Happy Wednesday, Barkada --

The PSE closed down 23 points to 7202 ▼0.3%.

Thank you to @iso8583 and @tagongpangalan of the PHinvest Discord for bringing to my attention a case where someone has been stealing my content and posting MB articles to his website and 15 different Facebook groups. Maybe if he didn't remove my name and chop off the copyright notice at the end, he'd realized that I encourage people to forward MB on to others, provided that MB is not altered and that full credit to MB is given. Let's be real: MB is free, and I've always been "pro share" with anyone and everyone who might be interested... but hacking my name off and removing my branding is just basic copyright infringement. Thanks for letting me know! Gives me another thing to do over the holidays.
A huge MB thank-you to one of my original Producer-level Patreon supporters, FinanceForever. Today's send is completely backed by his donation. FinanceForever has been a fantastic resource of feedback on MB's content, and a helpful well of suggestions for improvement! That producer title is well-earned. Haha
Since today is the last trading day of the week (Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are non-trading days), I just want to wish you all a Merry Christmas... more importantly, I want to wish you a safe and healthy Christmas.

Daily meme | Join MB | Today's email

COVID Update

WW: 77741478 PH: 461501 

Top 3 MB indices:

 #COVID-19 ▲1.30% POGO Prop. ▲0.89% Cement ▲0.53% 

Bottom 3 MB indices:

 POGO Gaming ▼3.03% Fast Food ▼2.88% MiddleClass ▼2.35% 

Main stories covered:

• [NEWS] Ayala Corp [AC 838.00 ▲0.36%] acquires majority stake in parent company of Qualimed Health Network... Ayala Health, a subsidiary of AC, purchased Ayala Land’s [ALI 41.70 ▼0.12%] 39.2% stake in Mercado General Hospital, Inc (MGHI), the parent company of Qualimed Health Network. Ayala Health also purchased an additional 15% of MGHI directly from the Mercado Group of individual shareholders. The deal gives AC a 54.2% controlling stake in MGHI. The Qualimed Health Network includes four hospitals, an ambulatory care facility, and several clinics.
  
  • MB: AC believes that the acquisition of this “hospital platform” completes their cycle of patient care. AC, through Ayala Health, owns primary clinics, specialty clinics, and now... hospitals. AC has been growing its healthcare portfolio aggressively, but it’s interesting to see the group pivot away from its previous “stance”; the group was more focused on the distributed, non-primary care facilities like community clinics and specialty care clinics, and not so much on the traditional centralized hospital with an emergency ward and beds. As an investor, I was more interested in AC Health’s distributed approach, but I’m open-minded to see how these flavors might cook into the Ayala stew of assets.
• [NEWS] PSE looking to tweak the rules on voluntary delistings... the new rules will only permit a voluntary delisting to proceed if less than 10% of the total outstanding and listed shares of the company vote to reject the move. That’s a huge change from the previous rule, which only required board of directors approval and a fairness opinion to proceed to a pre-delisting tender offer. Now, companies must conduct a shareholders vote, get less than 10% of shares to reject the move, and get 2/3rds of the board to approve, including two independent directors, and the minimum tender offer price is now the highest of a fairness opinion or a volume-weighted average price.
  
  • MB: This move is aligned with the PSE’s goal of increasing the public ownership of listed corporations. The exchange has been focused on ratcheting up the minimum public float from 10% to 20%, but it’s also been forced to take a second look at the voluntary delisting rules after a few sketchy transactions (Resorts World Manila, I’m talking about you). In the old days (you know, those days before this PSE memo went into effect a couple of days ago), all a company had to do to delist was have the board approve the move and then cram a tender offer through based on a fairness opinion cooked up by a valuator selected by the board. Now, while that fairness opinion bit hasn’t changed much, it’s no longer just up to the board. It’s no longer so easy for a company to court the investment of the public only to fold up shop a few years later once the novelty has worn off (or their interest in public disclosures has, shall we say, waned).
• [NEWS] Bloomberry [BLOOM 8.20 ▼4.32%] adds ₱20bn to an existing loan facility... the Solaire casino operator negotiated with lenders to get an additional ₱20bn added to a ₱73.5bn creditline. The company also negotiated with its lenders to get a huge “covenant test holiday” on that loan facility until June 2023.
  
