Inspection Update on Vicom

This post first appeared on substack. 

Vicom has done almost nothing over the past 18 months and hence I believe it is time to do a quick update and see if this is worth adding. For the uninitiated, here’s the original writeup about Vicom, the largest vehicle and industrial inspection company in Singapore:

https://8percentpa.substack.com/p/investment-idea-4

Vicom, while it is a decent SGD460m market cap company, has no analyst coverage and its published materials for analysis is atrociously lacking. The company only has its annual report and bi-annual earnings update. Meanwhile, the annual report has no Management Discussion & Analysis (MD&A), the most important section of any annual report.

That said, financials are solid:

Simple Financials (Dec 2025 estimate, SGD)

• Sales: 120m
• Operating Profit (OP): 35m
• Net income:30m
• FCF: 30m
• Debt: -55m, Mkt Cap: 500m

Financial Ratios 

• ROE: 21% ROIC: 21%
• EV/EBITDA: 10.7x (Dec 25)
• PER: 16.9x (Dec 25)
• Past Margins: OPM 30%
• FCF yield 7%

The stock has completely underperformed in 2024. With global stock markets rallying 20-30% and the STI itself going up mid teens, Vicom’s share price has actually gone down since our last review. This post serves to provide an update, redo valuation and decide if we should add.

1. Review

Vicom share price has stagnated primarily because revenue has not grown much since COVID-19 because Singapore’s vehicle population has not grown at all. Thanks to the exorbitant cost of car ownership here. Before the announcement of 20,000 new Certificate of Entitlements (COEs) last week (see video link below), there was no prospect of significantly revenue growth.

To add on the above point, c.50% of Vicom’s revenue comes from vehicle inspection and since the number of vehicles in Singapore is capped by the number of COEs (the certificate that allows for vehicle ownership), there has been no volume growth over the last few years, as mentioned.

For the un-initiated, the price of the COE in Singapore (essentially a piece of paper that the government issues to vehicle owners) is six figures. That’s household’s annual salaries. While goods vehicle like vans, light trucks and lorries have cheaper COEs, they are still crazily expensive which explained the lack of volume growth for vehicles and hence lack of revenue growth for Vicom.

With no volume growth, investors then want price increase. Sadly, Vicom has not raised inspection fees, due to potential far-reaching repercussions. Singaporeans require our vehicles, both passenger cars and goods transport trucks / lorries, for their livelihoods. With COE prices higher than the sky, should Vicom raise inspection fees during election years (i.e. 2025), it would become a major issue for the government in power. And that is a big no-no.

Vicom's inspection fees as per Vicom's website

As such, prices have more or less stayed the same for many years as shown above. The basic inspection fee is SGD68.67, which is cheaper than dinner at Macdonald’s for a large family. This is quite a rarity in Singapore where prices of everything has gone through the roof in recent years.

Electric Vehicles (EVs)

The other risk not discussed in the initial analysis was EVs. While the basic price for inspecting EVs is the same, there are no additional tests required (e.g. emission related) and hence should the number of EVs grow significantly, Vicom’s future revenue growth might be impacted.

Investors' mind are on this issue because many believed Elon Musk and Tesla will take over the world. This is now supercharged with nitro boost with Donald Trump coming back into power. That said, this author believes that EV should not change the picture for Vicom. The main reason that EV penetration will take years, if not decades to play out. Vicom is a steady compounder with strong FCF generation. EV or not, stock price should compound at single digit over time.

Growth Angles

Future single digit growth might be supported by the release of 20,000 new COEs and the remaining non-vehicle testing business in SETSCO, Vicom’s subsidiary doing testing for food, manufacturing and construction materials. The balance between vehicle and non-vehicle testing revenue has underpinned part of Vicom’s steady growth story. This business is featured prominently in its annual report.

Management

Vicom is currently helmed by Mr Sim Wing Yew who has led the firm since 2011. He is supported by a strong and experienced team with varied backgrounds. As expected, a significant number of managers come from the Comfort Delgro Group while others are recruited within Singapore Inc.

The following is an excerpt of the profile of Chairman Dr Tan Kim Siew, who has had a distinguished career spanning the Ministry of Finance, Defence and National Development. Dr Tan undoubtedly provides the oversight for Vicom to continue to perform to shareholders’ expectations.

