Medibank – Rising Political Risk

Medibank has been under selling pressure on fears of rising political risk.  The Labour Party appears likely to campaign into the next Federal Election with a promise to limit annual premium rate increases to 2% for two years. This is well below the 4-6% historical trend.

Despite the concern highlighted above, we view Medibank as a buying opportunity, as it approaches an oversold level.

A rally back to $3.00 should provide an opportunity to set covered call options and generate additional premium income to complement the 6.5 cent  September dividend.

Medibank Private

 

Harbour Energy Offers $13.5 Billion For Santos

US-based, private equity firm Harbour Energy has raised it’s takeover offer to $13.5 billion for oil and gas producer SANTOS. 

This is the third offer since last August and pencils out to $6.50 per share.

The bid represents a 30% premium over last Friday’s closing price of $5.07 per share.

STO was added to our ASX Top 100 Model Portfolio at $4.82 on February 12th.

Santos

 

 

 

 

Star Entertainment – Growth Outlook

Star has entered into a private placement with its JV partners, Chow Tai Fook  and Far East Consortium to raise $490m at $5.35. The alliance agreement has been entered to build an additional 5 JV towers at the Gold Coast and one in Sydney.

The SGR board has revised the dividend pay-out ratio to a minimum of 70% of normalised EPS. The announcement was also accompanied by a trading update – Normalised group revenue for the March 18 quarter was up 19%.

FY19 revenue of $3 billon, EBIT $440m, EPS $0.33 and DPS $0.20 places SGR on a forward dividend yield of 3.7%.

Star