Wolf Money(portfolio update end Feb 2026)long post
Road safety is for everyone
Road accidents have increased over the past year. Is our road getting less safe? One of the primary reasons. The lack of time, patience and the constant need to be on the mobile phone by the drivers and pedestrians might have contributed to the increase in road accidents. Without patience, driving on the road can be unsafe. That vehicle became a killing machine. The constant rush for time is another factor that gets people into accidents. I have seen a lot of drivers breaking traffic rules by doing illegal U-turns and failing to stop at pedestrian crossings. The traffic rule’s relaxation in 2025 where jail time is not mandatory for first-time offenders involving a fatal road accident is not doing much good to lower accident rates. Accidents that involve injuries and fatalities have spiked 7.4% in the first 9 months of 2025. Fatal incidents increased 4.8% in the first half of 2025. Tougher laws should be enforced on those drivers that displayed a flagrant disregard for traffic rules. Higher responsibility should be placed on drivers. Tougher regulations on errant driving behaviour can help create a safer environment for all. One may argue that pedestrians should be taken to task for their actions too. A pedestrian may not be a driver, but a driver is a pedestrian. Drivers, in my view bear the higher burden of responsibility. Tougher rules help everyone in general. Some pedestrians are not angels too. More enforcement actions should be taken on pedestrians in accident prone areas. Having tougher laws is one aspect to keeping our road safe, more critically, enforcement is the key. I wish everyone a safe journey. Everywhere, Everyday. God Bless 🙏
Lone Wolf Fund(LWF)
Portfolio as at end of Feb 2026
1.) Cash
2.) Tai Sin Electric
3.) Grab Holdings
*Stocks are not rank in accordance to capital invested.
Commentary
The correction in gold, commodities and crypto sparked a margin call in the market which caused it to go through some heavy losses in the middle of the month. The market woes were worsened due to Mr. Trump trying to pick a fight with Iran. He is probably well stocked up on oil companies. What are the chances of a war with Iran? 👇
“LWF is officially up and running. All portfolio stocks experienced an uptick in price. Overall, LWF was up x% this month. Year-to-date gains was x%(unleveraged, excluding return from cash and dividend). The better performance came from Genting Singapore improvement. Tai Sin Electric put up a commendable showing. Grab was stable, given the backdrop of a substantial improvement in their financial results. Just to recap, Grab made their first net profit of USD $200m in FY2025. They are guiding of ebidta profit of close to USD $1.5b by 2028”…..wait a minute. This was what I am going to say until the bombshell from Genting Singapore few days before the month was up. Genting poor result forced the portfolio back to the starting point. In the end, LWF was less than 0.5% higher for the month. YTD gains stand at 0.5% (unleveraged, excluding dividend and cash yield) . I didn’t account for this month gain to LWF as the gain is less than 0.5%. With Tai Sin and Grab improvement making up for small losses at Genting SP and IREIT.
Blue Ouch..
The recent problem at Blue Owl Capital is a typical liquidity problem of using short-term capital for lending to private equity companies which typically have a longer exit cycle. Private equity and private credit investments are not for the average investors. In my opinion, I classify them closer to alternative investments. I am worried if the current conditions are bad enough, fund managers of those assets will start selling those assets to uninformed retail investors by dangling high returns to lure them in. There have been talks of private equity/credit launching a fund for retail investors in Singapore. There is no way a retail investor can properly assess the underwriting standard of those investments made by those fund managers as the financial data of those private companies are not easily available. Secondly, those PE/PC are difficult to exit when the market freezes up. With PE and PC having a bigger component in a multi-asset portfolio. Will it cause contagion to other assets? Most of PE did a mark-to-model valuation approach to their investments. Will the latest trouble cause the day of reckoning for funds that specialise in those assets, forcing them to adopt a more realistic approach to valuation? God Knows!
Previously I mentioned about the danger of having too much private equity in a portfolio.
Tai Sin Electric
LWF added a new position in Tai Sin Electric. I was thinking on how to get onto the digital economy and construction industry megatrend in Singapore without subjecting my portfolio to buying low-margin businesses in the construction sector and high valuations in the tech sector. Trying to grapple with the complexity of the technology industry also puts me off. Tai Sin is nothing new to me. I always take a keen interest in them, but I was deterred by the lack of liquidity in our market previously. The EQDP fund has improved the liquidity situation in some small and mid-cap stocks. Tai Sin Electric is the largest cable and wire company in Singapore where they dominate the data centres and construction industry. They have a market share of over 70% in data centres locally. They are the choice supplier of cables and wire to iconic projects in Singapore (MBS, Gardens by the Bay and T4). The dominance in the data centres didn’t come by accident. A data centre requires only the best cables and wires to provide stability to their servers. Once established a relationship of reliability, data centres are unlikely to switch suppliers for fear of disruption to their operations.
