As usual, Genting Malaysia held their 2019 AGM at Wisma Genting. Genting Malaysia is the subsidiary of Genting Berhad, most of its assets are the resort, themepark at Genting Highlands. They also have a ship charter business, Star Cruises.
This is the 1st time I join Genting Malaysia AGM. I took an LRT to Dang Wangi and took a 1km walk from there to Wisma Genting only to realize there is a Monorail just in front of Wisma Genting.
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| Genting Resorts World Berhad - a highlands resort |
The AGM started at 10AM, I arrived at 1030AM and there was no crowd at the registration counters, most of the other shareholders ware at the auditorium already. Coffee and tea were served after the registration counter.
The auditorium where the meeting was held required taking a lift up at Wisma Genting. Good thing the whole exercise was well coordinated with the guards helping to escort us shareholders up. 1-2 lifts were specifically allocated for this event.
A note to myself I realized in Wisma Genting there is a Maybank bank branch and also a Coffee Bean outlet there.
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| Registration counter |
The door gift for Genting Malaysia didn't featured any fancy product, RM 80 food and beverage voucher and RM 50 of themepark voucher were given. These vouchers had to be used at the Genting Highlands resort. In the last last AGM I understood that Genting Malaysia gave Old Town Coffee Shop chain vouchers.
There was 1 senior citizen who was standing around offering to purchase the Genting vouchers from shareholders for a price of RM17. I misheard and thought he wanted to buy it at RM 70. The senior citizen managed to buy a few copies of the coupons from other shareholders. I did not sell mine to him as I felt his sales pitch was quite not quite ethical, he was telling the other shareholders to sell the coupon with a value of RM130 for a mere RM17 by saying Genting only wanted people to go up gambling their fortunes away so is better to just sell it off to him as the minimum price of a buffet for single person is already RM50. Nonetheless I give this guy my respect for being bold enough to do this.
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| Genting Malaysia Door Gift |
At the auditorium, I discovered it was fully pack and people were standing until the entrance. The Genting staff opened another meeting room below the auditorium with TVs that broadcasted the entire event.
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| Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay in action |
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| Voting device |
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| Lounge area to see the broadcast |
The popular topic that shareholders keep bringing up is on the details on the 1MDB Jho Low's Equinimity which Genting Malaysia bought for USD 126 million and renamed to Tranquility. Some were bashing Genting on the price paid while other praise Genting Malaysia for doing a national service and publicity stunt.
On this topic, Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay gave a few information about the super yatch Tranquility.
- She (Tranquility) is enroute to a shipyard at Germany for refurbishments. Previously she was parked in Singapore shipyard to fix the mechanical parts of the ship so that it can move nearer to its designed speed (18 knots) before moving to Germany.
- Genting Malaysia might sell off Tranquility if the price is right as it attracts too much attention due to its roots to 1MDB scandal.
- Genting Malaysia intends to charter Tranquility to Genting's high rollers, targeting Macau's big players.
- USD 125 million was the reserve bid and there were other bidders but they price were too near the reserve price and as a result Genting won the bid. In Gentings opinion, the price of USD 125million is the price needed to build a new yatch of this size.
On the topic of Fox Theme Park that was suppose to be opened in September 2018. The litigation case between Genting Malaysia and Fox Studios is still ongoing and is expected to be completed end of 2019. Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay is positive the theme park can be opened in 1 Q 2020, however he seem to indicate that most likely it won't be a Fox theme park. Genting Malaysia is sueing Fox for USD 1 billion for breach of contract. However, Tan Sri Lim has reiterated that whether the theme park if a Fox branded themepark or not, the theme park will have world class facilities as it was designed to be.
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| Genting AGM Annual Report 2018 |
I was quite impressed how Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay handled some hecklers in the crowd. Hecklers are shareholders that like to complain over trivial stuff over AGM. Usually these shareholders only hold less than 1000 units but come to AGM for the sake of complaining about trivial matters and for the door gift. One old fella was trying to embarrass Tan Sri about Genting's rescue of the 1MDB super yatch Equinimity and investing into US Red indian land. Another person was complaining about parking and also personal data being leaked out by Genting staff. Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay kept is composure during the event and answered coolly to all the hecklers despite some of the hecklers being quite aggressive towards Tan Sri.
Just in the news in the AGM, an item I missed was Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay also announced he will be taking a 20% pay cut to offset the effect of heavy gaming taxes which have weighed on the group’s financial performance. In the shareholder meeting also a few shareholders questioned Tan Sri's pay which is the highest executive pay among all listed Malaysia companies.