Case Study on DBS (SGX: D05) - Using ShareInvestor

Established on 16th July 1968 by the Government of Singapore to take over the industrial financing activities from the Economic Development Board, DBS Group Holdings Ltd is a now multinational banking and financial services corporation. DBS acquired POSB Bank on 16th November 1998 and currently have multiple branches all over Singapore. DBS Bank is the largest bank in South East Asia by assets and among the larger banks in Asia, with total assets of S$482 billion as at 31st Dec 2016.

DBS have strong market positioning in consumer banking, treasury and markets, asset management, securities brokerage, equity and debt fund-raising in Singapore and Hong Kong. Its largest and controlling shareholder is Temasek Holdings. DBS received Global Finance's "Safest Bank in Asia" accolade for six consecutive years, from 2009 to 2015 and was also awarded the Best Digital Bank in the World in the year 2016 by Euromoney. With operations in 17 markets, the bank has a regional network spanning more than 250 branches and over 1,100 ATMs across 50 cities.

DBS recently reported a quarterly profit slightly below estimates on Monday (Nov 5), expressing worries due to trade war and property cooling measure that might lead to hold back on its loan book growth next year. With the intensifying tariff dispute between China and the United States impacting Singapore’s export-reliant economy, and implementation of new measure, outlook for bank are clouded after reporting their profit last year.

DBS reported net profit came in at S$1.41 billion in the three months ended September as compared to S$822 million a year earlier. 

DBS having 31 per cent share of the Singaporean housing loan market mention that the slowdown in new mortgages due to recent cooling measures is bigger than expected. Before the latest round of measures were introduced this year, DBS is expected to grow its mortgage book by around S$4 billion in 2018. However, the lender revised it to S$3.5 billion and now expects about S$2.5 billion after implementation of the cooling measures.

Let’s look at how DBS is scoring based on ShareInvestor’s grid:

DBS shares fell 2.6 per cent in afternoon trade after the result release, on track for their biggest single-day percentage fall in nearly three months.

In terms of price movement, although there is a huge decline in its year on year high but there is a strong support for its incremental year on year low. 

Reviewing historical CAGR data, the company is also showing positive performances across the ups and downs of both business and market cycles. 

However, considering that CAGR does not reveal growth volatility, we can look at forward estimates to have a sensing of the pace of growth and momentum that can be carried into future years. 

With strong estimates put forth by the analysts based on growth forecast, four analysts from research houses maintain DBS as BUY and one as Hold in November 2018. 

With its less than estimated profit for Q3, is it still a good stock to include in your portfolio? Leaving you with ShareInvestor’s consensus estimates. 

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ShareInvestor is a financial platform that provides market data information for multiple markets to both institutional and retail investors across its online toolsets, ShareInvestor Station™, ShareInvestor WebPro™ and ShareInvestor Mobile.

Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by ShareInvestor  

The Class Divide In Singapore - Does Having More Money Makes Us More High Class?

Many of us would have seen a video by Channel news Asia about a few students from different backgrounds voicing out their views on class divide issues in Singapore. This video went viral and was debated widely even by Ministers.

The class divide - Education tracks & Money

Besides the different education tracks which cause class divides (eg express, normal academic, normal technical stream), another apparent issue which emerged out is the class divide regarding money. I was surprised that kids as young as 10 years old are comparing who has the more expensive school bags and pencil boxes with their classmates.

You can watch a snippet of the video below:

"If you've the most expensive things, you're the most popular also". This was commented by a young primary school girl. The class difference only gets worse and worse as students are divided into different streams in secondary school and it even continues in adult working life. 

Our society has gotten use to this kind of segregating people in life. In schools, the better students are put into special or express streams while the weaker ones are put into normal academic and normal technical streams. This makes the students who are in the normal streams feel less inferior to their peers in the express and special stream while the express stream people tend to look down on the normal stream people too. 

Then, as we proceed to the higher education level, there are some people who get into Junior college,  some into Polytechnic and some to the Institute of Technical Education (ITE). Thereafter, some proceed to local university such as NUS, NTU and some choose to go private universities. The difference is again apparent as even employers sees the degrees differently. 

It doesn't stop here. In the workplace, we continue to segregate people into different class through the management associate program where it is a fast track program for employees to advance their career faster. People in this program tend to be treated differently at workplace and also get promotion up to twice as fast as another employee who is not in this program. The starting salary and future salary adjustments may be different too. 

The above are just some of the examples of how we as a society contribute to class divide unknowingly. While in this society nothing is fair, those who make misinformed choices in life at an early stage will inevitably lag behind in life.

How would you describe the expectations your parents have of you?

In the video, it is apparent that those who end up in the normal stream have thoughts which are different from the students in the express or even integrated program. Parents of these students have different expectations of them too which is quite distinctive. 

For students of integrated program, their parents expect them to pursue education such as law. They also expect them to get at least an A for their exams. 

For students in the normal stream, when asked what's their parents expectation of them, they say they just expect them to just pass. They don't expect very high grades

Does Having More Money Makes Us More High Class? 

In the same full 48 mins video about class divide, it goes on to discuss on how higher class people look down on people such as security guards, cleaners and so on. A condominium security guard who was interviewed said he has been shouted at by residents and called names such as stupid security guard. This shows the great disrespect these people have and think they are high class living in a luxurious condominium. 

You can watch the full video here. 

Ultimately, I always believe that having more money does not make us a bad person but it amplifies whatever character we have no matter if we are poor or rich. Having more money does make us feel better about ourselves especially when our income power increases. But, we should always remember not to look down or show disrespect for those who are worse off in life. At the end of life, we are actually only just a normal human being no matter which social class we belong to. 

Some of us may have made misinformed choices when we were younger and regretted the choices we made back then such as not studying harder and in the end didn't manage to get a good job to earn higher income. In any case, there are people who still manage to become successful even though they came from a lower class background. With some knowledge of financial planning, it helps along the way to become more financially secure for our lives. 

Feel free to join in an AMA session which I have on DBS NAV website. Just ask any questions you have at this link on any issues or topics, no restriction. You can help answer some questions too in the community. 

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