The lowering of PARF for cars will have huge implications on the demand for EV. The paper value is negligible at the end of life for all cars now. That will create more demand for EV. The pivot into EV will have substantial demand for charging stations. Current regulations require only a minimum of 1% of the total cars and motorcycle parking lots to be EV ready. Which mean 100 carparking lots, there is only 1 charging station. At that number we are likely to have “charging fight” among car owners for that limited EV lots. The government is likely to increase that percentage soon. A 1% increase would have double the number of charging stations in Singapore. There will be substantial upgrades to electrical infrastructures across Singapore as the current voltage at public carparks can’t support the huge growth in EV. Our carparks were built for cars of last century, not for the modern EV, not for the demand of fast charging. Tai Sin Electric, as the leader in electric cables and wires in Singapore stood to be key beneficiary of such green initiatives. A side note on charging, the 7kw charger is a waste of money. Those low power chargers should be replaced with fast charging.
The 1H result was weaker yoy due to a substantial rise in the copper price. Copper went up more than 30% over the past 6 months. They took a provision of $11.8m for fixed contracts which were suppose to be delivered within the next 1 to 3 years. I guess this amount is fluid depending on the copper price at the moment. A write back is possible if the copper price drops. I am sure contracts going forward will come with a contingency provision on the copper price. The company doesn’t have a demand issue, but they need to be on top of their game in terms of hedging against the rising copper price. More than 60% of a cable is made up of copper. The other part of the business requiring “eagle eyes” management is trade receivables. The construction industry is notoriously known for delay payments, where more than 55% of companies experienced some form of delay payment. Bernard Lim, CEO of Tai Sin Electric, is active in the market buying shares at 51.5c this month after a 8 months absent.
IREIT Global(sold)
The rise in industrial production numbers in Germany bodes well for the German economy. Given Berlin is the capital of Germany, it is likely to benefit from the uptick. There is hope this will rub off on office leasing activity in the Capital. The results announced at 11.55pm yesterday continued to show weakness which is within my expectations. To be honest, I don’t quite bother with the rest of the properties within the reit. IREIT is Berlin Campus and Berlin Campus is IREIT. This is the one that matters. The REITs did not announced any conclusion to the two substantive rental negotiations at Berlin Campus. The agreement had been delayed to 2Q. What if there is a delay to Q3 or even Q4? Better communication is needed. The NAV stands at 51c per share as the weakness in Berlin Campus continues to weighed on valuations. Last year NAV was 58c. The narrowing of NAV and share price has made it unattractive. The yield stands at a low 5.4%. With financing cost is moving much higher. The REITs need to move quick on Berlin Campus leasing as any longer delay will affect financial numbers greatly. The position was eliminated from the portfolio. LWF was down 1.6% on the position.
Genting Singapore(sold)
I am cautiously optimistic about their business, especially in 2026. Given the rally in Chinese equity market, more Chinese will be spending their profits on travelling. Singapore remains the top overseas destination for Mainland Chinese given their diplomatic spat with Japan which caused a 60% flight cancellation. There are safety concerns to America and Europe. The Cambodia kidnapping saga still lingering on the minds of travellers. There are fewer places for Chinese tourists to go on a holiday in 2026. Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam are likely key destinations for this Chinese New Year holiday.
The 2H25 results of Genting Singapore were disappointing. It felt like a kitchen sinking quarter to flush out as much negatives as possible. The lower base in 2025 may set up for an outperformance in 2026. The bad debt situation needs a closer attention by the management, $165m were written off in FY25. Better credit assessment is needed. The cash burn on RWS 2.0 is my major concern. They are barely into the first year of construction of the RWS 2.0. Given the drop in operating cash flow, more money will have to come out from the cash balance. The capital management cited by an analyst is not a given. Cash had dropped to $3.2b from $3.5b previously. If the new RWS 1.5 continues to disappoint, I am afraid the capital management is unlikely to happen. The increase in VIP guests from new facilities never came through. Genting Singapore made a net profit of $390m. 2c final year dividends were announced, taking the full year payout to 4c, unchanged from last year. The stock is paying more than 5.5% dividends at the time of writing.
I sold the share due to technicality as I am unwilling to go beyond my maximum loss allowance. 10% gains were sacrificed for higher gain. I wouldn’t rule out coming back again.