Dr Tan Kim Siew is the Chairman and Independent Non-Executive Director of VICOM Ltd. He is the Chairman of Nominating and Remuneration Committee and a member of both the Technology Committee and the Sustainability Committee. He is also an Independent Non-Executive Director of SBS Transit Ltd.

Dr Tan is presently a Senior Consultant in the Ministry of Finance. From 2012 to 2014, Dr Tan served as Commissioner of Inland Revenue. Prior to this appointment, Dr Tan was the Permanent Secretary (Defence Development) of the Ministry of Defence from 2003 to 2012. He had also held other appointments in the public service, including Chief Executive Officer of the Urban Redevelopment Authority, Deputy Secretary in the Ministry of Finance and in the Ministry of National Development, Chairman of the Defence Science and Technology Agency, and Chairman of the DSO National Laboratories.

2. Valuation

As Vicom’s business is simply so stable and predictable, there isn’t really much reason the change the numbers in the previous analysis. With FCF and Net Income at SGD30m and applying the same multiples, we get to an average intrinsic value (IV) of c.SGD1.7 which gives c.30% upside if we take the average for the three metrics below. This is lower than the original SGD2.2 IV because we used 25x multiple which on hindsight was probably too high for a single digit compounder.

Vicom has also continued to distribute good dividends as its parentco - Comfort Delgro probably relies on that for its own earnings growth. As such, we should expect Vicom to continue its c.4% dividend yield, which is a good spread vs Singapore’s T-bills at 3% today.

The rest of the post is on substack. Thanks!

Huat Ah!

This post does not constitute investment advice and should not be deemed to be an offer to buy or sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments.

Vicom

I have written about this name in 2017 and not much has changed since then. The stock did well and the thesis played out and it seemed that it should continue to perform. The company entered a rough patch during COVID and I think this presents an opportunity for us to buy / add today. 

The following is what I wrote on Substack a few months ago and am reproducing here.

Vicom is Singapore's leading testing and inspection company with two core businesses. The first is the vehicle inspection business which it has 70% market share across 7 inspection locations in Singapore. The second business housed under the brand SETSCO does industrial testing and calibration. It also provides certification services to various industries. The important ones are construction, oil and gas, aviation amongst food, sanitation and other test-heavy industries.

1. Fundamentals

I believe little has changed since my last analysis a few years ago. Vicom enjoys very strong fundamentals with stable demand that comes from regulatory requirement for vehicle testing. It conducts tests for 500,000-700,000 vehicles annually across its 7 test centres in Singapore. There is room to increase pricing as with everything else in Singapore.

SETSCO which makes up its second business in industrial testing, benefits from the global ESG* global trend. There will be more requirements and demands for tests and certifications in various industries. Singapore, the South East Asia’s hub for many industries, can also attract companies to do tests from other countries and SETSCO stands to benefit from this.

The company stopped disclosing the business splits years ago. We can only speculate that revenue is split roughly half in each and margins also more or less similar at 20+ percent. Putting the two businesses together, Vicom comes out as a solid compounder. Its revenue has grown from c.SGD50m in 2003 to c.SGD100m today. Similarly, its operating profit expanded from c.SGD11m to SGD30m with margins maintaining at 20-30% throughout the last 20 years

The ompany has never had a single year of negative free cashflow (FCF). It averages c.SGD20m over the last 20 years and is poised to generate a higher average over the next 10 years. In some good years, it has achieved over SGD30m and as you can imagine, cash has piled up nicely, reaching SGD100m back in 2017 but is at SGD65m today after returning some to shareholders. Its ROE is a healthy 18-20%, mostly on the back on strong margin and high asset turnover

Risks

That said, Vicom is not without risks. Every investment idea will have downside and it is vital to get these out in the open. Nothing is worse than being blindsided by obvious risks that we should have considered. Even when we have identified the risks, we have to keep monitoring and make sure things are under control. It will take willpower and courage to cut loss when things go wrong. Case-in-point is Hyflux, Singapore’s poster child in water purification that went bankrupt. I lost 100% of my capital even though I identified the key risk!

