Raffles Education

Raffles Education: Straits Times today mentioned that the no. of private schools in Spore is currently about a third of what it once was (~328 schools remain vs est 1,000 in 2009), following the tightening of regulations which led to an industry shakeout. These recent updates came from the Council for Private Education (CPE) - set up 2yrs ago to clean up the private education sector, which had been hit by a spate of sudden closures of schools…

On the other hand, total student enrolment has gone up from 120k in Dec’09 to 146k as at Jun’11. KE Research believes the more established schools have expanded and are getting a bigger market share as a result of further consolidation/closures within the industry. ..

With less competition and renewed confidence (particularly for foreign students) in the local private school system, KER reckons the ongoing development to be largely positive for Raffles Edu in the long run.
Stock -0.8% at $0.59, hovering near the $0.60 resistance, after rising as much as 35% over the past 2 wks.