Hope of a continuation of US February's good job data doused after the March ADP employment data showed just 158k compared to 200k consensus. At the same time, the service sector ISM labour component dropped by 4 points to 53.3. This pours cold water on Friday's non-farm payrolls figure  that is expected to give a 195k gain. The current session is likely to be a choppy one for the Singapore bourse given the weak ADP data and the developing stories on North Korea's nuclear provocation and China's bird flu. STI's immediate support is around the 3300 level that coincides with the 15-day EMA.

At the time of writing, China reported a third death of the total of 9 people in China infected with the H7N9 bird flu virus. According to Bloomberg, the WHO has said that current drugs are effective against the virus and there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission. Thus, unless the situation changes, we think the current bird flu scare should not result in a negative reaction for equities.

Yoma Strategicwill be forming a 40/60 joint venture company, BYMA Pte Ltd (BYMA), with Dragages Singapore to construct apartments for Yoma's Star City project. Dragages is a unit of French-listed Bouygues S.A., a leading global infrastructure conglo. Yoma is expected to pay S$400,000 for its 40% stake in this JV. The main intention of this JV is to tap on Dragages' experience and know how to speed up construction and maintain quality of Star City. Beyond Star City, this partnership will position Yoma to benefit from the tremendous growth opportunities within Myanmar's construction industry. This is a positive development as the slow pace of construction has been hindering Yoma's earnings delivery in the last two quarters. Assuming average completion of over 300 units in a year, we see upward earnings revision from FY14 onwards. This may not lead to TP adjustment just yet. However, if earlier construction and occupancy can lead to higher take up rate than expected, there is potential to raise RNAV. Maintain HOLD for now, TP: S$0.80.

Telecom operators are diversifying into the mobile ad space but we believe they are unlikely to be market leaders. We estimate the targetable market for operators to be only 12% of the total mobile ad market in 2016. Players like Google, Apple & Facebook are likely to dominate. Our analysis suggests low score for operators versus Google & Apple due to challenges like lack of multi-channel capability, limited advertiser base, privacy concerns and limited reach to third party ad inventory. Pure mobile ad players tend to get razor thin margins. SingTel has invested ~S$500m in the new digital business with most of it going into the mobile ad space. We question SingTel's foray into a highly competitive space with long breakeven time and razor thin margins. We are neutral in Singapore telcos as yields are not attractive on a regional basis. We have Hold calls on SingTel (TP: S$3.40) and StarHub (TP: S$4.30).

Lian Beng Grouphas secured two construction projects boosting its order book to a record S$1.085 bn. The two contracts, amounting to S$201m, involve the building of two multiple-user light industrial developments for Oxley Holdings.

Logistics Holdingshas been awarded two contracts amounting to S$50.9m by the Housing & Development Board for design and build of upgrading projects. With the award of the projects, the Group's order book amounted to approximately S$329.1m.

Sunlight Group is placing up to 130m new shares at an issue price of S$0.038 for each Placement Share to raise gross proceeds of up to S$4.94m. The Placement Price represents a discount of approximately 5.0% to the volume average price. The proceeds will be mainly for funding possible acquisitions and/or investments when opportunities arise.

ISDN Holdings is placing up to 23.7m new shares (~19.99% of issued share capital) at an issue price of S$0.45 per share. The Placement Price represents a discount of approximately 9.96% to the last weighted average price. The gross proceeds of about S$10.7m will be used to partially fund the planning and construction of additional industrial facilities within the ISDN High-Tech Industrial Park and for working capital purposes.

Singapore's manufacturing economy returned to growth in March, with PMI rising to 50.6, signaling an expansion of the manufacturing sector, after falling to 49.4 in February. The better overall PMI was largely due to higher new orders from both local and foreign markets, as well as production growth. The electronics PMI slipped to 51.9 in March, after climbing to 52.1 in February, even though it stayed in growth territory. But March's improvement may not be enough to offset poor industrial output in January and February. Manufacturing output in the first two months of the year fell 8.6% y-o-y. The market expects the manufacturing sector to contract in Q1 from a year ago, and think this will weigh down the Singapore economy's performance overall. Official flash estimates for Q1 GDP, based largely on the first two months of the quarter, are due to be released next week.

Source: DBSV