A Look At Apollo Food Earnings

Apollo Food announced its earnings on Thursday. It looked really superb.

Its net earnings of 5.76 million is much better than what it achieved the same corresponding period last year and the half year profits indicates that Apollo should achieve decent growth.

Now, Apollo Food is rather well known to 'local investors' as a company which has a real sold balance sheet. As per its earnings reported, Apollo has an impressive 71.9 million in its piggy bank and no debts.

So is this a must have stock in one's investing portfolio? Is there any risk associated with such a stock?

Unfortunately, yes, there are risks.

And yes, I had highlighted this very same issue before. See Apollo Food's'Investments' In The Share Market and A Look At How Apollo Food Holdings Dabble In The Share Market.

I would like to stress again that I do applaud Apollo Food Holdings for being rather transparent because they do come up with reports indicating what stock they purchase and at what prices.

However, a company dabbling in the share market still equates to a company dabbling in the share market. And for some, this equates to one being uneasy with Apollo Food's involvement in the share market.

Why you may ask? Why should one being uneasy? If one is good, one can still make money, yes? Aren't you making money from the market?

Look at Apollo Food's latest earnings. Hasn't it done well?

Hasn't Apollo has done well with their investments? It made some 1.797 million for the quarter and 3.535 million for the first 6 months of this current fiscal year.

Impressive, yes?

And look at the size of shares held at book value. It has shrunk to a mere 2.2 million (compare this what's highlighted in the posting A Look At How Apollo Food Holdings Dabble In The Share Market ). So what's the problem?

Well, markets go up and down. There's no doubt that one can make money from the share market and Apollo Food had clearly shown.

But such money is rather poisonous. Not many can handle 'stock market winnings' well. Success creates the hunger and desire to make more. The greed to make more and not everyone can handle this well at all. Some can make fantastic money in their early stock market career but as easy as they can make, they can easily lose it all. The greed and the hunger to make more money, can easily cause anyone to take more risk in the market. Yes, for me, in my flawed views, I do reckon that in the long run, discipline is so very important. (nice read: Good Investors Stay Humble )

Now for me, from my flawed investing point of view, I would rather be in control myself. Which is one of the biggest reason that I invest personally in the stock market and not via unit trust fund managers. I like to control my stock market risks myself. I do not like to invest in an instrument where someone else invests and manage my money for me. It's like what if the person at the other end screws up by taking more risks in the market? Or what if the person at the other end, makes mistakes and is reluctant to acknowledge their mistakes?

And worse still for me, is when I see our listed companies dabbling in the markets, thinking that they are the super duper investors/traders/punters!

How could I sleep well knowing very well that they could easily make a mistake?

And because the management dabbles in the share market, won't the management lose business focus? Not true?

Having said all that, I do have to applaud Apollo Food for doing well and more importantly, it had really trimmed down its position in the stock market.