HOPL - is it trading at a massive discount

Today HOPL is trading at 70/=. HOPL recently reported a EPS of 13.28, which means that share is trading at PE less than 6. Isn't it a attractive counter.Views appreciated

Disclosure: HOPL is not in my PF but under my watch list

FY12E EPS-Rs.14.99
PRICE-70Rs
PE-4.7times

*The rubber segment was the largest contributor to group GP accounting for around
78% of total GP while the tea segment accounted for only 27%. GP margins in both
segments showed considerable improvement over 4QFY10 but over the adjacent quarter,both segments witnessed a decline in margins due to increase in costs.

*Having factored in an arbitrary increase of 12% in cost of sales including the wage hike,we expect HOPL to post Rs. 374 million in earnings for FY12E given favourable
weather conditions. This translates to an EPS of Rs. 14.99. a significant discount to the sector

Further discussions...
http://forum.srilankaequity.com/search?mode=searchbox&search_keywords=hopl&show_results=posts

mark wrote:FY12E EPS-Rs.14.99
PRICE-70Rs
PE-4.7times

*The rubber segment was the largest contributor to group GP accounting for around
78% of total GP while the tea segment accounted for only 27%. GP margins in both
segments showed considerable improvement over 4QFY10 but over the adjacent quarter,both segments witnessed a decline in margins due to increase in costs.

*Having factored in an arbitrary increase of 12% in cost of sales including the wage hike,we expect HOPL to post Rs. 374 million in earnings for FY12E given favourable
weather conditions. This translates to an EPS of Rs. 14.99. a significant discount to the sector

Further discussions...
http://forum.srilankaequity.com/search?mode=searchbox&search_keywords=hopl&show_results=posts

KGAL and HOPL being manipulated. I witnessed signs price forcefully kept down.

Once the KGAL reports are out prices will start to increase again.

ipoguru wrote:

KGAL and HOPL being manipulated. I witnessed signs price forcefully kept down.

Once the KGAL reports are out prices will start to increase again.

True, today also I noticed that couple of thousand shares were dumped at 70/= at the last two hours. For me this is more than an attractive counter, thinking of start collecting.

Don't consider this as a buy/sell recommendation. It's you, who is responsible for your decision.

Being the biggest bear here and I don't agree when people say prices are being forced down.

It's damned hard to force the price down of anything. To force the price down, you need to sell massive quantities for shares. That means you need to hold a lot of shares in the first place. So you need to sell what you own at a loss. You will probably not be able to buy back at a lower price because bargain hunters always move in. It has been statistically proven that people are more likely to hold on to a losing position. So in the unlikely event that prices are being pushed down, it will not cause others to sell at a loss.

Pushing the price up is a lot easier, put in a fake buy order for about 100,000 shares and retailers will jump in and push the price up for you.

Ok , to cut a long story short: The market is falling under it's own weight. There isn't a single plantation that is under valued. Plantations are supposed to trade at low PE.

tubal wrote:Being the biggest bear here and I don't agree when people say prices are being forced down.

It's damned hard to force the price down of anything. To force the price down, you need to sell massive quantities for shares. That means you need to hold a lot of shares in the first place. So you need to sell what you own at a loss. You will probably not be able to buy back at a lower price because bargain hunters always move in. It has been statistically proven that people are more likely to hold on to a losing position. So in the unlikely event that prices are being pushed down, it will not cause others to sell at a loss.

Pushing the price up is a lot easier, put in a fake buy order for about 100,000 shares and retailers will jump in and push the price up for you.

Ok , to cut a long story short: The market is falling under it's own weight. There isn't a single plantation that is under valued. Plantations are supposed to trade at low PE.

What if you sell and let your wife buy( I think its possible for same person to sell and buy with different accounts with different brokers. Please clarify this..) Then you are only loosing brokerage .
When market is going down others are normally afraid to buy. So it is so easy to do this game. This is what I imagine.
In the mean time if some body sells at a stop loss you can collect them.

Can you explain why you think that plantations should trade at P/E about 5.

HOPL's NAVPS is also more than 30 rupees I think.

ipoguru wrote:

tubal wrote:Being the biggest bear here and I don't agree when people say prices are being forced down.