For Vicom, the key risk pertains to its passenger vehicle business. While this business does not account for the majority of revenue (only c.30% or less of overall revenue by my estimate), it is very visible and top of mind. Analysts and market participants immediately think about the drop in the number of passenger vehicles in Singapore when stratospheric COE prices and vehicle quotas are announced. These announcements come regularly!

It may be true that the number of passenger vehicles in Singapore will not increase much. But the majority of inspections are actually made on commercial vehicles (trucks, lorries, buses and also taxis) and importantly, there is room to raise prices to offset any volume decline. As such, the bigger risk, in circumspect, is the cyclicality that comes into Singapore’s economy for both vehicle inspection and industry testing and certification businesses

Vicom's end customers are subjected to the whims and fancies of business cycles. This is more pronounced in Singapore because we are a small open economy in the global ocean with big fishes generating bigger waves. In 2016, Vicom suffered a small revenue decline in more than a decade as the global economy plunged into crisis with China slowing down and Europe imploding on Grexit and Brexit. Although the share price did not react much, it did stagnate until 2019 and only crossed $1.5 for the first time around June in the same year.

Then in Mar 2020, at the height of the pandemic, share price suffered a 20% drawdown and fell through $1.5 again. On hindsight, that was also a good opportunity to add to this rare Singapore compounder

2. Technicals

This is a good segue to talk about technicals. As mentioned, all stocks have risks and the even best compounders suffer from drawdowns. With Vicom, we face a similar situation as the share price dropped from $2.1 to $1.9, c.10% decline in the last few months of 2022. This was likely due to:

• a slight decrease in dividend and special cash over the calendar year when comparing 2022 against 2021 (8.5c vs 9.2c). Singapore shareholders hate dividend cuts. So, they voted with their feet (or sell orders in this case).
• the relentless increase in COE prices bringing the initial cost of owning a car to SGD150,000-200,000 which was enough to buy a small 3-room HDB flat just a decade ago. Market is postulating that the Singapore car population will decline, therefore the number of inspections will decline and hence the share price weakness

This presents the opportunity for buying as the risk reward is now favorable. We shall further illustrate below:

The pandemic low for Vicom was $1.75 in Mar 2020. We always refer back to this period because the market exhibited complete pandemonium as panic and uncertainty gripped the world back then. As such, share prices around this time should mark the low price where shellshocked shareholders cowering in fear will capitulate when everything is messed up.

This is not to say that prices will not fall below this level. We have seen a lot of stocks trade below their Mar 2020 lows, like Netflix (until recently) and Peloton, the Netflix + bicycle gym stock darling of 2020-21 (PTON US) and Zoom Video Communications (ZM US). But for Vicom, with its stable business profile, $1.75 should represent some sort of threshold and we are here today!

In terms of risk reward, downside is limited from here, but the upside could be $2.4, which was the recent high. This is c.26% upside. Since this is a compounder, assuming that it compounds at 7%, the stock should double in 10 years (the famous rule of 72). So we are talking about c.9% downside but c.40% upside over a few years. Meanwhile we are also getting c.4% dividend annually

To add a cherry on top of the icing, Vicom is 67% owned by Comfort Delgro, the transportation conglomerate in Singapore that operates taxis, buses and the North East Line. For historical reasons, and because its fleet of taxis represent one of Vicom’s largest source of business, it has held to this 67% stake and suffers a 33% leakage to minority shareholders.

If Vicom gets too cheap, Comfort Delgro (CD) can simply take the whole company private. This is how the math can work. To buy the remaining stake that CD does not own today, it will require approximately SGD260m. This is assuming we put a 20% premium to buy out Vicom at market cap of SGD800m. Vicom has SGD65m on its balance sheet and churns out, say, another SGD75m in 3 years. So, technically, CD only has to fork out SGD120m (SGD260m - SGD140m). At a certain lower share price, for CD, putting some cash upfront to take Vicom private pays for itself.

Therefore we always have this situation that some kind of floor will be put on the share price. Of course, this is a theoretical exercise. We do not know whether CD will ever take Vicom private. But history has also shown that past share price drawdowns rarely exceeds 30%.

