Prayer Strategy

1. The Thumb is nearest you, so begin your prayers by praying for those closest to you..
As C. S. Lewis once said, praying for loved ones is a “sweet duty.”

2. The pointing finger in next. Pray for those who teach, instruct and heal. This includes teachers, doctors, and ministers. They need support and wisdom in pointing others in the right direction.

3. The middle finger is the tallest finger. It reminds us of our leaders. Pray for the president, leaders in business and industry, and administrators.

4. The ring finger is next. This is our weakest finger. Let it remind us to pray for those who are weak, in trouble or in pain.

5. Finally, our little finger, the smallest finger of all. The Bible says, “The least shall be the greatest among you.” Your pinkie should remind you to pray for yourself. By the time you have prayed for the other four groups, your own needs will be put into proper perspective and you will be able to pray for yourself more effectively.

So practise tonight!

MEASAT-A Potential Buy?

This just came in today (June 21)

Measat Satellite Systems Sdn Bhd (MEASAT)is targeting to reap higher revenues of US$100 million (RM354 million) annually in the next three to four years, up from US$60 million last year from new businesses arising from the launch of its two latest MEASAT-3 and MEASAT-3a satellites.

Paul J Brown-Kenyon its chief operating officer said the company also has in hand revenue of US$600 million, which would be raked in from contracts ranging from three, five and 15 years.

The company, which has spent RM1.6 billion in the last four to five years, is looking to launch joint venture satellites with partners who could bring in capital and in the process, spread risks.

MEASAT-3 launched in 2006 and MEASAT-3a, which will be launched Monday morning on June 22 at 5.30 Malaysian time from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, is expected to expand the business,” he told journalists here yesterday.

This means that MEASAT’s sister company, Astro would be able to provide more channels to its customers while expanded services would be available for clients such as Telekom Malaysia, Maxis and Celcom.

“They will have the ability to provide more communication services to more customers, he said.

Brown-Kenyon said the US$165 million MEASAT-3a would be operational by end-July or possibly even earlier, and then would start serving customers.

“Two satellites give us an enormous amount of peace of mind as we would be able to expand our capacity and deal with redundancy issues associated with old satellites,” he said.

He said MEASAT-3 was close to full capacity in terms of take while Astro had already booked half of the transponders on MEASAT-3a, which means new services, new channels, and increased content.

Asked when MEASAT could recoup its expenses for the new satellite, he said that investments and costs in the satellite business would dilute earnings in the next 12 to 18 months, “but after that, revenue goes up.”(That means good things will come only after December 2010)

In terms of payback, he said that it would take about six to seven years to repay the US$165 million MEASAT-3a.

Satellites have a 15-year life mission.

“In our industry, we can’t be a small player because of the huge capital investments, which is why we need to be a big player but the good thing is that MEASAT-3 and MEASAT-3a have a very strong customer base.

“Beyond MEASAT, we are looking always to grow the business. We are looking at Africa as a region and we are at the moment discussing with a number of partners about doing joint venture satellites in that part of the region.”

He said MEASAT was mulling joint venture satellites as the strong customer base means the capacity in the two MEASAT satellites would be used up quickly.

“We have access to 17 orbital slots throughout the world and each allows a satellite to be launched into a new region”, said Brown-Kenyon.

“We are in a growth phase and we have very successfully built up a strong Malaysian base and growing regionally in India, Indonesia, with good broadcast customers such as British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), National Geographic and History Channel,” Brown-Kenyon added.

So watch this counter closely and buy on weakness.

Netting Tourists off the Net

So, even the Tourism Office is jumping on the bandwagon to tap Internet resources to woo in-bound tourists.

Tourism Malaysia intends to go big on this platform. It will promote tourism by engaging Facebook, Friendster, Twitter and other global social networks to attract visitors to the country, said its acting director-general. He said that the agency had just entered into internet marketing and was planning on several programmes to capture the huge and untapped market via such social networks.

“We want to go through community-based websites such as Facebook, Twitter and others. People spend a lot of time surfing (the) Internet and its influence is huge...social networks are becoming the favourite place to keep in touch and share experiences,” he said on the sideline of the Sixth Asean Leadership Forum here.

According to him, Tourism Malaysia had already embarked on Web TV, banner advertisements in Yahoo, MSN and Google. Facebook has 175 million members worldwide while Friendster has over 90 million. According to Compete.com which analyses web traffic, Facebook had 104 million visitors in April in the United States.

He said greater promotion through the internet was one of the plans adopted by Tourism Malaysia, in the wake of the global economic slowdown and its effect on the travel and tourism industries.

Malaysia, apparently was not badly affected by the crisis as the number of arrivals in the first four months showed positive growth as compared to last year, although neighbouring countries recorded reduced numbers. Many visitors avoided troubled Thailand and sought Malaysia which was a safe place to visit.

However, despite positive tourist arrivals, Malaysia had reduced its target of attracting 24 million tourists to 20 million in 2009, due to slower demand brought about by the economic crisis as well as the reduced travelling over the current Influenza A (H1N1) virus scare.

According to Toursim Malaysia, this need to change strategy is imperative. They said Malaysia works best under pressure. After having learnt from the 1997 financial crisis when tourist arrivals dropped to 5.5 million, it introduced the ‘Malaysia Truly Asia’ campaign, rapidly increasing tourist arrivals to 22 million in 2008.

Tourism revenue also jumped from US$4 billion to US$14 billion in the same period.

