Sino Agro Food Inc (fka SIAF)

[RealDutch]

At some point you have to think management knows what they are doing.

Not entirely. The problem is that management can't be objective. They all think they are the next AAPL or something. And you will find it hard to convince any CEO not to grow the company like a madman.

But the fact is, if they are really growing as fast as they think they are, then there is no better investment than repurchasing your own stock. A lot of companies can't, because they are not profitable. But what I think SIAF should do for the next two to three years is use 8% of earnings to payout dividend and another 8% to repurchase stock. Stay within budget with the remaining 84%.
Is that really too much to ask for?
This way, even if growth is absent or doesn't materialize, they will be repurchasing their own assets at a 70% discount. So in a way it's also a hedge.
Sending out this signal (using 8% to repurchase stock) to the marketplace will help the share price once sentiment improves in the sector.

Well, people act on sentiment and CEO's are no different. I suppose we will have to settle for 70.5M shares for 2012.

But management needs to understand one thing VERY CLEARLY.
You need to get the share price up first, any way you can. This in turn will result in confidence and attract more buyers. It simply doesn't work the other way around. You simply can't induce confidence by growing a business alone. If they haven't learned this by now, it's about time they did.