3. Valuations

Intuitively, we know Vicom can be worth a lot. Let’s use the usual three valuation methodologies (FCF, EV and PE) to triangulate to some intrinsic value. On FCF, we have alluded to Vicom capable of generating c.SGD30m per year. It did c.SGD18m last year and to be conservative, let’s assume it would do SGD25m on average for the next few years. Assuming it should trade at 3.5% FCF yield given its strong fundamentals, we get to SGD714m and adding back its SGD65m cash, we get to SGD780m of market cap

Based on experience, companies with strong business moats seldom trade above 5% FCF yield (except during crisis) and it gets to expensive to buy them at 2+% FCF yield. As such, I believe 3.5% FCF yield is a good level to get in.

With Enterprise Value or EV, Vicom will likely achieve an EBITDA of c.SGD45m in Dec 23. Using 15x which is near its last 5 year historical average, we get to EV of SGD675m and again adding back cash of SGD65m, we get to market cap of SGD740m.

Lastly, using Price Earnings or PE, Vicom should be able to achieve Net Income of SGD30m in Dec 23 and using PER 25x on the basis of its inherently strong business, we get to SGD750m and adding back its SGD65m cash, we get to market cap of SGD815m

Intrinsic Value

Taking the average of the three market caps, we arrive at SGD780m and translating this into share price, we get to c.$2.2 in terms of intrinsic value per share. This is 28% upside from today’s price and not as mouth-watering but that’s simply a function of the market’s efficiency. As we hold out stock for a couple of years and wait for compounding to do its job, we should see the stock going back to the recent high of $2.4 and exceed that in time to come.

Huat Ah!

This post does not constitute investment advice and should not be deemed to be an offer to buy or sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments.

Inspecting the Vicom Story - Part 2

This is a continuation of the previous post.

Okay, in the last post, we discussed the basic stuff about Vicom. It is hugely cash generative and we are getting it at low teens PE, 13x to 16x PE for a 30% operating margin, 20% ROE business. This is really not expensive, albeit the growth angle could be questionable. Singapore is a mature economy, our vehicle population is maxed out, we don't have enough roads for more cars. So how to grow?

Maybe Vicom is cheap because there is no growth. Or is there really no growth?

This is where it gets interesting. In stock investing parlance, we call it optionality. Optionality refers to potential upside that is there but we do not know if they would materialize. Usually, if they do, it means a lot more upside but if they don't there is also not much downside. It is said that the best investment portfolio is simply a portfolio of free optionalities.

To delve further, this optionality concept comes from the big branch topic in finance simply called options which were created as early as 600BC by Greek mathematicians but only well understood when two Professors put on their thinking hats and solved the puzzle in the 1960s. Their theory won the Nobel Prize and today, all finance students have to study what they created - Black Scholes Option Pricing Theory. Rings a bell?

Call option chart

The simplest option chart (above) shows how the downside is capped if the stock does not move or in the unfortunate event, even if it goes down a lot, the option buyer only loses his premium (capped at $200 in the chart above) and face no further downside loss. But in the event that the stock price goes up, the option buyer stands to benefit from all the upside. The catch is that options expire and the deal is off once the option hits expiration date.

In a more general context, optionality refers the similar asymmetry in risk and reward but with no expiration date. The catch is that most optionality do not really materialize which is why it is not worth much in the first place and the market refuses to pay for it. The sector with the most optionality examples would be the pharmaceutical sector. Pharma companies are always researching on new drugs and nobody knows which ones would be the next blockbuster drug. The example that comes to mind would be Pfizer and Viagra. 

Back in 1996, Pfizer was just another pharma stock trading at $5. It was not small though (market cap at that time was already USD 40bn!). It generated a billion plus dollars of free cashflow with its huge portfolio of drugs. But in the same year, it filed the first oral drug for erectile dysfunction (ED) - Viagra. Nobody knew how big the market would be. There wasn't such a market in the first place. Men with ED just lived with it, unless it's super serious then they go drink Tongkat Ali or eat oysters or something. There wasn't any medical treatment for ED. If the drug failed, then Pfizer would just continue to make its billion dollar annually with its huge portfolio of legacy drugs and the stock would be $5. As it turned out, Viagra became the biggest hit ever, allowing old men to have sex again and the stock went 5x to $25. At its peak, Viagra sold roughly $3 billion annually. 

