CabRewards vs GrabRewards

CZM and I always do OT (sad life) and company policy allows us to claim our cab rides after certain hour. Last year, we were able to convert our CabRewards to $70 Comfort Delgro vouchers!

These are the small little things that keep KPO happy. I will now analyze both options to see which is a better option.

CabRewards 
CabRewards is the first ever taxi rewards programme for Cashless paying passengers with Cabpoints.

You need to create an account at their site and register up to 2 ez-link/NETS FlashPay card. Before making payment, tell the driver you want CabRewards and tap your card at the terminal.

You can earn 1 point for every $1 dollar spent (rounded to the nearest dollar) and expire by next year Jan. $5 voucher requires 1000 points while $10 requires 1650 points. That gives us a rebate of 0.5% for $5 redemption and 0.6% for $10 redemption (something like the marshmallow experiment on delayed delayed gratification? lol). Occasionally there will be certain promotion that allows one to redeem voucher at a certain discount or x5 points on your birthday month, etc which will accelerate the process.

GrabRewards
Grab introduced GrabRewards recently where one can now earn 7 points for every $10 spend (0.7 points per dollar). One can redeem $5 using 2200 points and $10 for 4200 points. That would translate to 0.15% for $5 redemption and 0.16% for $10 redemption.

I guess the winner is clear, the rebate (0.5%) one can get from CabRewards is around the same as what Capitaland and Fraser are giving. You can read my recommendation/comparison of both rewards program here. Grab is a winner too - not for their rewards program but in giving out promo codes :)

Weekend trip to KL

KPO has been nagging me every weekend to blog.. Sometimes I wonder if his nagging gets worse with age.. and how am I going to survive this.

To stop KPO's nagging, I shall blog about the food places we have been to in our KL short getaway.

Oversea Restaurant

This restaurant serves real good food!
Must try includes the char siew, sio bak, and their home-made tofu.
This restaurant has a few chain stores, of which one is walking distance from Berjaya Times Square/Pavilion, so anyone who visits KL should not miss this!

We didn't get to eat the char siew on our first day because it was sold out (we reached the restaurant at about 2pm). So people who want to try it should consider making a reservation first (they allow you to reserve char siew).

Website: https://www.oversea.com.my/restaurant/restaurant-oversea-imbi/

Miru Dessert Cafe

For those who have tried After You at Bangkok will know that their Shibuya toast is really good. I thought I would never get to find another good substitute until I tried the Shibuya toast at Miru Dessert Cafe at Pavilion. The toast is crisp and buttery, and goes perfect with the honey sauce. Highly recommend people to give it a try as well.

Website: https://www.facebook.com/mirudessertcafe/

Petaling street Lou Shu Fen

Actually this shop isn't really located at Petaling street. It is located near Petaling street, so anyone who is intending to visit the Chinatown in KL should try this.

KPO and I weren't exactly impressed initially when we see bloggers raved about the Lou Shu Fen; afterall, how good can it be right? Our impression of Lou Shu Fen is typically the one which is served with soup and tasted bland.

However, we were so wrong. The Lou Shu Fen there is served with minced meat in claypot and has the fragrant claypot taste. It was so good we had to order two of it although we weren't hungry. Don't believe how good it is? Just do a simple google search of its review and you will get what I mean.

Address: 52, Jalan Sultan, Kuala Lumpur 50000

We also had some other random meals along the way, such as food at Jalan Alor and some random shopping malls, but the food was not worth mentioning. So this pretty much sums up our fat-die-us trip to KL. Definitely looking forward to another M'sia trip! 

KPO Analysis on Ascott Residence Trust (REIT) Rights Issue

Ascott Residence Trust (REIT) announce 29 rights units for every 100 existing units at a discounted price of $0.919 per share few weeks back to raise gross proceeds of approximately S$442.7 million. If you do not know what is a rights issue, you can read about it here. It is one of the way the company raise more fund to do all sort of things (acquire more property, expand business, pay debt, etc.).

People generally do not like rights issue because it would dilute the equity/value that belongs to existing shareholders and it feels like the company is asking for more cash/taking the dividend back. KPO is rather neutral (secretly likes it), I guess it depends on each and every individual situation. For example, rights issue would not be good for people at later stage of their life, people using CPF or people having tight cash flow.

