It's good to see that the Company bought back 150 lots of its own shares over two trading sessions this week.

It is a somewhat belated action if I may say so, but nonetheless a good response by the Company to signal to the market that they view the stock price as being undervalued at the current level.

This share buy back initiative taken by the Management of Advanced Holdings is reassuring to Shareholders and Investors alike and will help to stabilize the share price / protect the share value of the Company.

The Management of Advanced has been given the mandate to do a share buy-back and should react more quickly in the future when there is an unreasonable sell down of the shares in the marketplace.

Advanced Holdings is a profitable Company with good fundamentals and a great future and should not be priced below NAV.

P.S  HuatAh!  Agree with your comment on Advanced's business model.  That's the reason why most of us here are long term holders of the stock despite its dismal performance.  Let's hope that the Management of Advanced can interest Fund Managers / Big Investors in the merit of the Company's business and get them to invest in it as that is the only way to get the share price moving again.

Advanced secures four new contracts worth S$19.3m

• Two oil and gas projects in Singapore and two petrochemical projects in China; targeted to be delivered by end 2009

• Asserts Advanced’s horizontal integration efforts into the chemical and petrochemical and clean, renewable energy sectors

SINGAPORE – 14 July 2008 – Advanced Holdings Ltd. (“Advanced” or the “Group”)

Of the four contracts, two are oil and gas projects in Singapore while the other two are petrochemical projects in China. These contracts are not expected to have any material impact on the Group’s earnings in the current financial year.

Commenting on the new contract wins, Dr Kar Wong, Managing Director of Advanced, said, “I’m very pleased to witness our steady gain in visibility in the fast-growing industries that we have targeted. With these new contracts, it demonstrates our commitment to intensify our efforts and activities in the Oil & Gas and Petrochemicals & Chemicals as well as Clean Energy & Environmental Technologies Divisions. We recognize that these high growth industries will represent a key growth opportunity for our Group and will continue to leverage on our technical expertise and marketing strength in these industries.”

Details of the oil and gas and petrochemical projects secured by Advanced are as follow:, a global supplier of proprietary process equipment and technologies, clean energy solutions and environmental technologies, today announced that it has secured four new contracts worth a total of S$19.27 million. These contracts are in addition to the S$63.0 million outstanding orders as of 31 March 2008 announced during the Group’s 1Q08 results.

Singapore Parallel Train-Integrated Refinery Facilities (“SPT-IRF”) project, Jurong Island, Singapore

Advanced inked two contracts to supply process analyzer systems for the SPTIRF project on Jurong Island. The SPT project is an integrated petrochemical project initiated by ExxonMobile Singapore (“EM”) as an extension to their existing plants at the refining and chemical complex on Jurong Island. It consists of a number of downstream units including a steam cracker ethylene complex and two downstream plants for the production of ethylene and propylene derivatives.

The SPT project will add new facilities to the existing EM’s fully operational chemical and refinery facilities, while the SPT-IRF project is termed for works which are confined to within EM’s existing refineries.

Dr Wong commented, “The SPT project once completed, will position Jurong Island as the petrochemical hub in Asia. We are very proud to be awarded these two contracts and be able to support ExxonMobile for this planned major milestone in Singapore’s petrochemicals industry where the Jurong Island petrochemicals industry will account for an impressive S$25 billion of the Singapore economy

MTO project, China

Strengthening its portfolio in the clean renewable energy sector, Advanced entered into a contract with a state owned petrochemical and chemical company to supply equipment for its methanol-to-olefin (“MTO”) process unit.

Through this project, “clean coal” technologies will be applied to convert coal feedstock to produce methanol, which will be further converted to olefins via MTO technology and eventually to ethylene and propylene - elements that are used as the building blocks for processes such as plastics and chemical products.

With the use of coal, an abundant and relatively inexpensive feedstock, to produce various products, on the environmental front, the MTO technology does not only help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it will also produce great economic benefits.

MDI project, China

With the second petrochemical contract signed, the scope of Advanced’s contract calls for the supply of equipment to another petrochemical and chemical company in China.

In recent years, global MDI capacity has had a rapid expansion, reaching 4.8 million tonnes in 2007, at a compound annual growth rate of over 20%. Global MDI production capacity is mainly concentrated in Europe and the United States which accounts for more than 40% and 30% of the global production capacity respectively. China accounts for 13% and is quickly emerging as one of the key MDI markets with an expected 13% MDI consumption growth rate in the next few years.Methylene Diphenyl DiIsocyanate (“MDI”) is used in the production of polyurethane which is widely used in the construction and automobile industries as well as for the manufacturing of paint and footwear..”

