Why you need to include GNB (KLSE: 0045) in your portfolio? Profit Guarantee of RM80M over the next three years is a sweet deal![SIZE=7]

To recap, G Neptune Bhd (GNB) has been suspended since 2017 due to its inability to submit their annual report for financial year 2017.

However, things are started to change as there are white knights joining the company. And this drastic change would immediately change the fate not only to existing shareholders of GNB, but also to its future investors.

Prior to that, let us first clarify a few things in the circular first.

Proposed Consolidation of Shares:

Before the suspension of trading, GNB last traded price was RM0.015 with 288,7333,333 outstanding shares in the market. The first action proposed would be the consolidation of the 10 shares to 1, which the rationale will be explained shortly.

In short, the share price of GNB shall be consolidated from RM0.015 to RM0.150.

Proposed Acquisition:

Here comes the fun part. For GNB to be “rescued”, there must be substantial change in terms of the fundamentals of the company. The new white knights – namely the reputable property developer Tan Sri Datuk Gan Yu Chai, Gan Yee Hin and Datuk Sydney Lim Tau Chin will inject a new “baby” to the company, which is Southern Score Sdn Bhd (SSSB), the construction arm founded by Tan Sri Gan in 2010 when he decided to move downstream from property development business.

To date, SSSB had completed 4 projects with a combined value of RM217.0 million, and RM1,066.0 million covering 6 other projects in the pipeline, excluding its tender book of RM634.4 million.

And for our fellow Setapak or ex-TARCian readers, certainly the name of “Platinum Victory” or “PV” will ring a bell. Many also are familiar with Tan Sri Datuk Gan. For your information, the mega developer under the Platinum Victory group who completed over RM9 billion in total GDV, shall be the backers of SSSB.

It is also understandable that the market is concerned on the current challenges of the overall construction industry. Despite being a turnkey contractor, the interesting part of SSSB comes with them outsource all of the construction work to 3rd party contractors, which enables to group to better control costs as they mainly focuses on the design and project management end.

Hence, very minimal direct raw material or labour issue is troubling SSSB at this juncture.

Notably, the group also offers RM80.0 million in profit guarantee over FY22, FY23 and FY24 to sweeten the deal. Once again, this would transform GNB from a loss-making and fundamentally challenged company to a very bright investment gem.

To back with the costs controlling part, SSSB had 9.7%, 12.9% and 12.3% in profit after tax margin for FY19, FY20 and FY21 respectively. The company had also landed RM35.17 million in profit after tax for FY21, which is really impressive given how challenging the year had been for not only construction, but Malaysia as whole.

The company also had RM40.87 million generated in operating cashflow for the same period.
Based on the discounted cash flow valuation on its FY21 results, the company is valued between RM258.27 million to RM275.54 million, and 13.13 times in PER based on the acquisition valuation of RM252.0 million, a slight discount to the lower bound of the DCF valuation.

While investors are fixated on the PER of construction should be in the 10-ish range, I wanted to emphasis that GNB had a superior margin comparable to the likes of Kerjaya Prospek Group Bhd, which is trading at 13.24 times in PER.

Moreover, the acquisition shall be completed via issuance of 1,680,000,000 new shares of GNB, which will be named after Southern Score Builders Bhd. The issuance price per share shall be RM0.150.

Proposed Debt Settlement:

To clean up the legacy balance sheet of GNB, a total sum of 20,666,667 new GNB shares shall also issue to Chai Tham Poh for the purpose of RM3.10 million debt settlemement.

Proposed Private Placement:

If you are attracted to the new GNB (or should I say new Southern Score Builder Bhd), the placement is the perfect venue for you to secure your shares. There will be a proposed private placement of 543,047,900 new GNB shares at a price of not lesser than RM0.200 to be fair to the existing shareholders of GNB.

Based on an expected issuance price of RM0.220 per share, the group expects to raise a total RM108.61 million, in which RM25.0 million shall be utilized for purchase of building materials, another RM25.0 million for repayment of contractors, and RM21.8 million for injection of fund into TCS SS Precast Construction Sdn Bhd as the group’s effort to venture into Industrialised Building System (IBS).

To recap, Malaysia’s government is encouraging contractors to shift to IBS as it is much more time saving in generic sense, hence IBS will be the future of construction in the Malaysia market.

The remaining RM18.0 million is expected to be utilize on acquisition of construction assets, RM9.41 million on working capital, RM5.0 million on acquiring of office and RM4.4 million to be paid for the estimated listing expenses.

For MITI eligible investors, you can now subscribe to the shares of GNB before 4th September 2022, 5pm.

Conclusion:

With a strong backing and solid fundamental, the shares of GNB is expected to be taken up quickly. This is before mentioning the group is also actively seeking opportunities in the MRT Line 3 RM31.0 billion packages. When election comes, construction companies are also expected outperform the market as a whole.

Hence, I hope you get a gist of the idea on why GNB should be in your investment portfolio!

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