Short-sellers increased their bet even past 4pm, from 366,200 to 543,200 shares averaging $5.26485 by the close, perhaps believing strongly that such a liquid, expensive company that is still incurring losses would naturally fall with a long weekend looming & having already risen 37% from last week's low, up from an average of only $5.04-5.05 before the afternoon started; instead the stock continued to forge relentlessly upward after dipping back to $5.07 early in the noon session. If the IDSS sellers all covered their shorts by the close, they would have lost $116,813, continuing their streak of bad luck all week that began on Friday, March 6th.
As news of the still exponentially escalating mutual attacks on gas & oil fields in Iran & other Gulf states spread, brent crude spiked from $113 all morning to a $119.13 high even as US light sweet crude kept a huge discount by trading up to $98.96 at the same time, compounding the woes of Petronas Chemicals shorties!
Poh Kong, recommended to paying clients on Dec 26th, mystifyingly remained almost unchanged since that call, on the last day of the year's dividend entitlement date. After the close, it announced a quarterly profit 60% higher than '25's corresponding number & a 20% hike q-o-q on the 2nd highest revenue ever. 1H '26 EPS is 21.23 sen, 71% higher than 1H '25 while NTA is 16% higher, or 36 sen. 2026's turnover is shaping up to be the best ever, as is this year's EPS which looks more likely than not to handily beat the record 29.54 sen last year.
Despite NTA increasing 4-fold since 2008, average quarterly revenue more than tripling in the last 17 years & EPS rising 6-fold since the recession year after that, the current price is 3.37-4.06x the lowest levels seen in that era. Profit margin is 9% which is a 7-year high while ROE is only 20% lower than the highest figure in '08, when the price peaked at 73 sen.
When compared to competitor Tomei, which has superior ROE of 18.8%, Poh Kong would be trading for at least $1.50. If their lows of 76c & 64.5c in '22 were compared to their current levels, the latter would be priced for at least $1.60. Their prices post pandemic were only 13% apart while the former is now 61% higher! Meanwhile the larger company's book value per share has advanced $1.20 since the post-pandemic high of $1.80 while the latest quotation is strangely 62 sen lower than that record high, with its competitor's peak at the time only 8 sen above.
Be that as it may, Grahamian net-net has advanced 20 sen per share since a year ago to $2.08 from $1.88 & I am confident that the jeweler's market price will advance above $1.50 within the year, just as it rose 63% to its peak a full 5 months after gold's peak of US$1,921 per ounce in 2011.
also enters the stable ¥3,150 cheaper than the close, a single tick above the intraday low!!
