SG Market (30 Dec 16)

The market could see some year end window dressing as investors position for 2017.Regional bourses in Tokyo (-0.7%) and Sydney (-0.4%) tracked lower.Technically, bottomside support for the STI is seen at 2,865 (50-dma), with immediate resistance at 2,900, followed by 2,910.

Stocks to watch:
*SingPost: Appointed Paul William Coutts as its new CEO wef 1 Jun, ending a year-long hiatus. Coutts was previously CEO of Toll Global Forwarding, one of the five divisions of logistics player Toll Group, which in turn is a unit of Japan Post.

*Vard: Fincantieri has extended the closing date for its voluntary cash offer of $0.24/share to 12 Jan, 5.30pm from 29 Dec. At last update, Fincantieri controls 55.6% of Vard.

*Mermaid Maritime: Its 33.8%-owned associate, Asia Offshore Drilling (AOD) secured a three-year contract extension for the jack-up drilling rig, AOD III in Middle East until Dec ’19. The extension comes at reduced rates but will add about US$112m to AOD’s contract backlog.

*mm2 Asia: Pre-IPO investors have completed the subscription of mandatory convertible note in UnUsUaL for a term of 2 years.

*ASL Marine: Sought consent from bondholders to extend maturity of two outstanding notes, $100m due Mar ‘17 and $50m due Oct ’18, by three years to 2020/2021. In exchange, it is offering investors a coupon step-up of 0.5% per year and redemption of 2.5% of the principal every six months, plus a subordinated charge over some mortgaged vessels.

*Wee Hur: Selling a 3,690 sqm plot of land in Brisbane, Australia to a third party for A$65.1m ($67.8m), which will reap a net disposal gain of $14.4m.*GLP: Another committed co-investor of its US Income Partners III fund has made its initial capital contribution of US$26m or 8.1% of the aggregate capital contributions to-date. Following this further syndication, GLP’s interest in the fund has been reduced to 82.2% from 90.3%.

*Artivision Technologies: Placing out 277.8m new shares to Oxley CEO Ching Chiat Kwong (246.9m) and investor Christine Poh (30.9m) at $1.62¢ each. Following the placement, Ching will become a controlling shareholder with 24.5% stake. The group also issued $4.875m 10% bonds to Oxley Dy CEO Low See Ching ($2.875m) and private investor Tee Wee Sien ($2m) and granted them 370.4m share options each with right to subscribe for a new share at 1.62¢ each. In total, the placement and bond issue will raise net proceeds of $9.3m, of which $2.875m will be used to partially redeem $4.5m bonds due on 30 Dec, while another $3m will be used to make an advance payment to an Isreali publisher. Separately, chairman Philip Soh has resigned with immediate effect.

*VGO Corp: Plans to issue 1.2b new shares at 32.5¢ apiece to Colin and Edwin Tan to allow the backdoor listing of Sky Win Management Consultancy, Malaysian conglomerate Hatten Group’s property development arm. VGO will also seek to change its name to Hatten Land and to move from the Catalist board to the Main board.

*Rex International: Its stake in Steeldrum has been lowered to 25.7% (prior: 36.9%) following its decision not to participate in a rights exercise to raise US$1.3m in capital. Steeldrum has drilling operations in Trinidad.

*ASTI: Agreed to acquire PT Cahaya Sakti for US$2m in cash, an independent power producer in Indonesia. The deal would have narrowed loss per share to 3.09¢ from 3.13¢ in FY15, on a proforma basis.

*San Teh: Commenced arbitration proceedings against Shanghai Yi Ya Investment Management to recover outstanding rentals of Rmb8.4m ($1.7m).