It's damned hard to force the price down of anything. To force the price down, you need to sell massive quantities for shares. That means you need to hold a lot of shares in the first place. So you need to sell what you own at a loss. You will probably not be able to buy back at a lower price because bargain hunters always move in. It has been statistically proven that people are more likely to hold on to a losing position. So in the unlikely event that prices are being pushed down, it will not cause others to sell at a loss.

Pushing the price up is a lot easier, put in a fake buy order for about 100,000 shares and retailers will jump in and push the price up for you.

Ok , to cut a long story short: The market is falling under it's own weight. There isn't a single plantation that is under valued. Plantations are supposed to trade at low PE.

What if you sell and let your wife buy( I think its possible for same person to sell and buy with different accounts with different brokers. Please clarify this..) Then you are only loosing brokerage .
When market is going down others are normally afraid to buy. So it is so easy to do this game. This is what I imagine.
In the mean time if some body sells at a stop loss you can collect them.

Can you explain why you think that plantations should trade at P/E about 5.

HOPL's NAVPS is also more than 30 rupees I think.

I'm getting this, It is so easy....

Say best Bid is 75 and offer is 79

place a order to 75.10 for 5000 shares and then sell your 5000 shares to you at 75.10. Being matched and immediately executed.
Sell about 100 or 200 to others also at 75 and then suddenly you can see best Bid goes down to 73 rupees.

Then sell another 10000 shares (from you to you ) at 73.10.

Isn't this possible tubal. If I have had at least 50 million rupees I will try doing this.

ipoguru wrote:

ipoguru wrote:

tubal wrote:Being the biggest bear here and I don't agree when people say prices are being forced down.

It's damned hard to force the price down of anything. To force the price down, you need to sell massive quantities for shares. That means you need to hold a lot of shares in the first place. So you need to sell what you own at a loss. You will probably not be able to buy back at a lower price because bargain hunters always move in. It has been statistically proven that people are more likely to hold on to a losing position. So in the unlikely event that prices are being pushed down, it will not cause others to sell at a loss.

Pushing the price up is a lot easier, put in a fake buy order for about 100,000 shares and retailers will jump in and push the price up for you.

Ok , to cut a long story short: The market is falling under it's own weight. There isn't a single plantation that is under valued. Plantations are supposed to trade at low PE.

What if you sell and let your wife buy( I think its possible for same person to sell and buy with different accounts with different brokers. Please clarify this..) Then you are only loosing brokerage .
When market is going down others are normally afraid to buy. So it is so easy to do this game. This is what I imagine.
In the mean time if some body sells at a stop loss you can collect them.

Can you explain why you think that plantations should trade at P/E about 5.

HOPL's NAVPS is also more than 30 rupees I think.

I'm getting this, It is so easy....

Say best Bid is 75 and offer is 79

place a order to 75.10 for 5000 shares and then sell your 5000 shares to you at 75.10. Being matched and immediately executed.
Sell about 100 or 200 to others also at 75 and then suddenly you can see best Bid goes down to 73 rupees.

Then sell another 10000 shares (from you to you ) at 73.10.

Isn't this possible tubal. If I have had at least 50 million rupees I will try doing this.

What I said was that it's not impossible to push a price down but it's difficult. What you are saying above can be done and has been done. However while novices only buy shares after they have jumped about 20% in price, there are countless value investors waiting to pounce on shares when the price drops. I for one have list of shares that I would buy if only the price was a bit cheaper. Wish someone would try the tactic you have mentioned with DIMO or DOCK

As for why plantations should trade at low PE: open the annual report of your three favourite plantation companies and look at the 10 year summary.

ipoguru wrote:

tubal wrote:Being the biggest bear here and I don't agree when people say prices are being forced down.

It's damned hard to force the price down of anything. To force the price down, you need to sell massive quantities for shares. That means you need to hold a lot of shares in the first place. So you need to sell what you own at a loss. You will probably not be able to buy back at a lower price because bargain hunters always move in. It has been statistically proven that people are more likely to hold on to a losing position. So in the unlikely event that prices are being pushed down, it will not cause others to sell at a loss.

Pushing the price up is a lot easier, put in a fake buy order for about 100,000 shares and retailers will jump in and push the price up for you.