Grab Holdings
This month’s newest purchase came from a familiar counter which I had taken position a couple of times last year. The selling in tech has given me the opportunity to rekindle my interest in Grab Holdings. Fundamentally, there is nothing wrong with the company. The risk associated with Grab will come from policy risks, especially in Indonesia, where there are significant implications on the part of the government capping the platform fees of ride-hailing app. So far there is no indication beyond discussion. If there is a cap on fees, the GoTo and Grab merger is unlikely to happen. Investment into Indonesia will slow due to more socialist agenda of the Indonesian government. There are plenty of ways to get around the fee cap if the government decides to implement, which I wouldn’t go into details.
Grab has developed a strong flywheel business model, enough moat to attract Oaktree Capital under the leadership of legendary investor, Howard Marks, to take a stake in the company. Base on various sources from the internet. Oaktree Capital’s average purchase price in Grab was in the range of USD $4.69. As mentioned, Chinese tourists are heading towards Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and, to a lesser extent, Singapore for their holidays. Grab has a strong presence in those ASEAN countries with market shares exceeding 60%. I see Grab as an essential travelling app to this part of the world. Furthermore, tourists are less price sensitive about taking Grab as safety concerns and tourist scams rank higher on the minds of most travellers.
Grab reported net earnings of USD $200m for FY25. It is the first full year net profit in their history. Their business units are firing in all cylinders. It is quite puzzling for the market to value them lower than they are loss-making. I sat through their results webcast. The management sounded confident of meeting their ebitda target of USD $1.5b in 3 years time. Financial will be the biggest growth engine for Grab. Concurrently, they announced the purchase of Stash Financial in the US(not Stashaway). Users of Stash can invest as low as $5 a week. It makes a good starter app for people who are new in their investment journey.
The purchase of Stash will give Grab the ability to offer investment products on their Grab platform in the future. This will create further opportunities for more user engagements, thus the stickiness to the Grab ecosystem. I am pretty excited by their latest addition to the range of services that Grab is offering.
Over the past two weeks, I had trouble getting a taxi during our CNY visitation. ZIG, part of ComfortDelGro had problems finding a taxi for us. I suspect many taxi drivers are on a well-deserved CNY break. I would also like to make a point, many people see driving a taxi more suitable for a more senior demographic which was indeed the case. With fewer drivers going into Taxi trade, and more seniors drivers retiring, where are the taxi companies going to find drivers? If passengers can’t get a taxi, they are most likely to take a Grab, sometimes at higher price. Younger drivers are drawn to the ride-hailing trade. That will strengthen the hands of Grab’s network effect. Network effect is the ability to control the supply and demand side. The algorithms of Grab is second to none. There are at least 4 times more PHV drivers than traditional taxis.
One similar example is Property Guru. Agents are “forced” to pay a toll to capture a higher level of eyeballs from the Guru app, thus increasing their chances of a successful sale. From my source, agents on average paid about $20,000 a year for unlimited property listings on Property Guru. Grab is one of the few companies in Singapore that has incorporated AI into their operations using OpenAi and Anthropic. 90% of the ride-hailing services are matched by AI. The adoption of AI improved their operating efficiency further. The cost of service to drivers and consumers will be lower in the future. Grab is the enabler of AI.
The only downside to their results is the ridiculously high share compensation to management. Then again if Elon Musk is paying himself USD $1T in stock option, it will make Grab share compensations of USD $241m look ridiculously low. The other concern as Grab gets more and more powerful. One could even argue if Grab app is offline for a day. It will cause massive disruption to the way of life of many people, especially to the income of 50,000 regular PHV drivers and 15,000 Grab food delivery personnel in Singapore. Regulations will increase due to the systemic risks.
Deliveroo has announced the exit of the Singapore market by early March. The food delivery market has officially become a duopoly with Panda and Grab. The food delivery market is cut throat. Food delivery is a volume business where margin for Grab food was only 2.2%. With the exit of Deliveroo, it is likely to strengthen Grab competitive advantage in the Singapore market.
Cash
There was a bigger increase cash due Genting SP and IREIT Global. The cash yield is likely to fall due to lower saving rates across the board.
Summary
To be honest, even with LWF experiencing a slightly positive month. It still felt like a loss, a kick in the teeth with the disappointment of Genting SP and IREIT results. Why am I not doing 10x better? I have no answer. I will term itself as a “bad month” in office. We can analyse the company in full details, but we need the management of the company to punch above their weight, to run their business well. I continue to assess the market situation. I am unlikely to put more capital into the market given the limited opportunities. The market’s elevated valuation should be viewed with caution. It is important for an investor to get a good understanding of what they are holding. The ability to distinguish the “6 from the 9”, “The Orion from The Onion” and “Top Dogs from the Hotdogs” are critical aspects that make the investor great again. God Bless. 🙏
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