The 2024 AGM of HUTCHISON PORT HOLDINGS TRUST (HPH) started with a sharing of a schedule on the screen (please click this link if you would like to read Part 1). Based on the schedule, the AGM would commence at 1100 hrs and was targeted to end at 1200 hours (but as I will be about to share later, this schedule was a gross underestimate!)
Just to digress a bit, I noted the names of the board management and as I have expected, several of the names of the board and management have Christian names that originated from Britain (after all, Hong Kong was a former colony of Britain). And I noticed the same for my colleagues from Hong Kong.
The CFO of HPH presented a short background for the company in 2023 and this was followed by some financial snapshots and then it was open to the floor for the Q&A segment before the electronic voting commenced.
What I would expect to be a short Q&A turned out to be an interestingly long segment of Q&A that lasted slightly more than 1 hour! It was however interesting as there was one very vocal and remarkable shareholder who asked many very insightful questions. I welcome such vocal shareholders as most of the time, many retail investors come to AGM and leave AGM without asking any questions, even though some of them may have some burning questions. But my welcoming of these vocal shareholders come with a condition: the questions asked must be of a certain quality.
After the vocal shareholder has asked the management of HPH, there were few shareholders who seem to be “inspired” by the vocal shareholder and they took turns to ask questions at the management. All in, the questions asked by these few shareholders made this HPH AGM 2024 worth my time in attending it as some of the questions which I had were also addressed by the Q&A session. Though I also noticed that quite a number of attendees started leaving the AGM after the initial 12pm targeted closing time when the AGM was still in the Q&A sessions. I believe some of them might have commitments to attend to.
Let me share the key highlights of the Q&A session of HPH AGM 2024 below.
In gist, the shareholders who took turns to ask management of HPH would like to know what the management of HPH will be doing to try to improve the share price of HPH especially that the price has gone some 90% down from IPO. Not only that, from the questions asked by the shareholders, it seems that investors also wanted assurance from HPH management that the management is and will be committed to enhance shareholder value.
In his response, the Chairman of HPH Trust who was recently appointed cited the several ongoing efforts by the Board and Management to enhance shareholder value. And the Chairman highlighted that he will work hard with his team for the company and explore ways to further improve value to shareholders.
To digress a little, some shareholders felt that the company should have done more introduction to the shareholders of the new Chairman and the management at the start of the AGM as the annual report does not contain photos of all management team. The annual report carried name and photo of the previous Chairman. I fully agreed with this point. Just to provide a more balanced perspective, while the Chairman of the HPH Trust did give a quick introduction that he is Chairman and the CFO described him as Chairman of the meeting, my quick impression on this was that the Chairman was Chairman for chairing the AGM only. With few suggestions raised, the Chairman shared that there are opportunities to improve for the next AGMs.
There were questions after questions on the outlook for HPH in 2024, specifically on whether 2024 would be a better year compared to 2023 for HPH, especially given the current geo-political tensions. The Board and Management gave their replies to each question related to this, and made an attempt to share with the investors more every time the same related question is asked.
Given the keen interest asked in the outlook for the company as evident from the many questions asked, one shareholder suggested that perhaps the Board and Management could have started sharing with all on a very comprehensive outlook for 2024 at the start of the AGM first so that shareholders would not need to ask to probe for more and more details. To me, this is really a valid and reasonable suggestion. As shareholders, nobody wants to see the stock price of HPH Trust at its current price versus its initial price, what everyone want is a hope for the better and a projected outlook for the company for 2024 as shared by the Board and Management directly to the retail investors will help greatly! As also highlighted by the most vocal shareholder in the AGM, the AGM is the only time that retail investors can come face-to-face (except for the Covid-19 years where virtual meetings were held) with Board and Management.
(TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 3)