Ok , to cut a long story short: The market is falling under it's own weight. There isn't a single plantation that is under valued. Plantations are supposed to trade at low PE.

What if you sell and let your wife buy( I think its possible for same person to sell and buy with different accounts with different brokers. Please clarify this..) Then you are only loosing brokerage .
When market is going down others are normally afraid to buy. So it is so easy to do this game. This is what I imagine.
In the mean time if some body sells at a stop loss you can collect them.

I agreed with both ipo guru and Tubal for some extent. It is possible to force price down of a stock and it has been done in the past. I have seen this a lot on poultry stocks, Reef and Greg family stocks. But it is very difficult to implement as the manipulator should be a high net worth person to do it.

But i don't think today anybody tried to keep the price down. I have a different view of recent downward trend in HOPL, KGAL, KOTA and other plantation stocks. What i think is this was caused because of investors skeptical and precocious about ongoing wage hike issue.

I strongly believe if KGAL, NAMU and KOTA come up with impressive results. HOPL will also appreciate with them as it currently undervalued. It was witnessed on last plantation run also.

tubal wrote:
Ok , to cut a long story short: The market is falling under it's own weight. There isn't a single plantation that is under valued. Plantations are supposed to trade at low PE.

I like this part..
There is RISK with plantations, every qrt is not like the earlier one or the one that will follow.. Rains, cost of production will heavily hit the revenue.. So obviously plantations must be traded at a low PE.

Currently most rubber + oil palm plantations are fairly valued as per their last earnings suggested.. But we're looking for more.. We've seen HOPL results are good.. Even BALA was outstanding..
In that view if KGAL, NAMU, KOTA can produce better than last qtr results.. they are gonna be undervalued for current price very soon..

tinyman wrote:

ipoguru wrote:

KGAL and HOPL being manipulated. I witnessed signs price forcefully kept down.

Once the KGAL reports are out prices will start to increase again.

True, today also I noticed that couple of thousand shares were dumped at 70/= at the last two hours. For me this is more than an attractive counter, thinking of start collecting.

What..... If this happened in Dow Jones or FTSE100 people will call it as a result of Professional trading but at CSE its just a result of manipulation

UKboy wrote:

tinyman wrote:

ipoguru wrote:

KGAL and HOPL being manipulated. I witnessed signs price forcefully kept down.

Once the KGAL reports are out prices will start to increase again.

True, today also I noticed that couple of thousand shares were dumped at 70/= at the last two hours. For me this is more than an attractive counter, thinking of start collecting.

What..... If this happened in Dow Jones or FTSE100 people will call it as a result of Professional trading but at CSE its just a result of manipulation :roll: :roll:

If you can't use your brain and analyse what happening you are going to get robbed soon.

FYI Manipulation done even in Dow Jones or FTSE100 but they are quite big markets compared to CSE so manipulating is quite difficult. In CSE if you have few hundered millions , good network of brokers worshiping you and with abundantly available stupid retailers its a walk in the park.

tubal wrote:

ipoguru wrote:

ipoguru wrote:

tubal wrote:Being the biggest bear here and I don't agree when people say prices are being forced down.

It's damned hard to force the price down of anything. To force the price down, you need to sell massive quantities for shares. That means you need to hold a lot of shares in the first place. So you need to sell what you own at a loss. You will probably not be able to buy back at a lower price because bargain hunters always move in. It has been statistically proven that people are more likely to hold on to a losing position. So in the unlikely event that prices are being pushed down, it will not cause others to sell at a loss.

Pushing the price up is a lot easier, put in a fake buy order for about 100,000 shares and retailers will jump in and push the price up for you.

Ok , to cut a long story short: The market is falling under it's own weight. There isn't a single plantation that is under valued. Plantations are supposed to trade at low PE.

What if you sell and let your wife buy( I think its possible for same person to sell and buy with different accounts with different brokers. Please clarify this..) Then you are only loosing brokerage .
When market is going down others are normally afraid to buy. So it is so easy to do this game. This is what I imagine.
In the mean time if some body sells at a stop loss you can collect them.

Can you explain why you think that plantations should trade at P/E about 5.

HOPL's NAVPS is also more than 30 rupees I think.

I'm getting this, It is so easy....

