Welcome to this week’s edition of top stock market highlights.
DBS Group (SGX: D05)
DBS released its second quarter of 2024 (2Q 2024) earnings earlier this week.
Singapore’s largest bank saw total income rise 9% year on year to S$5.5 billion on the back of a 5% year-on-year increase in net interest income.
Net profit rose 6% year on year to S$2.8 billion for the quarter.
Net fee income hit a new record with treasury customer sales staying strong, and the bank declared an interim dividend of S$0.54, 22.7% higher than the S$0.44 paid out a year ago.
The blue-chip lender saw its group net interest margin remaining unchanged at 2.14% and reported healthy asset quality with low specific provisions.
CEO Piyush Gupta believes that net interest income can chalk up a mid-single-digit percentage growth for 2024.
He is confident that net profit for 2024 can improve in the mid to high-single-digit level year on year.
Meanwhile, DBS also announced that Piyush Gupta will retire as CEO of the bank during the next annual general meeting on 28 March 2025.
The board has appointed Tan Su Shan as Deputy CEO and she will succeed Gupta as CEO when he steps down next year.
Tan, who is 56, has more than 35 years of experience in consumer banking, wealth management, and institutional banking.
She joined DBS in 2010 and has managed the consumer banking, wealth management, and institutional banking businesses that bring in 90% of DBS’s total income.
Sembcorp Industries (SGX: U96)
Sembcorp Industries, or SCI, also announced its 1H 2024 last week.
The energy and urban solutions provider saw revenue fall by 12% year on year to S$3.2 billion, led by an 18% year-on-year decline in gas and related sales to S$2.3 billion.
Both the group’s Renewables and Integrated Urban Solutions divisions saw revenue stay flat year on year at S$371 million and S$209 million, respectively.
The Decarbonisation Solutions division saw the sharpest revenue increase from S$5 million to S$22 million.
Net profit before exceptional items tumbled by 12% year on year to S$532 million.
SCI increased its interim dividend by S$0.01 from S$0.05 to S$0.06.
The group continued to make progress in growing its renewables capacity, which ended at 14.4 GW at the end of June 2024.
As a reminder, SCI is targeting to reach 25 GW of renewables capacity by 2028, as communicated during last year’s Investor Day.
On the same day, the group also announced its long-term strategy for its Urban Solutions division.
With a current land area of 14,000 hectares, SCI hopes to grow this to 18,000 hectares by 2028.
For industrial properties, it currently owns around 130,000 square metres of gross floor area but targets to increase this by more than tenfold to 1.5 million square metres by 2028.
Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.B)
In a surprise move, Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company owned by famous investor Warren Buffett, announced that it had slashed its stake in Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) by nearly 50%.
Berkshire sold US$75.5 billion worth of stock in the world’s largest company during 2Q 2024, sending its cash pile swelling to a record US$276.9 billion.
In addition to Apple, Berkshire has also significantly reduced its stake in Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), trimming this position by 8.8% since the middle of July.
Berkshire first disclosed its stake in Apple back in 2016 and has chalked up a massive unrealised gain on this position.
At the end of 2021, Berkshire had roughly 908 million shares of the technology company.
After the sale, the company is left with roughly 400 million shares of Apple which are valued at US$83.9 billion.
At May’s shareholder meeting for Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett had alluded to Apple remaining as the company’s top investment holding but implied that tax issues had motivated the divestment.
The sale will help the conglomerate avoid paying higher capital gains taxes.
Apple recently released its earnings for the third quarter of fiscal 2024 (3Q FY2024) ending 29 June 2024.
Revenue rose 4.9% year on year to US$85.8 billion while operating profit jumped 10.2% year on year to US$25.3 billion.
Net profit improved by 7.9% year on year to US$21.4 billion.
Apple’s Services revenue, which touched a new record, increased by 14.1% year on year to US$24.2 billion.
The business also generated a positive free cash flow of US$84.9 billion for the first nine months of the fiscal year.
Ready to discover the next $100 billion stock? Our newest FREE report dives deep into five popular SGX companies that many say are the next big thing. Read our team’s findings to guide your investment strategy. Click the link here to download now.
Follow us on Facebook and Telegram for the latest investing news and analyses!
Disclosure: Royston Yang owns shares of DBS Group and Apple.
