This has been a crazy week in real life while virtual life has been somewhat placid.
Still waiting for Genshin Impact’s new nation with the element of Dendro to go live and also waiting for Neverwinter’s new mod.
It is partly my fault for going through new gaming content as quickly as I do but I am a full time gamer first and a retiree second.
What to do?
So, I have been playing RISK a lot online recently!
Yes, I was surprised to find that I could play RISK online with people around the world and it has been pretty amazing.
Anyway, with real life matters demanding a lot more attention from me this week, I didn’t have a lot of time to read the news.
Catching up.
Today, I am happy to read that ComfortDelgro is recovering nicely as expected.
First half profit is up significantly and even the taxi business reported an increase of 18% in profit.
There was a one off gain from a sale of asset and the company is going to pass the gain from the sale to shareholders.
What I like about this is that it will be a standard practice from now on.
An interim DPS of 2.85c and a special DPS of 1.41c were declared.
ComfortDelGro chairman Lim Jit Poh said:
“With the exceptional gain from the sale of the Alperton property in London, we have decided to pass on the net gain from that sale to our shareholders. This is something we will continue to do going forward when we make extraordinary gains and have no urgent need of the proceeds.”
This reminds me of the reason why I bought ST Engineering donkey years ago.
ST Engineering, flushed with cash, didn’t need to retain any of their earnings and simply paid all their earnings to shareholders as dividends, year after year.
See:
It is good to see that things are improving but it is also important to remind ourselves that SIA is heavily in debt and it will take them more time to fully recover.
How much time?
Definitely not out of the woods yet and SIA still has plenty to be concerned about.
Air traffic might return to pre pandemic level in the next couple of years but for SIA to fully recover, I suspect it would take many more years.
Of course, if something untoward happens and the economy plunges again, would we rather be investing in businesses that have strong balance sheets than those that do not?
Peace of mind is priceless.
With past crashes, not many people could tell what would be their triggers.
With all that is going on in the world recently, it is not as hard to see what could trigger the next big crash.
Troubled is the world today.
Still, it would be silly to do a Chicken Little and just sit on cash.
I am staying invested in bona fide income producing businesses and preferably those with strong balance sheets.
I am also keeping some powder dry just in case and, of course, I have an ultimate safety net, my CPF savings.
In my retirement, I am not going to be too adventurous.
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