Daily Briefing: Singapore property stocks build its best rally; Is SIA's share price ready to soar again?

And OrangeTee eyes being the third largest real estate agency.

From Bloomberg via Yahoo!: Singapore property stocks are set for their best annual performance in five years, and strategists believe the rally is far from over. With an expected pickup in real estate following the easing of housing curbs, developers are expected to be the bright spot in Singapore equities as gains in the city-state’s stocks may be limited for the rest of the year. “The residential property market has seen a marked improvement in sentiment,” said Desmond Loh at JPMorgan Asset Management, who helps manage the second-best performing Singapore fund this year. Developers that have started buying land for new projects stand to benefit, he said, adding that vacancy rates are expected to decline over the next few years.

From Shares Investment via Yahoo!: Singapore Airlines’ (SIA) share price plunged 7.2 percent to $9.98 in a single day on 17 May 2017, following the release of its 4Q17 results which reported a shocking quarter net loss of $138.3 million attributable to SIA Cargo’s provision of competition-related fines and settlement. This led to a 55.2 percent decline in net profit for FY17 to $360.4 million. Cathay Pacific Airways, SIA’s counterpart in Hong Kong, is not far better off. Last month, the group announced that it is set to cut around 600 staffs in a bid to reduce costs and streamline its operations, hoping to turnaround its business which has been bleeding cash, losing around HK$3 billion in last year alone.

From Yahoo! Finance: OrangeTee, currently the fourth-largest real estate agency in Singapore in terms of headcount — 2,646 agents to be exact — reckons it could increase in size to about 3,600 in the coming months, says Gary Chua, senior associate executive director at OrangeTee. This could push OrangeTee into third place, ahead of Huttons Asia, currently ranked third largest with 3,100 agents, and below the two biggest, PropNex Realty and ERA Realty Network, with over 6,000 agents each. Chua’s confidence stems from an announcement in April that his group from ERA and another from Savills Residential with a combined sales force of 1,300 will be merging and joining OrangeTee in batches. The five founding members from the two groups joined OrangeTee in April to form Navis Living Group (NLG).