  • MB: That’s a pretty big add-on. Most companies are in need of some operating cash these days; they can sell something (assets), borrow it (debt), or raise it (follow-on offering / stock rights offering). Each option comes with a cost, but most owners would prefer to take on more debt rather than give up points of equity. That’s what BLOOM has done here. The interesting bit (to me) is that they’ve been able to delay covenant testing for almost three years. When a company signs a loan with a bank, the bank usually includes a list of covenants (promises) that the company must abide by. Sometimes the covenant has to do with maintaining a certain debt-to-equity ratio, or other times it might have to do with capping public ownership or transference of shares. Banks periodically test a company’s adherence to the covenants, and my feeling here is that the ₱20bn addition probably blows up an existing debt-to-equity ratio covenant for a period of years. The bank(s) are likely eyes-wide-open here, with confidence in BLOOM’s ability to service the debt eventually through gradual recovery.

MB is posted to /PHinvest every Monday and Wednesday, but my newsletter goes out daily. To stay in the loop for daily email delivery, please join the barkada by signing up for the newsletter, or follow me on Twitter.

Join our Barkada here

Read today's full email here

Thailand is not a Democracy yet I feel more free in the Kingdom than in California.
Another day another thread or comment is posted on reddit about a FARANG talk crap about Thailand. Yet THAILAND has 3 of their cities in "Most Traveled to Cities in the World" Visa did a stats on this and many other sources corroborated. Why is that? Racists? Xenophobe? Rude culture? Then why do people come?
Allow me to play Devil's advocate:
1) FARANG can't buy land not because of racism but because of CAPITALISM. THAILAND PROTECT KING'S LAND for ITS PEOPLE to purchase at affordable price per Rai.
Examples:
Look at California coastal cities to Oregon to Washington to Vancouver BC. Most of THE LANDS ARE OWNED BY MULTI NATIONAL CORPORATIONS BANKERS. It baffles me when citizen of its own country who parents live in the area cannot afford rent where they grew up. Some old ass landlord dude bottleneck the whole zip code innovation from young people by purchasing up all land and making rent more than 50% of young people's income. People work to pay rent rather than live their life doing passion or other services. So many people are now doing "VaN LiFe, LiveLovePrayTraveltoThailand90daysVisaHopsElepahantPants" Young people suffers from: No private property, no care, no sense of belonging at all. So much pressure for young men, so high suicide rates and divorce due to RENT. It's always comes down to roof over your head.
Look at Facebook owner Zuckerberg. He owns half the island in Hawaii.
Look at Jamaica and other islands around it. All resorts own by few rich dudes. People can't access most beaches only one public beach.
Look at Manila. Homeless Citizens everywhere eating PAG PAG aka throw away KFC in trash while landlords gets fat. Same constitution as USA. Facsimile.
Look at Burma, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. Rich military men has multiple wives Helicopters for medivac. Regular citizen get snake bit in the field. No BTS. NO SPEED TRAIN. Good luck fighting cobra bite on motor bike for 45 minutes to "Hospital".
10 Families own half Florida land mass.
Al Jazeera UK usually anti Thailand just released in Youtube video praising Thailand Swiztzerland has program sending their elder to Thailand to lives rest of their lives with nuero disease. It's great news but it's kinda funny how they outsource their elder to other country and Switz and Sweden supposed to be best country in the world LOL. Thailand last resort https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7yeiO-UZoM Read the comments how many Switz praise Thai ways of respecting elder.
Look at California. City of Irvine. 4th safest city in United States. 90% own by Irvine Company. It's a big slum lord company with crazy HOA with high tax. You can never own especially with student loan.
Look with San Francisco. You can make 100k per year and live in a shack 3k per month.
You think an average Thai can afford that life style? Western born people even can't afford land in country like the United States land of the FREE so how can Thai? Unless you wanna live in Tornado alley where your life saving can be wiped in 1 shot. Then yes you cann buy a Mcmansion for a 100k.
