what happened, page-49

hewjet, can't give you a thumbs up for those recommendations, because FWD did spend most of the past 6 months between $9 and $10, so the analysts got it right. Analyst reports get updated on new details, and the company ha a downgrade- it's that simple. As to new analyst forecasts:

http://www.fnarena.com/dsp_recommendations.cfm?searchsymbol=fwd

If one looks at the most bearish one, based on the last downgrade, JP Morgan forecasts $3.75 price target for one year hence. I don't know how much growth they expect for their forward 1-year targets (20%? 25%?), but if one could buy FWD for $3.00 - $3.10 at any time this year, one could probably do well out of it. Macquarie expects no dividend for the second half.

What surprises me with this one is that the NTA is $2.54, from the Half Yearly accounts (p 12):

http://hotcopper.com.au/announcements.asp?id=531272

So, the market had been pricing FWD at 4X NTA, which is a pretty extraordinary achievement.

FWD had $9m cash, so they live off the smell of an oily rag. They will save if they pay no dividend, but will not have the DRP cash to rely on. They also only have $11m debt. Sure, it's a declining market, atm, for the services it delivers, but it is in good standing to deal with the downturn, in my opinion. Itshould not be hard to raise that kind of cash via debt, or better still, via equity, if the company needs to. It has the market cap to easily do so. $11m debt in these markets in nothing, and shows how well the company has been run.