Top Stock Highlights of the Week: Keppel Corporation, Sea Limited and Singapore as the Millionaire Capital

Welcome to the latest edition of top stock highlights where we present interesting business snippets or earnings reviews.

Keppel Corporation Limited (SGX: BN4)

Keppel Corporation has just announced a massive contract win from Brazil’s National Oil Company, Petrobras.

Its offshore and marine (O&M) unit’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Keppel Shipyard, has secured a US$2.9 billion international tender to build a Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel.

The vessel, known as P-80, will be the second FPSO that Keppel O&M will be building for the state-owned oil major.

The P-80 is set to be one of the largest floating production units in the world with a production capacity of 225,000 barrels of oil per day and a storage capacity of two million barrels of oil.

It is scheduled for completion in the first half of 2026 and this contract will add over S$4 billion to Keppel O&M’s order book.

As a recap, Keppel O&M’s net order book as of end-June 2022 stood at S$4.4 billion, so this contract alone will almost double the division’s order flow.

Elsewhere, Keppel Corporation is also partnering with Keppel Infrastructure Trust (SGX: A7RU), or KIT, to co-invest in a sustainable urbanisation business and a renewables project.

KIT, a wholly-owned unit of Keppel Corporation, and Keppel Asia Infrastructure Trust will jointly acquire a waste management services player in South Korea for around S$666.1 million.

Keppel Corporation will end up with an 18% ownership of this business.

Both KIT and Keppel Corporation will also jointly invest in a 50.01% stake in a German wind farm that will increase the latter’s renewable energy portfolio to approximately 2.2 gigawatts.

The investment amount is around S$445.3 million and the 50.01% stake will be equally split among the two businesses.

Sea Limited (NYSE: SE)

Sea Limited, a US-listed Singaporean e-commerce and gaming company, just released its fiscal 2022’s second quarter (2Q2022) and first half (1H2022) earnings.

Total revenue rose 29% year on year to US$2.9 billion while gross profit climbed 17.1% year on year to US$1.1 billion.

Despite the rise in revenue, net loss more than doubled year on year from US$433.7 million in 1H2021 to US$931.2 million in 1H2022.

The business generated a negative free cash flow of close to US$90 million in the same period.

Digging into each of Sea’s divisions, the e-commerce under Shopee saw gross orders jump 42% year on year to two billion while gross merchandise value rose 27% year on year to US$19 billion.

Globally, Shopee continued to rank as the top app on Google Play in the shopping category based on the total time spent using the app.

Sea Limited is, however, suspending its e-commerce revenue guidance for the remainder of 2022 due to macro uncertainties.

Moving on to the digital entertainment segment under Garena, quarterly active users witnessed a 15% year on year decline to 619.3 million.

Despite the decline, the latest figure is a slight increase from the previous quarter’s 615.9 million after the company saw two consecutive quarter on quarter declines in this metric.

Unfortunately, quarterly paying users continued their descent, down 39% year on year and 8.6% quarter on quarter, logging its third consecutive quarter on quarter decline.

On the bright side, Sea’s digital financial services division did well, with revenue more than tripling year on year to US$279 million.

Quarterly active users continued to rise by 53% year on year in 2Q2022 with total payment volume jumping by 36% year on year to US$5.7 billion.

Millionaires in Singapore

The number of millionaires in Singapore as a proportion of its population looks set to rise, according to a report from HSBC (LON: HSBA).

The bank projects that in the next eight years, the share of millionaires will rise to 13.4% of the population, up from just 7.5% last year.

Wealth is measured as the cash in bank accounts plus investments in securities such as stocks and bonds, along with any real estate holdings minus their associated mortgage amounts.

In absolute terms, the number of millionaires will jump from the current 400,000 to 700,000 from 2021 to 2030.

This steady rise bodes well for companies selling luxury goods as spending on discretionary goods is set to rise.

Luxury watch retailers The Hour Glass (SGX: AGS) and Cortina Holdings (SGX: C41) stand to benefit as the country will have more well-heeled individuals.

And let’s not forget that luxury brands such as Ralph Lauren (NYSE: RL) and Hermes International (EPS: RMS) that operate in Singapore will also see a boost in their sales.

Finally, unit trust and wealth management platform provider iFAST Corporation Limited (SGX: AIY) may also see sustained inflows that will allow it to continue growing its assets under administration.

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Disclaimer: Royston Yang owns shares of iFAST Corporation Limited.

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