Replies to post #89539 on Sino Agro Food Inc (fka SIAF)

[RealDutch]

Now, 3 000 mu of land worth $ 1 million each, that is three billion dollars.

I think he said RMB 1M per mu. At 55% that's $265M.

It's a non-event. Like I said before, the market doesn't care about book value, especially land. Yasheng Group has $1.1 billion of land use rights alone, and only a market cap of $120M. There are many more examples.

So I hope that management will come to grips with reality, LOL. I reiterate, it's all about telling the growth story.

[Carog]

There is nothing wrong with your conclusion, the land is a huge underrated asset...:)
Its also a great sign of credibility that they have been given these land use rights!

[NewJerichoMan]

My understanding is, this side of Monaco, real estate in Hong Kong is the most expensive in the world.

When dealing with values of a $1M per mu, it's usually not so much the value per square foot of site area - it's the value per square foot of buildable area, i.e., how high they can build. The denser the allowable development, the more valuable the underlying land is because of the "air rights". Then one can consider some of the very desirable locational factors such as waterfront land, proximate to both Hong Kong and Macau, yada, yada, yada.

That said, 99.9% of land is China is owned by the government. So the "bundle of rights" is diminished right off the bat. The land is only as valuable as the economic utility that it is allowed upon it. The potential economic value the, what I call the Southern Island (the island south of the Mega Farm), will only become unlocked once the Chinese government lets it.

Even at that point, I don't think you want to get overly excited about it. We're a fish company with an entrepreneur / CEO with a history of over-reaching, extending beyond our core competencies. I'm pretty sure we're not quite ready to go into the highly speculative business of real estate development. So I wouldn't get too excited about it yet. It's a long-term thing that may or may not ever pay off.