Singapore Press Holdings (SPH)

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r0n

Junior Member

Posts: 48
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Joined: Dec 2011
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#1,063

10-05-2021, 11:04 AM

(09-05-2021, 10:02 PM)¯|_(ツ)_/¯ Wrote: SPH restructuring or Umbrage Pte Ltd restructuring?

Let me do a quick QnA before I say what I wanted to say.

Why Umbrage?
Don't know the answer.
Initially, the reporters were rather gentle and was asking simple and easy to answer questions. CEO says something that the reporters could refers to the handout. That really triggered the tsunami.
A continuous chain of questions was raised and unfortunately both Chairman and CEO was not prepared.
And, very unfortunately, everyone know what happened when CEO do not know the answers to those tough questions.

Why Chairman and CEO did not know the answers?
First, they don't really care and it's obvious that those directors that help to prepared the press conference also don't bother.
If anyone of them (Chairman, CEO or director-in-charge) is paying attention to the restructuring, they would had prepared for level 2 instead of keep staying at level 1 tasks.
Basically, nobody care about how to implement the restructuring.
All they wanted to do is to make the announcement based on Umbrage Pte Ltd interest and only provide SPH with 4 year worth of $$$.
Nobody care.

Umbrage Pte Ltd only prepared for who, what, when, where and why - level 1 questions.
None of them is interested in how.
Or, they simply not competent enough to handle the restructuring?

Why restructuring?
5%
Chairman and CEO can says until cow come home that it's for the benefit of SPH.
If you had followed SPH history, in particular, media development, you would know that something is not correct. Shareinvestor.com and SRX.com were some of the examples. Basically, Umbrage Pte Ltd wanted to attract a group of friendly-substantial investors. The current shareholders limit of 5% is a grave concern for further expansion plan for Umbrage Pte Ltd.
Sad. Isn't it?

Ok, back to my story - SISV court case with SPH.
SISV is a no nonsense organisation. It's members consists of Surveyors and Valuers who are meticulous in calculating and assessing the value of properties. In our context would be real estate property. SPH basically demonstrated that it's automated valuation model for real estate property are sounds. Furthermore, with the increasing needs for digitalisation, big data, automation with Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligent would be the natural steps to achieve long term sustainability of providing quality surveying/valuation services to Singapore Real Estate industry.

The case is closed and SPH had stand tall. SPH had implemented successfully digitalisation, data, automation, ML/AI and sustainablilty.
What else do you expect SPH to do?

So, Shareinvestor.com, SRX and then another similar and great exploitation of tech happened in 2017:
SPH diverts MediaCorp sahres
https://www.tnp.sg/news/singapore/sph-di...ease-print

I vividly recalled at that period, everyday, I would received a few news articles - primarily Singapore news. My feeling at that time was, the news articles was actually customised for me. I will read those Singapore news quickly in order to get the first hand information that's relevant to me.

I could imagine that it this pushing of local news that's customised to different customer profile (c.f. Amazon), then combining with the Shareinvestor.com focused on financial information and SRX real estate information with inference engine merging different sources eg. MOH on Covid-19 visitors, contact tracing etc...

I strayed. But I would really think that the world is full of fake news.
SPH is naturally a trusted entity for Singapore and Singaporean.
If SPH is able to use those technology like big data, ML/AI and push out news based on different needs of a customer (c.f. Amazon), then these type of realtime feed, would be really great.

Let me dwell and stretch a bit further.
Valuebuddies vested in iFAST would be very amazed by iFAST growth and growth potential.
Don't be surprise that I tell you that SPH can be bigger and better than iFAST.
SPH is already a trusted brand in Singapore. It' already operating SI.com and STI. It has mature and proven big data, ML/AI capabilities. In term of social media, who else could beat SPH (in term of access to news content and ability to call out fake news)?

What we had seen throughout the history and what Chairman and CEO said in the press conference does not gel well.

Something is missing.

What could that be?

Last but not least.
We know that this restructuring exercise is not planned by SPH.
It is actually planned by the Umbrage Pte Ltd.
What would had happen, if the restructuring exercise is planned by SPH (instead of Umbrage Pte Ltd)?

Obviously, what we know (based on Umbrage Pte Ltd plan) is after 4 years, SPH would run out of operating cash and will need to draw down from tax payers $$$ to continue operation... lack alone growing into anti-fake news, tech giant, financial/property public education.

So, the interesting question would be if you are a tax payer, would you allow Umbrage Pte Ltd to plan for SPH?

Gratitude.