The NAV of Advanced Holdings is S$ 0.2215 c.

At the current price, the P/E ratio is around 5 x and the Dvidend Yield is around 6 p/c.

Above info obtained from ShareInvestor.com.

It is a pretty decent set of numbers anyway you look at it, and perhaps more so when you consider that the Company has been profitable and paying Dividends consistently since its listing 3 years ago.

I saw on the SGX news that Wastach Advisors has ceased to be a significant shareholder of the Company after disposing off 1.65 mil shares and this could be the reason for the recent sharp fall in Advanced's share price.  With a balance of 15.3 mil shares which they still hold, Wasatch Advisors will likely want to dispose of them too, so it looks like Advanced's share price will remain under pressure for a while yet.  However, once the selling by Wasatch is over, we should see a lift in Advanced's share price (unless another substantial shareholder calls it quits too).  Meantime, let's hope that the Management of Advanced will do so some share buy-back to prevent further falls in the share price as this is a very thinly traded counter and subject to wild swings either way with just a few hundred trades / day.

The last share buy-back action by the Company was made in December 2007.  The Company has bought back shares on just 4 occassions in 2007 totalling less than 5 p/c of the share buy-back mandate given to it.

I do not follow Aztech but out of curiosity made a check on it.

It seems to be a fundamentally sound Company sharing many similarities with Advanced, but operating in a different business area.

However, if you compare its share buy-back activities with that of Advanced, then they are in two totally different worlds.

Take a look :

Advanced share buy-back action (04.09.2007 - 18.12.2007)  :  4 occassions (none in Y 2008).

Aztech share buy-back action (02.09.2007 - 18.12.2007)  :  27 occassions (comparable period with Advanced)

Aztech share buy-back action 19.12.2007 - 26.03.2008)  :  33 occassions (of which 25 were made in Y 2008).

Aztech Directors' buy of shares in open market  (20.09.2007 - 23.06.2008)  :  23 occassions (of which 7 were made in Y 2008) 

It's not for me to day who is right or wrong, but if you look at the share buy-back activities, it does say a lot about the Management styles of these 2 fundamentally sound Companies.

For me, the Management of Aztech is the one that is giving more assurance / support to the Investors and Shareholders of the Company and a clear message of confidence to the investing public.

HuatAh ! ..Many counters are trading below  their Nav ..

Aztech even with Share buyback also suffer the same faith.

But if you believe Adv Hldg  can peform  .. it should be able to ride out the current storm.   

50% paper lost ...that's alot ! 

Adv Hldg NTA  is wat   ?  

One key  factor  for many share price poor performance is  Mkt sentiments..full of fear .

It is not difficult for the Management to show their support and confidence in the Company by doing a share buy-back as the daily trading volume for Advanced Holdings is very thin.  This shows that it is not a speculative counter and that most of the share-holders have been holding the stock for a very long time.  They should NOT allow the share price to just slide down from S$ 0.27c to S$ 0.195c in just three weeks (after stagnating in the range of S$ 0.26 - 0.32c for the past six months).  The current share price is now less than the NTA value of the Company, so if they are not going to do a share buy-back now, makes you wonder when they are going to do it. 

The speculation by Knightrider about a motive to keep the share price down may not be so wild after all.

Frankly, the Management does not realise that by not doing anything at all with the share buy-back mandate they are building up a groundswell of very diasppointed and soon-to-be hostile shareholders (who used to support them without any question in the past).

Question to Dr Wong : Why ask for a share buy-back mandate if you do not do anything about it especially now when the share price is below NTA.  What type of message are you giving out to Investors / Share-holders of the Company ?? 

Profitable Company, Cash Rich, Good Dividend Yield, Low P/E, Healthy Order Book, Involved In so Many New Projects yet the stock price keeps on going down (after being stagnant for more than 6 months).  It does not make sense and has no logic to it. 

Your "wild guess" may not be so wild after all.

SES should send a note to the Management to ask them what's going on. 

They sure have lots to explain, if you ask me.

Needless to say, like all long suffering share-holders, this surely must rank as one of the most disappointing stock to hold.

PS. Why ask for a share buy back mandate if they are not doing anything about it ??