IN AGGREGATE, the number of shares bought back is still small but could SIIC Environment be looking to buy consistently?
For the first time in at least 5 years, the company bought back its shares just last month on Nov 14.
To date, it has bought back 282,000 shares ranging from 5.4 cents initially to 7.2 cents recently.
SIIC Environment has undergone a boost in two ways: It was upgraded from Catalist to the mainboard of the Singapore Exchange on 30 Nov 2012.
It has also changed its name from Asia Water Technology (which listed on Catalist in 2005) to better reflect its blue-chip parentage: Its parent is Shanghai Industrial Holding, a Hong Kong listed company which is majority controlled by a PRC state-owned enterprise.
Click on the above 64-second slideshow on the gong ceremony at SGX to mark SIIC's upgrade to the mainboard as well as its name change from Asia Water Technology.
(For higher resolution, click on the slideshow, then move your mouse cursor over the base of the slideshow, and click on 'Change Quality'.)
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BIOSENSORS INTERNATIONAL has strongly accumulated its own shares over the last month.
Deutsche Bank, in a 5 Dec 2012 report, noted that:
1) A total of 19.12mn Biosensors stocks were repurchased costing SG$21.2 mn;
2) The buybacks were conducted on a daily basis, which accounted for approximately 24% of daily
trading volume on average;
3) Biosensors stock price increased by 5.9% from Nov 8 (the first date of buyback) to Nov 30 (the last day of Deutche's tracking period).
Deutsche analyst Jack Hu, Ph.D said Biosensors indicated that:
1) shares that were bought back would be in treasury; as such, Deutsche is not changing the number of diluted share counts, which is unlikely to benefit EPS calculation;
2) the total amount of planned share buyback was not released.
The analyst highlighted that Biosensors had a cash position of USD 285.7M as of September 30.
The analyst has a price target of SGD 1.30 for the stock, which recently traded at S$1.14.
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