Let's take a look at the numbers:

Latest Annual Report 2016 (’000):
Total Assets = 4,791,281
Total Liabilities = 2,109,018
Unitholders' Funds = 2,200,625
Shares Outstanding = 1,653,471

Net Asset Value (NAV) per Unit attributable to Unitholders = 1.33

My average price for Ascott REIT is $1.188 for 5000 units. There is room (~11.9%) for the share price to move nearer to its NAV and assuming DPU (Dividend Per Unit) is around $0.0743 (decided to be more conservative by using the lower DPU as estimate after dilution), I will be getting around 6.3% dividend yield.

After Rights Issue (’000):
Total Assets = 4,791,281 + 442,700 = 5,233,981
Total Liabilities = 2,109,018

Unitholders' Funds = 2,200,625 + 442,700 = 2,643,325
Shares Outstanding = 1,653,471 + 481,688 = 2,135,159 2,136,615(4)

Net Asset Value (NAV) per Unit attributable to Unitholders = 1.23

There is a fine print!

(4) Includes adjustments to include approximately 0.9 million new Units issued as payment of the acquisition fee and Manager’s management fees for the German Acquisitions. The Manager’s acquisition fee was assumed to be paid in Units based on an issue price of S$1.19 on 1 January 2016. The Units issued as payment of the Manager’s fees were assumed to be issued at the same prices as those that were actually issued as payment for management fees for the existing properties for FY2016.

Hmm. They paid themselves around S$1 million (0.9 million x 1.19) for acquiring the German asset and diluting our shares... I guess this could be the reason as to why B said they are aggressive? 

Assuming if I were to subscribe for the rights:

My new average price would be (5000*1.188 + 1450*0.919)/(5000+1450) = $1.12 with about 9.8% room for share price to hit NAV and the new dividend yield would be around 6.6%.

KPO likes to buy things that are in discount and taking free GrabShare ride in KL but the one thing KPO really like about rights issue is that I get "buy" more shares without paying any commission as well as over subscribe for more discounted shares!!

Assuming if I were to over subscribe by double of my rights:

Average Price = (5000*1.188 + 2900*0.919)/(5000+2900) = $1.09 with about 12% discount from NAV and dividend yield of 6.8%. The number gets better and better if you are given more discounted units.

Given that the current market price is at $1.065, I am sitting at a loss of -$395.62 (-6.66%) :'( I will subscribe to my rights and over subscribe by at least 2850 units to turn it green!

The Westin Kuala Lumpur Review

CZM and I went to KL over the weekend (17-19 March) and ate so much food! I shall leave the food post to her.. On a side note, I was not allocated any Kimly shares :'( Imagine that 100% gain even with just 4/6 lots.

We have traveled quite a bit but this is the first time (maybe the only time since it is much cheaper this time round) we stayed in a 5 star hotel - The Westin. After booking the trip online, we received an email the next day from Westin asking if they can help with anything. 

We replied asking for higher floor and the price of the breakfast buffet as we booked the cheapest rate without breakfast. You can read about it here.

Not too bad for a 5 star buffet breakfast, so we asked them to add one morning of buffet to our reservation.

When we were deciding between various hotels, we were quite amused by the fact that they are constantly marketing their bed as a feature - WESTIN HEAVENLY® BED. To our surprise, upon our arrival at the hotel, they actually placed their heavenly bed in the middle of the lobby!

We were given floor 28! The highest floor is 35 and this is a picture of our Deluxe room and the window view, nothing too spectacular. One thing which I really like was that they gave us 6 bottles of water each day! Not sure if it was due to our SPG membership or what but we were glad that we did not had to buy separately or boil any water.

 This is a snapshot of our itinerary and what happened over the weekend:

Day 1 Lunch	Overseas Restaurant	Char Siew sold out :(
Day 1 Cafe	Miru Dessert Cafe	Shiok Toast comparable to After You in BKK
Day 1 Dinner	Jalan Alor	Wong Ah Wah Chicken Wing and Roast Pork Dark noodle
Day 2 Breakfast	Dolly Dim Sum	It was not opened when we reached. Too hungry, so we ate at a random place
Day 2 Lunch	Bak Kut Teh	Char Siew sold out on Day 1 so we went back to Overseas Restaurant again
Day 2 Cafe	Coffee Amo	3D Coffee
Day 2 Dinner	China Town Seng Kee	Surprising good mee tai bak/pearl noodle
Day 3 Breakfast	5 Star Buffet Breakfast	A lot of selections!
Day 3 Lunch	Meal at Pavilion	Cheap cheap! (Sushi Tei)

We ate so much that we had to exercise in order for CZM to not feel guilty (I do not have the slightly guilty feeling. lol). I do not gym but Westin gym WestinWORKOUT® certainly looks pretty well equip. The best/worst part is that the gym is 24 hours! CZM wanted to drag me to the gym at night!!

