Today, SCM announced an unexpected 3 rights for every 2 shares at the price of $0.08.
In my view, this rights exercise is an unnecessary corporate action and a maneuver by Temasek Holdings to profit off minority shareholders.
Why is it unnecessary
Sembcorp Marine has a strong balance sheet since its previous rounds of rights raising since balance sheet is not massively over levered and has a cash pile of hundreds of million.
Rights Exercise
Existing Shareholders are going to be fatigued by the amount of rights and be constrained by their own financial resources.
In 2020, SCM did a shares issue of 5 new shares at $0.20 for every one share held. In 2021, it is now proposing 3 new shares for every two shares held at $0.08. Let's break it down with an example. Assuming in April 2020, you bought 10,000 shares at $0.70 at a cash outlay of $7,000. After the first rights issue, you would have 60,000 shares and have to fork out an additional $10,000.
With the upcoming round of rights, the 60,000 shares results in 90,000 more shares to be subscribed at the cost of $7,200. Therefore, for just a $7,000 initial outlay, you have to put an additional $17,200. That is throwing another 250% more cash into your initial SCM investment. It is very difficult for investors to fork out so much cash in just one year.
2021 rights issue is priced at a higher discount than 2020 Rights Issue which dilutes Shareholders
In this round of rights, the discount to TERP for the last day (35.7%) and 5- day VWAP (36.2%) is much higher than 2020’s; in 2020, it was 35.1% and 21% respectively. This does not make sense because SembCorp Marine is (i) now in a stronger financial position than its pre-2020 rights issue, (ii) the industry has become better and (iii) Sembcorp Marine has a higher net cash balance. All these points to the fact that TERP could have been done at a 20+% discount value.
Many Ordinary Investors wont be able to keep putting in money unless you are....
Temasek. No doubt SCM is issuing new shares at a discount to the tangible book value; however, I don't think many small time investors will be able to benefit from it due to the limited cash they have
It will only benefit Temasek who has deep pockets and the reserves of Singapore. Temasek has the opportunity to subscribe to the excess cheap shares, up to 67.0% which tells you how willing they are to buy additional SCM shares on the cheap.
All in all, this is a bad rights exercise where SCM is doing it from a position of strength. It is totally unnecessary. The latest corporate actions benefits Temasek tremendously and I will definitely vote against it.
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