Well, we hope tourist arrivals are not too badly affected by the pandemic H1N1 scare.

Astro to Shine again?

This was taken from the website " Value Investing in KLSE". As the blogger has done his homework tracking this stock, let us give him our attention.

Astro All Asia Networks plc (AAAN), a Malaysia-based investment holding company engaged in the provision of management services is currently involved in the following business segments. These are:

Malaysian multi channel television, which is engaged in the provision of multi channel direct-to-home subscription television and related interactive television services in Malaysia;

Radio, which provides radio broadcasting services;

Library licensing and distribution, which is engaged in the ownership of a library of Chinese filmed entertainment and the aggregation and distribution of the library and related content,

A magazine publishing business

And others such as interactive content business for the mobile telephony platform, Malaysian film production business, talent management; creation of animation content, television content aggregation and distribution, ownership of buildings, and regional investments in media businesses and other investment holding companies.

Astro is the sole provider of satellite DTH TV service in Malaysia with exclusive DTH rights until 2017. It's the biggest pay-TV operator in Southeast Asia with 2.56M residential subscribers. Its total penetration of Malaysia TV households is 44% to date. This is a highly cash-generative business which generates around RM 0.13 of cash flow per share - per year on average.

Astro is spreading its wings to India,Indonesia(but failed) and Middle East. Due to its sheer size of population in these prospective areas,the volume of business to be generated will be enormous!

The article did an estimate of the value of business in Malaysia.

Its Malaysian DTH monopoly business is valued at RM 3.50 to RM 4.00 per share. But current share price is around RM 2.80 per share.At current price,it's selling at a discount because stability of Malaysian business and future potential are not factored in.

Major shareholders are Tan Sri Ananda Krishnan (42.4%), Khazanah Nasional Bhd (21.4%) and Employees Provident Fund (7.3%).

Recently,rumuors abound that Astro,Measat and Maxis will be 'lumped' together to create more value through cost savings and synergy. This rumour is not new and has been circulating in the industry for sometime now.

This event is very likely to take place some time in the future if the share prices of Measat and Astro is kept for too long at low valuation. This should be an indicator for investors to come in.

So,if you are looking to diversify your investments, Astro could be just that fillip.

Get in at an opportune time when the market hits the wall on unfavourable economic or political news.

SIA Pilots Takes the Lowdown in Pay Cut

As the battle for the skies take its toll on once high flying service providers, one elitist airline-Singapore Airlines (SIA) has got its pilots to agree to take no-pay leave as well as a pay cut from July 1. This is the latest to erupt in a string of cost-cutting measures as global airlines take continuous revenue battering.

SIA also said its management staff and board of directors have agreed to a pay cut of at least 10 per cent which will help SIA to save about S$21 million (RM51 million) in costs in 2009.

After months of tough negotiations, an agreement between SIA and the Air Line Pilots Association-Singapore (Alpa-S) was finally hammered out and signed on June 18.

Under this agreement, the pilots – more than 1,800 of them – will take one day of no-pay leave each month and a cut of 65 per cent of one day’s pay a month, pro-rated from their monthly basic salary.

SIA said that the terms of the agreement with Alpa-S were determined by the situation where there arose surplus pilot resources because of reduced flight schedules,as SIA cuts back flight frequencies following the sharp fall in demand for air travel.

SIA passenger numbers last month fell by almost 24 per cent from the same period last year to about 1.2 million, outpacing an almost 14 per cent cut in capacity.The airline’s passenger load factor also fell to about 67 per cent, down almost eight percentage points year-on-year.

From next month, all SIA management staff will take a pay cut of at least 10 per cent, while its chief executive will have his pay chopped off by 20 per cent.

The board also volunteered a cut of 20 per cent in director fees.

Almost 2,000 employees have also signed up for SIA’s voluntary no-pay leave scheme where staff can apply for no-pay leave of up to two years.

SIA's salary cuts and related cost-cutting measures are akin to what Hong Kong’s biggest carrier Cathay Pacific and Australia’s largest carrier Qantas Airways have announced. In May 2009, Cathay announced that 90 per cent of its pilots had signed up for unpaid leave while Australia had earlier on in April cut 1,750 jobs.

So what about MAS and Air Asia? Are they doing so well to prevent such cost-cutting measures from happening back home?

Hannah Tan-Another Rare Find.

Sexy and charming! Brains and beauty. That is Hannah Tan, another sparkle in the current Malaysian social scene.

Hannah Sarah Tan, is an accomplished Malaysian singer-songwriter and television personality. She is half Chinese and half Kelabit. Very interesting combo here.

Hannah Tan,also known as Hannah T or Hannah Sarah Tan, is also a beauty queen representing Malaysia in the 2002 Miss Global Petite World Finals in Montreal. Here she won Second Runner Up as well as the coveted “Miss Congeniality” subsidiary title.

In 2006, she was voted by FHM as Malaysia’s sexiest woman. Another wow feather for Hannah!
Hannah Tan has appeared in a number of first rate advertisements, including an advert for Lux in which she appeared alongside Karen Mok.

She has hosted numerous Malaysian television shows, including What Women Want on 8TV, Motorsports@Petronas on Astro Super Sports, Ringgit Sense on TV3, Girls’ Club on NTV7, Looking Good Feeling Good on NTV7 as well as being part of the cast for Sketches also on NTV7.

She is one great gal and I hope she has the vim and vitality to continue climbing to greater heights in that direction.

Just subscribed to her official site so that I can keep track of the achievements of this rare gem.....