Westin is also located at a very convenient/central location. Across the street is the super huge shopping mall - Pavilion (I dun think we finish walking/shopping it) as well as other smaller mall such as Lot 10, etc. Special mention to Grab for sponsoring our transport! Nope, this is not a paid post and they did not really sponsor us. It seems that Grab just launched their GrabShare service few weeks back and was having a RM8 promotion. CZM and I traveled to KL at the right time! lol. Even without the promotion, using Grab in KL is definitely a great idea since you do not have to worry about getting stuck in the jam with the meter jumping every second.

5 star buffet breakfast certainly did not disappoint us because they have a huge variety of food! CZM said that the breakfast buffet is a lot better than the one at Kuala Lumpur Grand Millennium when she went on a business trip 2 years ago. Even a simple egg, they have it in various forms (omelette, poached egg with salmon and egg benedict with fancy french name), we ate a lot a lot of eggs! 

With a heavy heart and a heavy stomach, we left KL bloated and return to work the next day. No work no money, no money no adventure.

Short Weekend Trip to KL

CZM and I will be going to KL (Kuala Lumpur) this weekend (17th to 19th March) because CZM has food cravings (Roast Pork/Char Siew from Restoran Oversea)!! She tried to justify it by saying MYR is at a all time low ($1 SGD = $3.14 MYR).

Fortunately/unfortunately, she is correct. Look at the exchange rate for the last 10 years:

We booked a return coach to from redbus.sg which has 10-15% discount (RBSG10 or RETURNSG). RedBus provide a platform for the booking of buses similar to what Expedia does for flights and hotels. They are not in one of the top google search results but being a KPO, I always look for cheaper deal and came across this site.

It is also an excellent opportunity for us to stay in 5 star hotel! We eventually decided to stay in The Westin because of its location which is near the shopping and food area. We thought we might as well made use of the SPG (Starwood Preferred Guest) and World Mastercard promotion to get ourselves a SPG Gold status which normally requires 10 eligible stays or 25 eligible nights in a calendar year. However, upon the registration and verification, we were immediately given a 20% discount!

At the above rate, we are paying around $150 SGD per night for a 5 star hotel stay that comes with SPG Gold status! A quick search at trivago shows that the cheapest rate available is $161. Sense of achievement whenever KPO finds a cheaper and better deal.

Hopefully, CZM will write some food blog post after this trip and share with everyone. Do comment and share with us if you have any food recommendation!

KPO's Virgin IPO (Kimly) After 4 Years!

I have never participated in any IPO after investing for 3/4 years. The reason is because one cannot do that with SCB and I have been trying to resist all temptations in order to accumulate all my investment in one account. I no longer need to do that as I have achieved that goal last month!

I am sure by now everyone is familiar with our (SGX) very first kopi-tiam (it means coffee shop in Hokkien, not to be confused with the food court Kopitiam) IPO - Kimly Limited. I would love to invest in Kopitiam and Koufu too whenever I see those crowd during meals time...

This is beyond my comfort zone as I can no longer value it simply using its NAV, CNAV, PB, etc. and to participate in this IPO would mean that I am not buying this at a discount/safety margin. At its IPO price, the PB (Price to Book ratio) is 5.51 and the NAV is only 4.56 cents >.<"" However, I do like the fact that it is paying dividends. Assuming if its payout ratio is at 50%, I will be able to get 4% dividend yield :)

For a more comprehensive analysis on Kimly, do refer to the masters/shi-fu below:
- Singapore IPOs: Kimly Limited
- Forever Financial Freedom: Kimly Limited IPO - Should You Be Getting This?
- 10% Per Annum: Kimly IPO - Exciting Stuff?

