Daily Briefing: ST Engineering price hits one-year low; Dependants' minimum salary raised to $6,000

And here's a bank that can't stop buying its own shares.

From The Motley Fool:

The first on the list is Singapore Technologies Engineering Ltd (SGX: S63), or STE.

As a quick introduction, STE is a conglomerate with business interest in various sectors, namely, Aerospace, Electronics, Land Systems, Marine and others.

Recently, STE reported its latest quarterly result. Quarterly revenue was up by 1% year-on-year to $1.62b whilst earnings before interest and tax was up by 78% year-on-year to $146.1m. As a result, profit attributable to shareholder was up by 67% as compared to previous year. Similarly, earnings per share grew 67% year-on-year to 4.12 cents.

Read more here.

From Human Resources Online:

From 1 January 2018, the minimum fixed monthly salary required for EP and S Pass holders in Singapore to bring in family members on Dependant Passes (DP) will be increased to S$6,000. This is an increase of 20% from the current qualifying salary of $5,000.

In addition, work pass holders will have to meet a minimum fixed monthly salary to bring in their parents on Long Term Visit Passes (LTVP) will be increased to $12,000. This is also an increase of 20% from the current qualifying salary of $10,000.

The changes were announced by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), and will only apply to new applications made by EP and S Pass holders on or after 1 January 2018. All applications received before 1 January will be assessed based on the existing criteria of $5,000 and $10,000 respectively.

Read more here.

From The Motley Fool:

Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation, or OCBC for short, is the longest established local bank and is the second largest financial services group in Southeast Asia by assets.

On 4, 5 and 6 December 2017, OCBC repurchased a total of 600,000 shares at a price range of between $12.31 and $12.51 apiece. The total cost was around $7.4m.

Shares of OCBC are going at S$12.16 now, giving a price-to-book ratio of 1.4 and a dividend yield of 3%.

Read more here.

Photo by Terence Ong - Own work, CC BY 2.5