Quick Take: Upson's stab fund and 2 more market updates
Upson [UPSON 2.39; 9% avgVol] [link] disclosed that its stabilization agent purchased 418,000 shares on April 19. That still leaves over 95% of the stabilization fund available for deployment, with about 10 days left to go in the life of the fund.
MB Quick Take: Aside from that crazy first couple of days, UPSON has had a relatively boring post-IPO life, largely because the price has melted back down toward its IPO price, and the demand hasn’t really been there to push it off that break-even level. Despite that, the stabilization fund has mostly been on the sidelines, because it can only jump into action and make purchases when the stock price is below the IPO offer price. The stab fund should have more than enough dry powder to fight back any selling pressure from shareholders that get cold feet next week, but it will be interesting to see what happens here after that huge reservoir of potential (artificial) demand is taken off the table.
BPI [BPI 102.80 2.6%; 45% avgVol] [link] teased a FY22 net income of P12.1 billion, which is a 52% improvement y/y, on P31.7 billion in revenues (+25% y/y). BPI said that total assets were up 12.4%, total loans were up 13.6%, and the NPL ratio was down to 1.82% (from 2.38% in Q1/22).
MB Quick Take: Banks are doing great, but as many have said, it doesn’t seem as though shareholders “share” in that success quite to the same degree with banks like BPI. Sure, the stock price is up 10.7% over the past 12 months, but it’s distributed only P2.12/share in dividends over that time, which is just a 2.12% yield based on BPI’s share price a year ago. This is part of the reason why I don’t normally mess with banks because I don’t understand the business of banking enough to know whether I should be thankful to pay such an opportunity cost for this stability, or whether I should be disappointed and looking for better.
VistaREIT [VREIT 1.63 1.9%; 53% avgVol] [link] declared a Q4/22 dividend of P0.0386/share, payable on May 29 to shareholders of record as of May 8. Using VREIT’s previous closing price, the Q4 dividend has an annualized yield of 9.53% based on the previous closing price, which is 6.93% larger than VREIT's pre-dividend annualized yield of 8.91%. Relative to VREIT's IPO price, the dividend increased VREIT's total stock and dividend return to -1.1%, up from its pre-dividend total return of -3.3%.
MB Quick Take: This is the second consecutive quarter that VREIT has declared a larger dividend, which will likely make the long wait a little easier for the company’s patient shareholders. VREIT is a subsidiary of the Villar Family’s Vista Land & Lifescapes [VLL 1.76 0.6%; 296% avgVol], which just provided its FY22 earnings report that showed how robust the mall and office rental market was for VLL last year, and VREIT is a big beneficiary of that recovery.
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Merkado Barkada's opinions are provided for informational purposes only, and should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any particular stock. These daily articles are not updated with new information, so each investor must do his or her own due diligence before trading, as the facts and figures in each particular article may have changed.
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