This post first appeared on 8percentpa.substack.com
This year's first batch of dividend lists are out!
Instead of using Poems, we will try out a new platform - Finchat.io. This is one of the most powerful toolkit for publicly listed stock research and I would encourage all readers to give it a try. It's a freemium model, so anyone can use the free ones, which is already very powderful!
For this year's lists I have similarly used FCF as the main filter, but added dividend and net cash and excluded certain industries. Here's the list for Singapore:
Venture (Market cap c.SGD 3.6bn) is the stand out here, with 35% of its market cap in cash and generating a whopping 12.7% free cashflow yield. This stock used to be a darling with share price hitting >$25 a couple of times since its IPO (today's share price is $12.5). It competes in a very good niche today, making hardware for the leading players in life sciences and networking equipment the growth segments of today, having successfully transitioned from PC and printers eons ago.
However, such hardware manufacturing business is inherently cyclical and share price had gone through many boom and bust cycles. Today, it is trading near trough valuations but without studying closer, it is hard to say when things would recover. It is also worth noting that the founder still runs the company and Venture's success over the last 40 years is largely attributable to him. Should he retire, it is unclear if the company can continue to grow and compound as it had.
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| US FCF and dividend list for 2025 |
This second list churns out the US names of which Acuity and Dolby are the largest. Acuity makes lighting and Dolby makes sound systems. In our substack, we have covered IMAX, which is in the same space as Dolby - cinemas. Both names look interesting but again, without doing the work, it is hard to say if they are good buys are not. The other issue with US stocks for us is also that dividends get taxed. 20% would be withheld and taxed so it makes more sense to buy stocks with little dividend if we really want to optimize returns. Almost all the stocks on this lists all have very high dividends. Dolby has a whopping 9% dividend!
Given the craze on Japan in 2024 and hopefully we see more buzz in 2025, this last list is on Japanese names. For those of us who don't look closely at the land of the rising sun, Japan has been undergoing a stealth transformation for many years after the burst of its bubble, banking crisis and corporate governance overhaul. The stock market finally exceeded its high in 1989 and a huge wave of shareholder activism is under way. We might see Nikkei successfully breaking through at hit 45,000, if not 50,000.
This is not a number plugged out of thin air. The math around it is as follows:
- Next year's Topix EPS (2026) is c.220 yen (and growing) and multiplying that by PER of 16x (one turn higher than its historical average to reflect Japan's transformation discussed above), we can explain Topix at 3,520 (vs only 2,800) today.
- The Nikkei / Topix ratio has a historical average of 14x and using that (i.e. 3520 x 14), we have Nikkei at 49,280.
- With that, 50,000 is not too far away.
Nippon TV (Mkt cap USD4.8bn, net cash USD1bn, dividend yield 1.1%, FCF yield 5.5%): broadcasters are right in the middle of shareholder activism with Fuji TV being targeted. The other four broadcasters including Nippon TV. They all face similar issues with Fuji TV: traditional management who knows nothing about capital markets and doesn't give a shit about shareholders. Hence, they all trade below book despite owning the most valuable real estate on prime land in Tokyo. Nippon TV also owns the crown jewel of Japanese animation - Studio Ghibli. As such, there a lot of hidden value beneath the PBR <1x apparent cheapness.
So, hope these ideas help. Please conduct your own deep dive research. Our substack will also write these out should they qualify to be in the portfolio.
Huat Ah!
Past lists:
2017 Oct Dividend List - Part 2
2017 Oct Dividend List - Part 1
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