With its new oil production business heading towards its first revenue, GSS Energy CEO has been stepping up his share purchases in the past two weeks.

CEO Sydney Yeung plans to spin-off GSS Energy's precision engineering business.
NextInsight file photo. Sydney Yeung, through his vehicle Roots Capital Asia, has bought 2 million shares each time on three ocassions, raising his stake in the company to 82.3 million shares (see table).

As has been previously reported, GSS Energy and its JV partner secured a contract in Oct 2016 directly from Pertamina, the national oil company of Indonesia.  

The contract confers rights to produce oil from a 47.61 sq km field in the Trembul area in Central Java. First oil is expected in 1H2017.

Its cost of production is estimated at only US$12 per barrel, as the field was producing until it was abandoned during World War 2.

GSS Energy stock closed at 8.6 cents yesterday for a trailing PE of 6 and a market cap of S$43 million. The valuation clearly reflects the precision engineering business of GSS Energy and has yet to capture the potential value of the oil production business. 

And the current PE would be just 4.1 on an ex-cash basis, given that GSS Energy had S$14.3 million net cash as of end-Sept 2016.