Recently, my colleague, Dennis Chan, wrote that in October, he had called up his remisier to make purchases of Sembcorp Marine at $1.10 if it should fall to that level, while he was in Japan.
His rationale: That was the price per share which SembCorp Industries had tried unsuccessfully to privatise the rig-builder in 2002.
Presumably, many other investors had the same idea. SembMarine briefly touched $1.15 that month before making a successful rebound. It now hovers around $1.50.
Yesterday, CapitaLand announced that it was raising $1.84 billion by selling a new share at $1.30 to investors for every two shares they currently own in the firm.
By sheer coincidence, this is close to the $1.10 listing price of CapitaLand’s predecessor firm, DBS Land, in 1987.
At the same time, its offspring, CapitaMall Trust, is raising $1.23 billion via a nine-for-10 rights issue at 82 cents a unit. The IPO for the real estate investment trust IPO in 2002 had been priced at 96 cents a unit – just fractionally above the rights price which investors are now required to pay.
Similarly, DBS is hovering around $8.25. This was incidentally the price which the stock had fallen to, during the Sars crisis in 2003, even though this is strictly speaking not a meaningful comparison because of the bank’s recent rights issue.