DAP gloats with pride whenever it flaunts their so called economic whiz Tony Pua as the Economic Advisor to DAP Secretary-General Lim Guan Eng, or when they offered their alternative Budget 2008. In their signature factsheet, DAP is quick to strut to the effect that “at age 28, Oxford alumnus Tony Pua, the founder-CEO of Cyber Village, an IT firm became youngest ever person in Singapore to public list his company in the Singapore Stock Exchange. Next, in full Malaysia-Boleh spirit, he gave up his Singaporean commercial world enterprise to concentrate full time in Opposition politics.” All this is just too nice sounding to be true.
In his blog tonypua.blogspot.com, Tony declares, “It was my wish to be able to retire early quite comfortably so that I will be able to devote most, if not all of my expendable time on socio-economic and political affairs.” Retire comfortable he did, after selling off his shares and washing his hands off any credibility devaluation.
DAP’s self accolade conceals the ugly picture, that is, Tony’s Cyber Village had actually been suffering losses since being listed on Singapore’s Stock Exchange.
The company’s 2005 annual report shows that it has been in the red since 2002 with total losses over the four years of SGD8.26 mil, and its auditors had doubts about its ability to continue operations should it fail to secure new contracts.
In the 2005 annual report, Ernst & Young Singapore (pg 13) wrote:
As at the financial year ended 31 December 2005, the Company’s current liabilities exceeded its current assets by $260,077, and for that year the Group incurred a loss of $2,187,404. These factors indicate the existence of an uncertainty which may cast doubt as to whether the Company and the Group are able to continue as going concerns.
The ability of the Company and the Group to continue as going concerns is dependent on their ability to generate significant positive cash flows from the Group’s core specialist activities which is in turn dependent on the Group obtaining new profitable contracts and the successful outcome of the Group’s ongoing productivity improvements and cost reduction exercises.
The financial statements have been prepared on the assumption that the Company and the Group will continue as going concerns to meet their liabilities as and when they fall due and their businesses continuing to operate as planned. This assumption is premised on future events, the outcomes of which are inherently uncertain.
In the event that the Company and the Group are unable to continue in operational existence for the foreseeable future, the Company and the Group may be unable to discharge their liabilities in the normal course of business and adjustments may have to be made to reflect the situation that assets, including intangibles, may need to be realised other than in the normal course of business and at amounts which could differ significantly from the amounts at which they are currently recorded in the balance sheets. In addition, the Company and the Group may have to reclassify non-current assets as current assets. No such adjustments have been made to these financial statements.
As disclosed in Note 3.3 the assessment of impairment of goodwill and intangibles involves estimating the expected future cash flows from the cash-generating units. If the Group is unable to generate significant positive cash flows in the future, the carrying values may differ significantly from the amounts at which they are currently recorded in the balance sheet.
Simply said, Ernst & Young, Singapore has cast doubt on the viability of Cyber Village if it did not win new contracts.
From a share price above SGD0.25 in 2001 free-falling to a few cents by 2005, would you buy Cyber Village shares? Is this an IT success story or perhaps just another typical dot.com bust whose founder had leveraged on the hype of his youth during the IPO?
While Cyber Village losses would have caused undesired anxiety among its share holders, Malaysian voters have to view Tony Pua’s advice for the Malaysia’s economy in a larger context. If Tony is not even able to have a grip unto the share prices of Cyber Village, how will he be able to balance the Malaysian economy? His company has yet to churcn profits. Tony is an entrepreneur, not necessarily a succesful businessman, and definitely not an economist.
Dare you trust your money with him? An investment with DAP is the same as signing away not only your fortune and future, but that of your children’s too. We’re talking about big-time collateral damage here.
Tony, with all his baloney, does not make cents. He breaks cents. And he’ll probably never ever make any sense in view of DAP’s tragic defiance of common sense.
-MCA online-