Hot stock: SPH falls 1.65% to S$2.98 after Monday's close

MEDIA group Singapore Press Holdings' (SPH) share price dropped five Singapore cents, or 1.65 per cent, to S$2.98 after trading closed on Monday. It opened at S$3.02 on Tuesday.

This comes after SPH reported last Friday that a muted economic environment, disruption of the media industry and impairments primarily due to the magazine business drove its third-quarter earnings lower.

For the three months to May 31, 2017, net profit of S$28.9 million for Q3 was down 45 per cent from a year ago. Operating revenue was down 10.8 per cent to S$260 million.

An analyst report by OCBC on Monday said: "Excluding the impairment charge, we note that group recurring earnings would have fallen by S$17.1 million or 19.2 per cent, and deem this quarter's results to have missed our expectations.

"The management team indicated that they are actively pursuing growth opportunities to diversify revenue streams with their recent acquisition of Orange Valley Healthcare and the recent winning tender for a mixed site at Bidadari with JV (joint venture) partner Kajima Development Pte Ltd. In addition, SPH has also completed the sale of 701Search on June 30, 2017 and expects to recognise a profit of (about) S$150 million from the divestment in the next quarter."

On Monday, SPH and Business Insider (BI), a US-based business news source, entered into a licensing partnership to operate the Singapore (www.businessinsider.sg) and Malaysia (www.businessinsider.my) editions of BI.

A statement issued then said that BI Singapore and Malaysia will offer local news, business and lifestyle coverage, in addition to content from BI's newsrooms around the globe, including Australia, Germany, UK and its New York headquarters.