Market participants could overlook a second day moderate decline on Wall Street dragged by corporate earnings and focus instead on the US Jan job numbers scheduled for release tonight. Consensus expects 165k increase in non-farm payrolls while unemployment stays at 7.8%. Meanwhile, China's Jan manufacturing PMI released this morning rose a lesser than expected 50.4 (consensus 51) although still stayed in expansion territory. Non-manufacturing PMI will be released over the weekend.

3Q13 results for Yoma Strategic fell short despite all rounded growth. The take up for property sale is healthy, and prices are higher. Our analyst has cut FY13F-15F EPS by 47-59% primarily to reflect slower construction. TP is adjusted marginally to S$0.80 (Prev S$ 0.79), downgrade to HOLD on limited upside.

Shareholders at an extraordinary general meeting unanimously approved Tiger Airways' sale of a 60% stake in the loss-making Tiger Airways Australia to Virgin Australia for A$35m in cash. The deal now awaits an opinion, expected next week, by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).

Rotary Engineeringhas clinched a $300m expansion project for Singapore oil trader Kuo Oil's Tankstore oilfarm here. It expects to start work immediately on the two-year project on Pulau Busing, located off south-west Singapore. The new win brings its current order book to approximately $750m.

JES Internationalis expected to incur a loss for FY2012. The Group has made prudent charges and provision for liquidated and ascertained damages over late delivery of some vessels and reduced contract prices for certain vessels.

Lafe Corporationis expected to record a significantly reduced profit for FY Dec 12 as compared to the previous year. The profit reduction primarily resulted from the impairment in value of the Group's investment property at Emerald Hill, Singapore which takes into account the impact of the recent Singapore Government cooling measures.               

Matex Internationalis proposing to place up to 10.3m new shares at an issue price of S$0.0473 per share, which is at a discount of 9.7% to the last weighted average price. The gross proceeds of up to approximately S$487,190 will be used for general working capital.

Swee Hong is expected to report a loss for 2Q13 and 1H13. The expected loss is attributable to: 1) decline in revenue from operations; and 2) significant costs increases.

AEI Corporationis expected to report significantly weaker operating performance for FY12 than that in FY 11, due to weak demand.

Loan growth for Singapore banks rebounded in Dec 12 bringing full year 2012 loan growth to 10.4%. Banks' guidance for high single digit loan growth may materialise judging from these numbers. Growth appears to be domestic driven, led by business loans. Housing loan growth remained strong. Despite measures to cool the property market in Oct 12, housing loans remained on a strong growth path, ending the year at 15.9% y-o-y (2011: 16.7%), ahead of expectations. We expect housing loan growth to be supported by drawdown of mortgage applications over the next 1-2 quarters, but could gradually drop after that. We forecast mortgage loans will grow by 8% in 2013, noting that there is still a market for natural new home buyers and HDB upgraders taking into account the measures implemented in Oct 12 and Jan 13.

Strong traffic from all key regions and increasing transit flows enabled Singapore Changi Airport to boast its busiest year ever in 2012, as it crossed the 50 million passenger movements mark for the first time in its 31-year history. Passenger traffic for the year totalled 51.2 million, as traffic to and from all regions and transit passenger numbers surged. Last year's passenger traffic numbers are 10% higher than 2011's (46.5 million) and a full 10 million passengers more than the 42 million it hosted in 2010. Flight movements grew 7.6% to 324,700, but cargo volumes declined 3.2% to 1.81 million tonnes. Changi recorded increased traffic to and from all regions of the world last year, except the Africas, where political turmoil hit the air travel industry. Changi's top markets by country were Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Australia and China.

Companies in the manufacturing and services sectors expect business prospects to be weak in the first half of this year as global economic growth remains sluggish. A survey by the Economic Development Board (EDB) shows that firms see the outlook remaining tepid in the first six months of 2013 as the state of the global economy continues to take its toll on business sentiment here. Within the manufacturing sector, the biomedical and general manufacturing clusters were the most bullish. The pharmaceutical segment sees higher demand coming from overseas while general manufacturing firms such as those in the food, beverages and tobacco segments expect demand to receive a boost from seasonal factors such as Chinese New Year. The electronics cluster was the least optimistic.

Source: DBSV