SGD Bond Alert : Swiber Glaring At Me

It wasn’t me because I am usually not the most attentive person around which makes it good to have old friends who are complementary partners to my life.

Swiber came up over lunch yesterday and hold on to your horses here, the senior Swiber perpetual is up 3.8% (in yield) this year. Its cash price has fallen from 98.00 to somewhere between 92 to 94 just on Friday. We are looking at yield to 09/2015 call levels of 12.56% – 13.55% here.

This is one of the few senior perpetuals around abeit its small issue size of SGD 80 mio.

Scanning at news headlines, we do not seem to have anything major and its equity price is holding up. Kim Eng Securities issued an overweight call on offshore marine companies early last month.

I ran through the rest of the Swibers and they do not appear too poorly off. In fact, the Swiber senior 06/2015 yield has fallen 0.12% since 31 Dec 12.

Comparables like Ezra and Ezion are holding up too which makes this Swiber perpetual glare out at me like a sore thumb.

SWIBER PERP

Granted, they have SGD 230 mio of debt to refinance this year and another SGD 164 mio next year and their market capitalisation is holding at SGD 418 mio, their earnings are expected to be announced on 27 Feb. Any doubts ?

I am too chicken to make an outright Buy call on the Swiber senior perp. But if you happen to be holding on to some China Central Real Estate CENCHI10.75 04/2016, you may want to know that its price has risen 2.5 cents since end 12 and it is quoted at the 110 handle now ie. 6.9-ish%. Property rhetoric out of China has been discouraging. Therefore, a switch into our local Swiber may not be a bad idea for a bond that could be called 7 months earlier in 09/2015 ?

PS : OLAM 6% 2022 chart for reference, as well.

OLAM 6% 2022