Say best Bid is 75 and offer is 79

place a order to 75.10 for 5000 shares and then sell your 5000 shares to you at 75.10. Being matched and immediately executed.
Sell about 100 or 200 to others also at 75 and then suddenly you can see best Bid goes down to 73 rupees.

Then sell another 10000 shares (from you to you ) at 73.10.

Isn't this possible tubal. If I have had at least 50 million rupees I will try doing this.

What I said was that it's not impossible to push a price down but it's difficult. What you are saying above can be done and has been done. However while novices only buy shares after they have jumped about 20% in price, there are countless value investors waiting to pounce on shares when the price drops. I for one have list of shares that I would buy if only the price was a bit cheaper. Wish someone would try the tactic you have mentioned with DIMO or DOCK

As for why plantations should trade at low PE: open the annual report of your three favourite plantation companies and look at the 10 year summary.

I am still not convinced that pushing price down in HOPL is that difficult. In past few days trading volumes were not huge. Every body was waiting for a rally but that did not happen and KGAL results were not out. So interest were low so pushing price down is easy forcing people to sell at loss (bought on credit or different reasons). Its not difficult to push down price if you time it correctly. It will be difficult to keep price down of HOPL when KGAL starts running.

Even in DIMO price is kept at 1600 levels not letting price to go up beyond that. In DIMO pushing down price below 1600 levels would be difficult . I think both are manipulations. I do not follow DOCK.

Sometimes I am too skeptical but I think its good rather than being ignorant. In CSE week after week you see prices soar up by 30% to 50% in different stocks. How this is possible without manipulation week after week... quite amazing isn't it?

Tubal you being a biggest bear you like prices to go down don't you? Like most Bull's posting stories price will soar up? It's natural that Bull's want price to go up and Bear's want price to go down.

So I understand that you are justifying a price dip in HOPL like a Bull's justification of GRAN will reach 300 rupees... (may be the comparison bit harsh... )

Its natural and quite human

ipoguru wrote:

tubal wrote:

ipoguru wrote:

ipoguru wrote:

tubal wrote:Being the biggest bear here and I don't agree when people say prices are being forced down.

It's damned hard to force the price down of anything. To force the price down, you need to sell massive quantities for shares. That means you need to hold a lot of shares in the first place. So you need to sell what you own at a loss. You will probably not be able to buy back at a lower price because bargain hunters always move in. It has been statistically proven that people are more likely to hold on to a losing position. So in the unlikely event that prices are being pushed down, it will not cause others to sell at a loss.

Pushing the price up is a lot easier, put in a fake buy order for about 100,000 shares and retailers will jump in and push the price up for you.

Ok , to cut a long story short: The market is falling under it's own weight. There isn't a single plantation that is under valued. Plantations are supposed to trade at low PE.

What if you sell and let your wife buy( I think its possible for same person to sell and buy with different accounts with different brokers. Please clarify this..) Then you are only loosing brokerage .
When market is going down others are normally afraid to buy. So it is so easy to do this game. This is what I imagine.
In the mean time if some body sells at a stop loss you can collect them.

Can you explain why you think that plantations should trade at P/E about 5.

HOPL's NAVPS is also more than 30 rupees I think.

I'm getting this, It is so easy....

Say best Bid is 75 and offer is 79

place a order to 75.10 for 5000 shares and then sell your 5000 shares to you at 75.10. Being matched and immediately executed.
Sell about 100 or 200 to others also at 75 and then suddenly you can see best Bid goes down to 73 rupees.

Then sell another 10000 shares (from you to you ) at 73.10.

Isn't this possible tubal. If I have had at least 50 million rupees I will try doing this.

What I said was that it's not impossible to push a price down but it's difficult. What you are saying above can be done and has been done. However while novices only buy shares after they have jumped about 20% in price, there are countless value investors waiting to pounce on shares when the price drops. I for one have list of shares that I would buy if only the price was a bit cheaper. Wish someone would try the tactic you have mentioned with DIMO or DOCK

As for why plantations should trade at low PE: open the annual report of your three favourite plantation companies and look at the 10 year summary.

I am still not convinced that pushing price down is not in HOPL. Even in DIMO price is kept at 1600 levels not letting price to go up beyond that. In DIMO pushing down price below 1600 levels would be difficult . I think both are manipulations. I do not follow DOCK.

