the U.S. and China. “Ninety percent of the deal is done, but the last 10% is the hardest part, it’s the trickiest part and it will require trade-offs on both sides,” said Myron Brilliant, executive vice president for international affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, adding that talks are in the “endgame stage,” according to the Financial Times.

BREAKING NEWS

Oil eases on US crude stock build but holds near 5-month high. Brent futures settled at US$69.31 a barrel, losing 6 cents. Their session high was US$69.96, the strongest since Nov 12, when they traded above US$70. US West Texas Intermediate crude settled at US$62.46 a barrel, falling 12 cents after briefly hitting US$62.99, the highest since Nov. 7. Crude stocks in the United States rose 7.2 million barrels last week, as net imports climbed, production edged higher to a new record and refining rates slowed, the Energy Information Administration said. Analysts had forecast a decrease of 425,000 barrels.

IRs to invest S$9b in major ramp-up of attractions; casino exclusivity period extended to 2030. The IR expansions are estimated to create up to 5,000 new jobs and bring in more than half a million additional visitors annually. Marina Bay Sands (MBS) will add a fourth tower adjacent to its existing three towers, the centrepiece of the expansion being a 15,000-seater state-of-the-art entertainment arena. A new luxury all-suite hotel with about 1,000 rooms, topped with a sky roof, will also be added. MBS is also including more MICE space. Resorts World Sentosa (RWS) will expand Universal Studios Singapore with two new immersive environments and enlarge its S.E.A Aquarium to create a new Singapore Oceanarium. Two new destination hotels, together with the expansion of the Central Zone, will add up to 1,100 more rooms to RWS.

Singapore manufacturing activity picks up in March, but electronics still in decline. The overall manufacturing PMI in March stood at 50.8, up 0.4 percentage point from February, which saw the lowest reading since November 2016. A reading above 50 indicates expansion in the sector. March makes for 31 months of consecutive expansion in manufacturing activity. However, the electronics sector PMI remained in contraction for the fifth straight month at 49.8, though the reading edged up 0.3 percentage point from February.

ING brokers S$50m green loan to fund Sunseap’s rooftop solar projects. Dutch lender ING, as the sole mandated lead arranger, has brokered a S$50 million loan deal for Singapore sustainable energy firm Sunseap Group. The loan will fund a 50 megawatt portfolio of rooftop solar projects in the Republic. The five-year loan – ING’s first such financing transaction in the Asia-Pacific – is structured on a limited-recourse “project finance” basis, and the repayment profile is based on a 15-year amortisation schedule. When asked about the loan’s interest rate, the bank said it is “very competitive” given the merits of the transaction, such as the quality of the power purchase agreements and it being a green loan.

China Everbright unit makes offer for Ying Li International. A unit of China Everbright (CEL), called State Alpha, is making a mandatory unconditional cash offer for Chongqing-based property developer Ying Li International Real Estate at S$0.14 per share. The offer was triggered after the offeror bought about 767.1 million shares, representing about 30 per cent of the shares in the company, from Newest Luck Holdings on Wednesday.

SingPost says will sell struggling US businesses, but no details announced. The planned divestment of Jagged Peak and TradeGlobal puts an end to a tale of woe that began in 2015, when SingPost made a play for both companies amid “aspirations of building an end-to-end e-commerce logistics network and technology platform”, as it put it at the time.

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

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