I went through Singapore IPOs past analysis on F&B related companies:
1. Katrina Group Ltd (July 2016)
- IPO price @ $0.21, EPS 1.51 cents, dividend yield ~4% (60% payout ratio) but no public tranche
- Closed $0.34 on first day (64% gain), current market price $0.21. lol

2. Jumbo Group (November 2015)
- IPO price @ $0.25, EPS 2.7 cents, dividend yield ~2.5% (30% payout ratio) with 2 million public tranche
- Closed $0.34 on first day (36% gain), current market price $0.68 O_O
- The 2 million public tranche was > 300x subscribed!! Investors who apply for 50 lots will get a 3:99 chance and be allocated 8,000 shares.
This time round Kimly has 3.8 million public tranche. Assuming the same number of people are interested, it would be at least > 150x subscribed but there will probably be more people around now?? So 50 lots will get 16,000 shares or 4000 shares?? KPO maths not good, CZM say I cannot teach our baby maths in the future. Anyway, KPO has decided to participate and made his virgin IPO application. Is there such a thing as beginner's luck for IPO?

Good luck to myself and all the applicants! Huat ah! 

Capitastar and Frasers Rewards

As a KPO, apart from being thrifty, I tries to make sure that the money spent is fully utilized. For instance, I avoid paying cash/NETS as much as possible and prefer using credit card because there is rebates/miles/reward points. If you spend in either Capitaland Malls or Frasers Centrepoint Malls, you should participate in their loyalty/rewards programme. Simply register and download both android/apple applications to your phone and take a photo of the receipts! This way you can get a little bit from the bank and a little bit from the malls. Shiok!

CapitaStar
A quick introduction from their site:
CapitaStar is the Multi-store, Multi-mall Cardless Rewards Programme by CapitaLand Mall Asia. 

With no membership fee, no expiry and no hassle of carrying a physical card, CapitaStar gives you benefits on top of any existing rewards and cards programmes. Simply shop and spend a minimum of $20 at any stores within our 15 participating CapitaLand Malls! 

Things to note:
- Receipt needs a minimum of $20 spending
- Receipt has to be scan/uploaded within the next 24 hours
- Every $1 spent = 5 STAR$ (1 STAR$ for supermarkets and food courts)
- The STAR$ expires by end of year + 6 months grace period to redeem the points
- Maximum of 5,000 STAR$ per day ($1,000 spending)

You can redeem Capitaland cash voucher after you have accumulated sufficient STAR$. Let's take a look at the numbers:

- Every 5,000 STAR$ = $5 CapitaVoucher

For every $1000 spent, you get $5 back. That is 0.5% or 0.1% ($5000 on supermarkets and food courts). I know some of you must be thinking that this is too little and simply not worth the effort but hey, this is more than the base interest of what the banks are giving you!

Frasers Rewards

Another quick introduction from their site:

Earn Frasers Points at all our retailers across our malls. That's more than 1,100 retailers (including supermarkets) to choose from.
Things to note:
- Receipt needs a minimum of $10 spending
- Receipt has to be scan/uploaded within the next 24 hours
- Every $10 spent = 10 Frasers Points (2 Frasers Points for supermarkets and food courts)
- The Frasers Points expires by end of year (01 October of the current year to 30 September of the following year)
- Maximum of 500 Frasers Points per day ($500 spending)

Similarly, you can exchange cash/rebates after you have sufficient points:
- Every 500 Frasers Points = $2.50 cash/rebate in your registered Frasers Rewards Gift Card

That is also a 0.5% ($2.50/$500) or 0.1% ($2.50/$2,500 on supermarkets). However, if there is a big purchase (e.g. furniture/electronics at courts), it would be better to get them at a Capitaland Mall because the daily capped is higher. Disclaimer: KPO has 2 lots of Capitaland shares. lol.

This is not a comparison! KPO is recommending you to participate in both programmes! 

On a side note, I find it quite funny how Capitaland is marketing their Capitastar as a "CARD-LESS REWARDS PROGRAMME, no hassle of carrying a physical card" (indirectly shooting Frasers Rewards Physical Gift Card) and how Frasers shoots back "EARN REBATES ANYTIME, ANYWHERE - Convert your Frasers Points to a rebate which will be instantly loaded to your registered Frasers Rewards Gift Card." (You will need to proceed to any of the Capitaland Malls customer service counters to redeem for cash vouchers).

Portfolio Update - Feb 2017

I just realized our blog has reached its first tiny milestone - 1,000 page views! Thank you everyone!

