SPH – Lim and Tan

• Market appears to be anticipating a good set of numbers from SPH, including a higher special dividend. (SPH will release results for its final quarter / full year ended Aug ’10 on Tuesday Oct 12th. For ye Aug ’09, while maintaining normal final dividend at 9 cents, SPH had cut the special by 1 cent to 9 cents.)

• Reported net profit for 9 months ended May ’10 came to $422.59 mln, vs $286.78 mln for the same period a year ago. Excluding exceptionals, the respective numbers would be $437.24 mln vs

$341.60 mln.

• The stock ran up 4 cents to $4.25on Thursday, the highest since Aug ’08, thereby breaching, albeit modestly, the $4.20 support-turned-resistance level. (SPH had in Aug ’08, broken-down from the $4.20-4.72 range that had held from Jan ’07 to July ’08.)

• Fact is, print advertising has been picking up nicely along with the strong economy.

• On Saturday Oct 2nd for instance, BMW took up 2 full-page and 7 half-page advertisements as it launched its new 7 series, extolling the 7 principles of leadership.

• And BMW is not alone, as other European marques Mercedes Benz, Audi have also been aggressively pushing their latest.

• We maintain BUY.