Tiger Roars on Good Friday

The stock market in Singapore is closed today for the Good Friday holiday. Many have taken the chance to go overseas for a long weekend. The MOS crew was also anticipating a slow end to the hectic week which saw Asian markets claw back to match or surge past their mid February highs.

Bursa Malaysia was, however, open for trading. Hence, we were pleasantly surprised when KLSE listed Keck Seng (KS) took a big pop today. KS was last featured on our blog in 9 January 2007 in a post titled "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Assets". It was trading at RM3.50 then. Following the post, the counter took off on a steady run up but fizzled out subsequently. But KS jumped to RM5.60 on early trading today, chalking up a 60% gain over the holding period. The spike up today can largely be attributed to a local newspaper report which hyped up the revaluation of KS' assets. In particular, a lofty valuation was placed on its huge land bank in south Johor. In our post then, we had alluded to the positive sentiment that KS could benefit from following Malaysia's massive IDR plans. The market is similarly excited as other property counters with exposure to south Johor have soared to highs of late.