Stocks to watch: Datapulse, Creative, CSE Global, SIA, SATS, Compact Metal

THE following companies saw new developments that may affect trading of their shares on Thursday:

Datapulse Technology: Its board, in a clarification announcement to the Singapore Exchange late Wednesday night, said they were not aware of Ascapia Capital's partial offer for the company prior to published media articles, including in The Business Times, on March 7. Ascapia, after the stories were published, had subsequently notified Datapulse in a letter that it will make its intentions clear by the end of March 9, 2018 whether or not it has a firm intention to make the partial offer.

Creative Technology: Co-founder Ng Kai Wa has disposed some of his shares in the technology company in the past few days as share prices ran up to levels not seen since 2007, cashing in on S$1.8 million in the process. According to a Singapore Exchange filing on Wednesday evening, Mr Ng disposed 95,650 shares in the company on March 6, receiving S$868,799 in this transaction. On March 5, he also disposed 104,350 shares amounting to S$939,150. That brings his current interest in Creative to a total of 2,148,555 shares, or 3.055 per cent.

CSE Global: Quarz Capital Management said it is satisfied with the dividend guidance provided by CSE Global following a meeting on March 5 with the management of the mainboard-listed company. In a letter to the CSE board on March 7 - which was put up on the same day on the Singapore Exchange website by CSE - Quarz said it "welcomes CSE's board and management for providing a clear dividend guidance of 2.75 Singapore cents a share for 2018... amounting to a potential attractive dividend yield of 7.4 per cent". The activist fund had published an open letter on Feb 26, calling for "cash discipline" and higher dividends from the process control and communications network system integrator.

SIA and SATS: Singapore's national carrier announced on Thursday it has entered into a non-binding deal with ground handler SATS and duty free retailer DFASS (Singapore) to work on a joint venture (JV) project in travel retail. The trio will be offering inflight and ground-based duty-free and duty-paid goods, as well as mail order and pre-order services, Singapore Airlines (SIA) said in a filing with the Singapore Exchange. The JV is intended to be carried out through a joint venture company, DFASS SATS, which is now owned equally by DFASS and SATS wholly owned subsidiary, SATS Asia-Pacific Star (APS). Under the terms of a Points of Agreement, SIA will purchase 70 per cent of the issued share capital of DFASS SATS from DFASS and APS, SIA said.

Compact Metal Industries: It announced that a bid to exit the Singapore Exchange's watch list has failed as the company has not yet completed audit of its financial statements for the 2017 financial year. However, the aluminium product supplier said that the SGX has granted it an extension of one month till Apr 2, 2018 to meet the requirements for an exit from the watch list. Compact Metal was placed on the watch list on March 4, 2015.