KUALA LUMPUR: The weakness in Sime Darby Bhd
’s share price is a good opportunity for investors to accumulate shares in the conglomerate.
At 9.42am, Sime fell two sen to RM2.13. Year-to-date, the counter has fallen some 7.8%.
“We make no changes to our forecast and target price of RM2.60, which has a 0% ESG premium built in. We think that a circa15% correction from its recent peak has priced in SIME’s near-term headwinds in China.
“Should weakness persist over fears of prolonged lockdowns or of weak 4QFY22 earnings, we believe this is an opportune time to accumulate – ahead of China’s imminent car sales recovery, which would be fuelled by government incentives and pent-up demand,” RHB Research said.
However, the research house noted that some of the key downside risks include longer-than-expected lockdowns in China, a softer-than-anticipated economic recovery in China, weakness in coking coal prices, and lower-than-estimated industrial margins.
RHB said while demand for Sime's electric vehicles (EVs) in Malaysia is strong, supply chain issues continue to cause long wait times.
It added that Sime’s EV ambitions have already begun – starting in China, where it has secured after-sales partnerships with new EV original equipment manufacturers (OEM) like NIO, Weltmeister and Li Auto.
Accounting for the EV line-up from its existing principals, Sime has many new EV models in its pipeline that span across the mass and premium segments.
RHB has recently visited Sime Darby's AutoCity and test-drove EVs from BMW, Hyundai, MINI, Porsche and Volvo.
“Among the six EVs we tested, BMWiX and Hyundai IONIQ 5 have the strongest demand, with c.1,000 and c.600 orders in hand, despite the long wait times.
“We believe the key appeal of EVs include lower cost of maintenance, with most EVs only requiring battery replacements eight years after purchase, and energy cost savings – eg a full charge on a BMW iX will cost circa RM80, versus circa RM170 for a full tank of RON95 on a comparable BMW ICE X5,” it said.
RHB said Porsche, BMW, MINI and Volvo are all experiencing some form of chip and component shortage, which is limiting their production.
“We gather that the BMW and Porsche plants in Germany are running at low utilisation rates, as a result. Meanwhile, due to the limited capacity at Hyundai’s Korea plant, Hyundai is not able to cater to the strong global demand for the IONIQ 5,” it added.