You yourself will likely pay way more once Thailand becomes democracy. Lands are not gonna be affordable like you think. With outside money, China will swiped right the whole coasts and turn it into Casino like in LAOS, Cambodia and Vancouver Africa. Those videos that FARANG JOE posts on youtube for $200/month BEACH FRONT RENTAL PROPERTY IN PRACHUAP KIRIKHAN etc will be all GONE. It will be like $200 a night bungalo cut out from street with all kind of HOA laws and everything will costs 3 times more due to permit. 30 BAHT street food bowl of BAH MEE MOO DANG from mom and pops shops? Low rent means cheap food. LMAO now 90 BAHT with RENT MARK UP TO GO TO IPO COMPANY WHO JUST ENTERED SP500. Look at USA LANDSCAPE nothing but malls, starbucks, and amazon warehouses. It takes 16 licenses to open a lemonade stand in California. Costs ramification is a lot to an average person. It's not racism at all. Thailand wants Thai to be self reliant and proud business owner. Capitalism kills small businesses Ask Jeff Bayso who during COVID 19 Earnings in first three months equivalent to $33m an hour.
If you want to own property buy condo or buy land but do it the right way and marry a good woman or man. You gonna pass it on to your sons and daughters anyway so who cares. Make babies, plant flag and hold down your land with your wife. If you marry a bar girl and she leaves you, you cannot blame Thailand. You lost your virginity and felt in love with your first warm cherries pie and then it's on you. Bar girls slept with 10,000 dudes by the time she retires at ripe age of 30. I get some people don't care about body count as long as no STD but generally they are harder to bond with. Think about it, would you hire someone to manage your business who leaves his job every week for a new job on his resume? No loyalty. They will run and find another sucker. Don't blame anyone but yourself.
2) Thailand has CONSCRIPTION aka ALL MEN MUST SERVE.
United States has VETERAN DISCOUNTS almost everywhere and has PX for active duty services and VET only electronic stores and booze and cigarettes no tax. Memorial days discounts and perks. Wear a dress Blue??? Free meals all day.
A group of Marine got on the same boat with me and my buddies from Long Beach to Catalina island fishing for scorpion fish. We paid $100 each for 4 hours fishing. Marines all paid 25% less than us due to military discount. I AM PERFECTLY FINE WITH THAT. They served, gave up few years of their youth for service. GOOD FOR THEM HOORAH.
Many average male in Thailand including your sons has to serve unless u hide him from Thailand until he is 30 years old. Many of them also has to be a monk one season for "GrAnDPaRenTz GoeS To HeavEn FamILy HappY" My point is they don't just get the perks. They have to serve 2 years guarding Cambodian, Laos, Burma, and Malaysia boarder and has to be a monk too. I AM ABSOLUTELY OKAY WITH PAYING 100 BAHT AKA 3 BUCKS to enter National Parks and Somchai can pay 30 BAHT aka 1 DOLLARS. I did not serve. My GDP is higher. I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH PAYING FARANG PRICE.
The Thais are not racists but are weeding out unorganized grab-asstic Cheap Charlies and sociopath takers who pack the attitude to be confrontational in their beloved Thailand. If you can't save up 800k BAHT aka 27k USD, you have no business leaching and retiring in other countries that you didn't put into the system.
People who qualify to retired in Thailand TODAY has a lot higher quality of life than the former Thailand of 20 years ago.
Seems like many Farang with Asian wife in particular ran from Neo-Liberalism-Bigbrother-nopersonalfreedom politics with high tax high rental costs and high divorce rate in the west. So why try to make Thailand Democracy like your home you ran from? Which eventually becomes high propety tax like California. Stay out of politics. Everytime USA bring Democracy, someone gets bombed. You're a guest go fix your home.
Old people can't even afford medicare copays and rent off SSA. What kind of society just let their elder dies in massive body count during COVID19 in USA hospice. Thais cares way more about old people and even bow to them and answer KRUP OR KRA after every sentence.
CHUCKIE AND PAIGE from NOTIME2BESAD just paid 1k PER YEAR for PPO INSURANCE in THAILAND. Thai doctors can make a dude turn to hot ladyboy. Your tumor or nose job is nothing. Them surgeons working in King's hospital are mostly Farang and or Western Medical Educated Thais and only cost a fraction of the US pricing. Retired at 50 years old no need to work hard all your life to 70 years old and break health to make money, then the spent the made money to save health.