We are proud to announce that we have hit our 1st short term goal this month - our portfolio is now greater than $200,000 :) With that, we have applied to become Standard Chartered Priority Customer. That means we have lower commissions (0.18% as compared to 0.20% previously) and most importantly, the minimum commission of $10 no longer apply. One of our strategy is to use DCA (dollar cost averaging) to buy 1 lot (1000 units) of STI ETF every quarter and we were quite annoyed by the fact that we will have to pay the $10 (KPO mentality) so we sort of put it on hold back then when it was around $2.9X >.<

February is the month where both of us got our bonuses for slogging our lives away for the past year. Hence, we had more $$$ than usual and invested $15,000 in the followings:
- Raffles Medical (4000 units)
- Soilbuild REITS (10,500 units)
- Sheng Siong (3000 units)

We decided to buy more Raffles Medical because its price fell further since we last bought it. However, after we bought it, it fell even more >.< Before buying more Soilbuild REITS, my average price was around $0.733. I decided to average down and at its current price ($0.645), there is definitely room for capital growth (NAV $0.72) and dividend yield is around 9%. Both our parents did not receive any phone call when they were watching 缤纷万千在昇菘 The Sheng Siong Show for the past few weeks. As their son/daughter, we learnt from their mistakes and buy more of the shares to collect dividends instead. Ignoring the above investment, our portfolio grew by about 1.8% this month. Not too bad but I am expecting next month to be bad because interest hike is coming to town again. All my REITs will bleed...

The total dividends collected this month is $1,170.11. The breakdown is as follows:
- STI ETF: $424
- Croesus Retail Trust: $234.82 (I chose DRIP instead)
- OUE Commercial REIT: $200
- Far East Hospitality Trust: $112
- Starhill Global REIT: $88.20
- Viva Industrial Trust: $41.28
- Singapore Post: $35
- Lippo Malls Indonesia Retail Trust: $34.80

Total dividends collected for 2017: $1,931.36
Average dividends per month for 2017: $160.95 

OCBC 360 vs UOB One Account

KPO says I am lazy, so I shall prove him wrong!

So as what KPO has mentioned previously, OCBC 360 has recently revised its terms where spending of $500 only gives 0.3% interest on deposit (as compared to 0.5% previously). Should we still remain with OCBC 360?

I did some calculations as per below.

From the table, you can see that OCBC 360 is still the better option for most salaried workers. It seems that OCBC is no longer the better option. The difference in interest increases if you have more deposit. Apologies if this post has mislead anyone! I shall go crunch some numbers and do up a more detailed analysis for all/majority of the banks (WIP) - Edited by KPO: Thanks to Investing Wolf for pointing the mistake.

However, if you are not drawing any salary or your salary is below $2000 and you have $500 spending every month, UOB One Account will always be the better choice.

BYE

Felt Cheated by OCBC & SIA on the Same Day

OCBC and Singapore Airlines both make announcements on what they have to offer going forward in the same day! If only they had sent these out on one month later (1st April), we will be happier thinking that it is a prank.

In the morning, OCBC sent us an email stating that they will be changing (decreasing) the interest rate for the 360 account with effect from 1st April 2017.

In summary, you will only be getting 1.8% after meeting the 3 conditions (salary, pay 3 bills and spend $500) vs 2.2% previously.

Some interesting examples:
Poor Now: $70,000 x 1.8% = $1,260
Previously: $60,000 x 2.2% = 1,320

Rich Now: $130,000 x 0.05% + $70,000 x 2.8% = $65 + $1,960 = $2,025
Rich Now Effective Interest: 1.0125%

That additional 1% is such a scam. Who would be in the right mind to leave $130,000 to get an effective interest rate that is much lesser? (the old rich aunties and uncles..)

Link: 360 Account Changes

In the evening, SIA sent us an email too! It states that the 15% discount for miles redemption will be discontinued and the cash surcharges will be removed (redemption) with effect from 23rd March 2017.

This is one of the example provided by them in the email. A cash saving of $241 does not justify the additional 12,000 miles. Even with specialized spending earning 4 miles per dollar, I would need to spend $3,000 to earn the additional 15% miles! I would rather pay cash because the difference is so huge!

CZM and I have been directing our spending to various different cards (specialized spendings) with the goal of redeeming Suites class tickets to US. We have accumulated about 180k miles till date and SQ just made it harder for us :'(

 Link: KrisFlyer Changes