Thanks to @amandayapsy and @seladangtrader for sharing about the developments in Penang. You can refer to their posts here https://cutt.ly/Uw7ej1Cd and here https://cutt.ly/jw7ej2ah respectively.

A particular company that stood out to me is $TAMBUN / 5191 (TAMBUN INDAH LAND BERHAD) , which @jay888 also favours.

With potential catalyst of the PDC's land acquisition exercise in Seberang Prai, we can see that the main players there include the likes of SP SETIA, IJM, ECO WORLD, amongst others.

However, as a more pure play exposure to Seberang Prai, Tambun seems more attractive.

From my own understanding, here are some interesting points about Tambun:

1) Consistent dividend payer with payout ratio around 40-50%, even during the thick of the pandemic.
2) One of the rare net cash property developers, Tambun has cash and equivalents of about RM 160m vs short and long term borrowings of RM 85mil, making them net cash of roughly RM 75mil+- or RM 0.18 per share.

3) NTA is around RM 1.7, which in and of itself is nothing great since most property developers trade at a discount to book value. However, if we dig into what exactly makes up their NTA, this is where things start to get even more interesting.

4) TAMBUN has about 630 acres of empty land for development mainly at the South and Central of Seberang Prai. These lands carry a book value of around RM 480mil in total. Most of them were last revalued between 2010-2014. This means that, on average, the book value of the lands are roughly RM 760k per acre, or RM 17.5 per sqft.

5) This excludes their other properties, such as their international school, shop lots, office lots, car parks, and so on. These remaining properties carry a book value of around RM 94mil, and most of them have not been revalued in a long time too.

6) PDC, in the reported news, said they are allocating RM 3bil for acquiring 3000 acres of land in North, Central, and South Seberang Prai. This is roughly RM 1 mil per acre.

Could this be an opportunity for them to unlock the value of their lands that they've been holding for years?
And could the management be as generous to their shareholders as they have been in the past?