Sometimes I am too skeptical but I think its good rather than being ignorant. In CSE week after week you see prices soar up by 30% to 50% in different stocks. How this is possible without manipulation week after week... quite amazing isn't it?

Tubal you being a biggest bear you like prices to go down don't you? Like most Bull's posting stories price will soar up? It's natural that Bull's want price to go up and Bear's want price to go down.

So I understand that you are justifying a price dip in HOPL like a Bull's justification of GRAN will reach 300 rupees... (may be the comparison bit harsh... )

Ok, let me try to come up with a retort over the rest of the weekend

Tubal FYI I did edit my post above after your reply so have a look again.

ipoguru wrote:Tubal FYI I did edit my post above after your reply so have a look again.

Well, I was just kidding, your post doesn't leave me with much room to argue

ipoguru wrote:

If you can't use your brain and analyse what happening you are going to get robbed soon.

That is excatly what has been happening in the market for last year or so.

ipoguru wrote:
FYI Manipulation done even in Dow Jones or FTSE100 but they are quite big markets compared to CSE so manipulating is quite difficult. In CSE if you have few hundered millions , good network of brokers worshiping you and with abundantly available stupid retailers its a walk in the park.

No no no we cannt say that any manipulation can be happened in places like Dow Jones or FTSE100. We do not call those people as manipulators & it is not allowed even to think that those are manipulators.

We called them professional traders.

tubal wrote:

ipoguru wrote:Tubal FYI I did edit my post above after your reply so have a look again.

Well, I was just kidding, your post doesn't leave me with much room to argue

Hey pal I was expecting a reply from you. I wanted to have constructive argument.
May be I was bit harsh. Will try to rectify in future.

ipoguru wrote:

tubal wrote:

ipoguru wrote:Tubal FYI I did edit my post above after your reply so have a look again.

Well, I was just kidding, your post doesn't leave me with much room to argue

Hey pal I was expecting a reply from you. I wanted to have constructive argument.
May be I was bit harsh. Will try to rectify in future.

No no, I didn't think your reply was harsh, It's just that the way you presented your point of view it didn't leave much room for me to retort.

It occurred to me that since I am always sayings those rallies are fake, guess I shouldn't argue too much when someone says the sell offs are also fake.

So no offense taken.

I did see buying pressure increasing today. In the morning there was 100,000 order at 65 rupees. This went up slightly today.

did you guys see HOPL trades today.
this was pushed down to 68 by a big sell order of 153,600 shares executed at 68-70.10 at 10:05:39am.......Hmmmmmm,sold with a good dividend.

mark wrote:did you guys see HOPL trades today.
this was pushed down to 68 by a big sell order of 153,600 shares executed at 68-70.10 at 10:05:39am.......Hmmmmmm,sold with a good dividend.

I can't understand even with attractive dividend why people selling undervalued stocks with a lot of potential like HOPL. Interesting to see where this money going.. IPOs or speculative shares.. Here is phrase i quote from LBO market report today..

"Brokers say investors were cashing into to buy into Softlogic, one of the largest initial public offers seen in recent years, while some punters were selling out of blue chips to buy into speculative stocks"

This is not a positive sign for market by any means..

Uncertainty has played in many investors minds regarding plantations. Though many positive reports from stock brokers the price of plantation stock is not moving,

update of HOPL price,see above for facts

*current price-64.50
*FY12E-EPS-15Rs

*current net price(cost) after deduct dividend of 4Rs.
-(64.50-4.00)=60.50

PE-(60.50/15)=4times
please tell me a plantation company which is below this PER...,i may be wrong

mark wrote:update of HOPL price,see above for facts

*current price-64.50
*FY12E-EPS-15Rs

*current net price(cost) after deduct dividend of 4Rs.
-(64.50-4.00)=60.50

PE-(60.50/15)=4times
please tell me a plantation company which is below this PER...,i may be wrong

Yes, the only exception is MAL.
It traded at PER 3.70 and P/BV 1.04 (MAL.N closed at 8.20)

at the net market price of 60.50 HOPL trades at PER 4.64 and P/BV 1.58.
The diffrence is arised becoz mark used FY12Y(Estimated) while I used historical (lase 4Qs) data.