ITD: Being Liberated from Dawei

About 10 years ago, Italian-Thai Development Public Company Limited (ITD) was one of the red hot best-performing stocks. ITD was the talk of the town after the company had been granted the development concession permit for Dawei Special Economic Zone and Deep Seaport Project that cover nearly 200,000 rai from Myanmar government. 

 

Shifted from construction services company to industrial estate developer. 

 

As Dawei Special Economic Zone was a big project, it had said that the government agencies would jointly invest as well, raising hopes for ITD to grow by leaps and bounds, along with overwhelming speculations. 

 

However, since the Framework Agreement was signed between Myanmar authorities and ITD in 2010, there was not much progress mentioned, which was due to an internal conflict in Myanmar and an uncertain plan for investment. Moreover, it did not have a continuity of policies for Dawei SEZ.   

 

Well…good luck seemingly turned out to be bad luck.!!

 

When things did not go as expected, selloffs from desperate investors started pouring out, causing the price of ITD in 2014 plummeted. ITD solved this problem by issuing a capital increase program which offered to potential specific investors such as  “Wichai Wachiraphong” or Sia Yak and “Sompong Cholkadeedamrongkul” or Sia Pu in order to stimulate the share price, however, it was not succeeded. 

 

Plunging ITD in a difficult situation. Moreover, ITD also suffered from chronic losses despite having some speculative pressures.

 

Recently, ITD has received a notice of termination for the 7 Concession Agreements from the Dawei SEZ…This case could be viewed in 2 ways: positive or negative.

 

In the negative view, that means ITD would lose the further opportunities in Myanmar…like being blacklisted. The hope to grow its business to the industrial estate in order to create a new recurring income disappeared.

 

On the other hand, there is no more chronic problem for ITD, so being excluded from the Dawei SEZ project may have more good than bad.

 

From the financial statements for the nine months of 2020, ITD had cash and cash equivalents of 3,100 million baht, but a current portion of long-term liabilities was as high as 16,042 million baht.