Tongkat Ali, herbal treatment for ED in S.E.Asia

So that's optionality. Pfizer was (and still is) a blue chip (now with the blue pill :), if one had bought it then at $5, one could enjoy the blue chip growth (maybe just single digit) and collect a stable dividend (2-3% dividend yield). If Viagra didn't happen, then it's decent growth, or rather, just blue chip growth and dividend. But when Viagra happened, then we are off to the moon. In fact the stock raced very early on as the market simply got excited even before the drug was launched. It more than doubled from 1996 to 1997 despite cashflow being weak in 1997 at only $600m (normally it should be above a billion dollars. Today Pfizer is a $200 billion market cap company.

Let's move back to Vicom. So what's the optionality? I see a few:

1. Price increase for inspection

2. Overseas growth

3. Buyout by ComfortDelgro

The first optionality is just about the timing of price increase. At some point, prices go up like everything else in Singapore. We just don't know if it is 2 years or 5 years. The history shows that the industry had a habit of raising the inspection fee every few years. It was $50 in 1997, then it was raised to $54 in 2001, then $56 in 2005 and then $58 in 2006. Based on its website, current fees are $62 inclusive of GST. This relentless price increase would simply continue bcos first it is nothing compared to the price of the vehicle (more than S$100k in Singapore today for a 1.6L car) and the other costs such as fuel, maintenance and what not. Every price increase again drop directly to its bottomline since there is very little cost in between. So even with the population of vehicle stagnates, Vicom can enjoy revenue growth. This is the beauty. Guaranteed revenue growth. Of course, the cherry on the cake is that Singapore's vehicle population will only go up. We need more buses, trucks, taxis every year. Passenger cars will also just keep growing bcos it is an aspiration to own an expensive car in this warped bubble on a little red dot. The market doesn't see this now, but when it does, that's when our option gets exercised!

Overseas growth is a new angle that is not being talked about right now. But the potential is huge. Singapore, for good reasons, is seen as a leader in standards by our neighbours and a few of them are very happy to bring Singapore companies into their country so as to learn from us. Vicom talks about opportunities in Vietnam. In the same vein, countries like Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia would one day require inspection and testing. Imagine if Vicom could just get 1 or 2 of these markets, or rather just a small slice of one of these markets, the potential is a huge increase in revenue. Vietnam alone has 100m people. Of course, this scenario is still pretty remote. There is nothing concrete yet. 

The last optionality is similarly remote though not zero probability. ComfortDelgro (CD) today owns 67% of Vicom and it is not inconceivable for them to buyout Vicom given that it's such a lucrative business. Why give away that 33% to others? Of course they also want to buy back at a good price which is why nothing has been done all these years after the stock ran from 50c to $5. So the other way to look at this is that if Vicom falls too much, Big Brother CD will just buy it out. Hence there is an inherent floor price to this stock. Our downside is capped much like a call option.

In a red dot not so far away... car wars

But given that Vicom is now a $500m company. CD needs to raise $150m to buy the 33% it doesn't own. With its woes, thanks to Uber and Grab, it would rather put money into this car sharing war to defend itself than to buy back Vicom. (CD only made $100m in free cash flow last year. So it's not a small sum for them, although one could argue that effectively they only need to raise $50m since Vicom has $100m on its balance sheet!) In any case, it might just be status quo for now. Some day they might buy Vicom, but not today.

To sum it up, Vicom has all these optionalities, but it is hard to put them into numbers. So we are paying c.$400m (after accounting for the $100m on its own balance sheet) for a steady $30m free cash flow. This translates to 7.5% free cash flow yield or 13x PE after adjusting for cash. The rest of the options, if it happens, comes free. With bank account interest rate at 1%, property rental yield at 2%, I would say 7.5% yield is pretty decent. In fact, 4% (or more in the future) would come back annually as dividends since they don't know how to deploy the huge amount cash coming annually.

That's basically why Vicom is a buy! Read from the first post.

This author owns Vicom.

Inspecting the Vicom Story - Part 1

Vicom has been one of the most amazing multi-bagger in the Singapore stock market. It was trading at 50 cents 10 years ago, with a market cap of S$150m and over just one decade, it became a $5 stock with a market cap of S$500m, generating S$30m of free cash flow per year on a revenue of S$100m and piled up another S$100m of cash on its balance sheet. Despite such a huge run, I took a look at this stock again and believe we can still squeeze some juice out of it. In fact quite a bit of juice especially if some of the optionalities come true.

