Despite the turbulence of the commodities market in the past few years, Noble Group says that it sees an unprecedented amount of opportunities and is confident of another bull market for commodities in a few years. What we're seeing at the moment is a huge amount of opportunities that never before has been seen," its founder and chairman Richard Elman told investors at the Credit Suisse Asian Investment Conference here.

The largest commodities trading house in Asia by revenue, meanwhile, plans to do some groundwork in strengthening its balance sheet. The firm has issued $820 million worth of bonds in Malaysian ringgit, Chinese yuan and US dollarsso farthis year, which it said would go towards refinancing its US$500 million bonds
maturing in May and bank debt worth US$685 million expiring in a year. The new bonds have a coupon of between 3.6 per cent and 4.3 per cent, compared to 8.5 per cent for the maturing debt. "You can see what we've done with the balance sheet in the last couple of years, interest rates and the costs. When we took on a large amount of debt (a few years ago), it turned out to be quite an expensive one," said Mr Elman. "I don't think anybody quite realised what was going to happen with interest rates. So now, we need to recycle that as well." Doing this will make a "substantial difference" to Noble's bottom line, he added.

The commodities veteran was confident of the future for commodities, even as commodity firms ranging from iron ore miner Vale to integrated palm oil firm Wilmarstruggle with thinner profits in the past year. Noble saw full‐year profit increase 9 per cent to US$471 million in 2011, though fourth quarter earnings fell 14 per
cent to US$91.2 million, dragged down by its poorly performing agriculture unit. The firm yesterday also hinted at a change in its approach toward sits agriculture business segment as part of its new asset‐light strategy unveiled during its results briefing late last month.

Source: AmFraser