First Looks @ PANAMY & PARKSON

The 2 Ps

Panasonic Manufacturing Malaysia Bhd
I chose PANAMY simply because it is as close to Dutch Lady. The corporate structure remains simple with a single associate Panasonic Malaysia Sdn Bhd (PMSB) of roughly 47% stake. For 40 years, it has been involved in the manufacturing and distribution of electrical products. The Panasonic brand name is as ubiquitous as Dutch Lady, which home don't have Panasonich ah?

Look at the share price performance. Does really look like DLADY right? No where but to go up for the last 10 years. From first looks it held my interest on a few items:

• Has no debts with cash in hand as high as ~RM500 million. That's a lot!
• Gross profit margin is more than 13%. Above average for a mfg company.
• Dividend yield is at an average of 7.0% over the last 10 years. WOW!
• Has export sales that contribute 50% to Panamy's turnover.

Parkson Holdings Bhd (formerly ACB)
Mr. Tan Teng Boo's favourite stock. ~27% of his ICAP fund size is Parkson and this made me curious. You can say hold ICAP is like holding some Parkson shares. Parkson is a pure regional retail player and has operations in China, Malaysia and Vietnam. It is an established department store chain since 1987 and currently has 43 stores in China, 35 in Malaysia and another 6 in Vietnam.

Share price performance has been mixed, probably a hyped up stock in the late 2007 before crashing hard and recovering. Nevertheless some key pointers:

• Has debts but has been decreasing down quickly. Current DE at 1.16.
• Net profit margin is very high of approximately 60% (more than Genting!) which is far sufficient to service short term debt obligations.
• Parkson's entry into China has been good and with growing income levels in China's gigantic workforce there is a lot of room for growth.

First looks are certainly nice but more work is needed. For now they have caught my attention and shall be in my research list very soon. Btw both are consumer oriented stocks because I love this sector.