Ok, first things first, what are Vicom's businesses?

Vicom is Singapore's leading testing and inspection company with two core businesses. The first is the vehicle inspection business which it has 70% market share across 7 inspection locations in Singapore. For car owners, we know this all too well, as we need to bring our vehicle to these dreadful places every year and get charged $60 for some 20 min routine work which doesn't seemed clear to us why it needed to be done except to satisfy the regulator.

The second business is industrial testing and certification which is done by its subsidiary SETSCO which provides calibration, testing and certification services to various industries. The important ones being construction, oil and gas, aviation. This business makes up 2/3 of its sales but only c.40% of its profits. There is some cyclicality in this business as industries grow or falter with global trends. In the recent years, the slowdown in both the construction and oil and gas sector had impacted earnings. 

So, now that we know more about Vicom, what's the story or rather the investment thesis? The investment thesis is the reason why we want to invest in some company and it should be simple enough for primary school kids to understand. So here's the version for Vicom.

Vicom is a stable, cash generative business (6-7% free cash flow yield) that is under-appreciated by the market. There is floor on its stock price underpinned by its strong cashflow and dividend but yet there are optionalities that would help boost the stock price even higher if they materialize. Vicom is also part of the ComfortDelgro group which might to take it private someday.

The stock market represents the view of all the investors and speculators and they tend to focus on the obvious and the recent events. The consensus view on Vicom is that there are now less cars on Singapore roads and most cars are brand new luxury cars then do not need annual inspections. (Only cars more than 3 years old require annual checks). Since c.60% of its profits come from vehicle inspection, so the stock is not interesting. The other business, as we discussed, is facing headwinds in construction and oil and gas. So, no story. This is why the stock did nothing for the last three years. Its stock price just hovered between $5.5 to $6 since 2014.

Cars are only 37% of Vicom's vehicle inspection business

However, astute investors, we dig deeper. We think at a higher, second level. The pie chart above shows the breakdown of inspection by vehicle type and as you can see, passenger cars only make up 37% of the total pie. The rest of it shows that 63% of the volume actually comes from commercial vehicles which require much more regular inspections. This is the reason behind Vicom's stable cashflow. Inspection is a recurring business. Taxis and buses are required to be inspected every 6 months and goods vehicle annually. There is some volatility due to the economic cycle but by and large, I would estimate that 40-50% of Vicom's overall revenue is very stable. This same argument can be made for its industrial testing and inspection business.

About 15 years ago, this stock was undiscovered as it was too small to matter to most global investors. It also only had the vehicle testing business since it had not bought SETSCO. But when SETSCO came in around 2003, the picture changed and investors took a few years to realize the beauty of its businesses. But still, for the next few years (2005-2009) it was still trading above 10% free cash flow yield. Over time, ultimately, it got bid up and is now at 6% free cash flow yield. 

This strong recurring cash generation capability is what underpins the stock price and hence it is very unlikely that it corrects a lot. To add more colour, Vicom's assets are all fully depreciated, these centres do not need capex, nor much labour, nor marketing or other expenses. Hence the $60 that we pay almost drops directly down to its net profit. That's why Vicom stopped reporting gross margins. But when it did report last time, it reported gross margin it was 96%! That's back in 2013. Today we know that its operating margin is still 30% which had stayed almost unchanged for the past 10 years.

Given such strong cash generation, it has to pay them out or else it would just drown in cash. Actually, it's somewhat drowning in cash. Despite paying 4% dividend annually, the firm amassed S$100m of cash over the years which is 20% of its market cap. They might have to do a big special dividend or something to clean this up. Needless to say, Big Brother ComfortDelgro would probably want it to uplift some of this cash given that its taxi business is really not doing so well and Big Brother really don't mind having a bit of that S$100m buffer.

So even without discussing further, we know that Vicom is a huge cash machine that we can get at 6% free cash flow yield of which 4% comes back annually as dividends. On conventional metrics, it is trading at 16x PE but if we strip out the cash it is actually more like 13x and EV/EBITDA is a reasonable 10x. In today's world of negative interest rates and low returns, these multiples are really not expensive for such stability.

Ok, next post we talk about the optionalities!

This author owns Vicom.