Latest / Investor Exchange / 95% Revenue Drop: Disaster Q1 2026 For Incredible Holdings
Transcript
- 0:02Time for another Investor Exchange podcast. Here are your hosts, Matt and Sally.
- 0:07Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are jumping into a really high stakes,
- 0:12I think highly critical financial report. We are.
- 0:15It's the unaudited condensed interim financial statements for Incredible Holdings LTD.
- 0:21This covers their first quarter of fiscal year 2026, so the three months ending
- 0:2630 September December 2025.
- 0:29And our mission really is to cut through all the density here and pull out the
- 0:33absolute truth about their financial health. Find out what's really going on. Exactly.
- 0:38We need to know what were the real drivers behind their performance?
- 0:42These cost-saving measures they talk about, are they sustainable?
- 0:47A very important question. And maybe the biggest question of all,
- 0:50What's the outlook for a company that's, you know, fighting on three different fronts?
- 0:54And we have to start, I think, before we even look at a single dollar figure
- 0:58by setting the regulatory stage.
- 1:00Okay. Because it really frames this entire discussion.
- 1:03Incredible Holdings is required to announce their results quarterly,
- 1:06which is, you know, more frequent than standard.
- 1:09Why is that? Specifically because their independent auditor issued a disclaimer
- 1:14of opinion for their financial year that ended way back on 31 December 2022.
- 1:21A disclaimer of opinion. For those of us who aren't CPAs, what does that technical
- 1:27phrase, what does it actually signify?
- 1:29Well, it's the highest level of warning you can get.
- 1:32Really? Yes. It means the auditors essentially told the market,
- 1:36we cannot verify if the financial foundation of this company is sound.
- 1:40Wow. They just couldn't get enough evidence to form an opinion.
- 1:42So this tells you right away that the company is under intense scrutiny and
- 1:47is still grappling with these profound unresolved issues.
- 1:50And these issues are related to the fundamental value of assets on their balance sheet. Precisely.
- 1:55So the stakes here, even before we start, are just incredibly high. High stakes, indeed.
- 2:00And let's just quickly remind everyone of the battlefield here.
- 2:02The group operates in three very distinct and, I think, challenging segments.
- 2:07Very different businesses.
- 2:08You've got distribution, which is specialty chemicals, then luxury goods,
- 2:12so trading watches, and finally, a loan financing business mostly centered in Hong Kong.
- 2:17Right. Okay, let's look at the financial performance for the quarter.
- 2:20Because the top line number is, well, it's not just bad. I'd say it's genuinely catastrophic.
- 2:24That's a fair word for it. If you look at the group revenue,
- 2:27it basically disappeared. It plummeted from S $104,000 in Q1 of 2024 to just $5,000 in this quarter.
- 2:365,000? We are talking about a 95% revenue contraction.
- 2:40Just look at the sheer scale of that shutdown. Their entire revenue engine just
- 2:44seized up completely, dropping from six figures to barely $5,000.
- 2:49It's a near total operational collapse in terms of sales. And the company's
- 2:53pretty clear about why. It's a combination of
- 2:55decreased customer demand, and increased competition. And you can see that pain
- 2:59across every single segment, can't you? Oh, absolutely.
- 3:01Luxury goods went from $28,000 last year to, well, to nil revenue this quarter. Nothing.
- 3:08Distribution, which was their largest segment at $75,000, that dropped 93% down to only $5,000.
- 3:15And loan financing. Also flatlined, down from $7,000 to nil.
- 3:19It's, you know, it's hard to find a business unit that wasn't critically hit.
- 3:22Okay, so given that level of devastation on the sales front,
- 3:25you would logically assume gross profit would be just completely wiped out. You would.
- 3:30And in value terms, it was. It was reduced substantially, dropping from S$13,000 down to $2,000.
- 3:36That's an 85% reduction. But here's where the numbers tell a fascinating and
- 3:41I think a pretty misleading story.
- 3:43A misleading hell. If you look at the gross profit margin, so the percentage,
- 3:47it actually increased significantly.
- 3:50Increased. It jumped from 12.5% in Q1 of 2024.
- 3:54All the way to 40.0% in Q1 of 2025.
- 3:59Wait, 40%. How is that mathematically possible?
- 4:02How can a near total collapse in sales lead to a quadrupling of the gross profit margin percentage?
- 4:07It sounds like amazing operational success, doesn't it? It does,
- 4:10but clearly that isn't the case here. It's not.
- 4:12It's purely a function of the extremely low volume. The reduction in the cost
- 4:15of sales was even more drastic than the revenue drop.
- 4:18Ah, okay. Their cost of sales went from $31,000 down to just $3,000.
- 4:22Since they sold virtually nothing, their cost of goods sold was negligible.
- 4:26So they made a 40% margin, but on a tiny $5,000 worth of sales. Exactly.
- 4:31You can think of it like this. If you used to sell 100 affordable watches at
- 4:35a low margin, but now you only sell one extremely expensive watch that you already
- 4:40had in inventory at a huge markup. Your margin percentage source.
- 4:45Right. But you're barely selling anything. Yeah. It's not a sign of a robust business.
- 4:50It's just the mathematical outcome of a shrunken operation. That's a crucial distinction.
- 4:55It's an indicator of minimal fixed costs in that specific bucket,
- 4:59not, you know, thriving commerce. Precisely.
- 5:01Okay, so let's turn to the bottom line because this is where it gets even stranger.
- 5:05Despite that revenue disaster, the overall statutory net result showed a smaller net loss for the period.
- 5:12Right. The loss actually improved. The group reported a net loss of S$175,000 in Q1 2025,
- 5:19which is an improvement of over 21% compared to the S$222,000 loss in the same
- 5:26quarter last year. How did they pull that off?
- 5:28Well, this is where we see some really aggressive cost mitigation driving the result.
- 5:32But, and this is a big but, much of it is temporary or non-recurring.
- 5:36Okay, so let's unpack that. They got to a reduced loss before tax thanks to
- 5:40massive expense reductions in two critical areas.
- 5:44First, administrative expenses. Right. They decreased by $65,000.
- 5:48That's about a 27% cut.
- 5:51Management was explicit. They cut staff and moved to a smaller office.
- 5:54So that's real, painful, structural cost control.
- 5:58It is. But the second reduction, this is where we see the artificial boost. Okay. Finance costs.
- 6:04They dropped from $70,000 to nil. To zero.
- 6:08How? It wasn't because they paid off their loans. It was due to an interest-free
- 6:12period that spanned these three months, from July to September 2025.
- 6:16So you're saying the only reason their statutory loss improved year over year
- 6:20is largely thanks to a temporary interest holiday.
- 6:22That's it. That $70,000 savings, a non-recurring swing that basically makes
- 6:27the entire quarterly loss improvement look, well, artificial. Exactly.
- 6:31If you annualize that, I mean, if you put that cost back in,
- 6:33it paints a very different picture of their underlying cost structure. A very worrying one.
- 6:38Even with the staff cuts and rent reductions, they are reliant on external forbearance
- 6:42just to look better on paper. And at the same time they were cutting internal
- 6:46costs, they also lost significant external income.
- 6:49Yes, that's the other side of the coin. Other operating income decreased sharply by $77,000.
- 6:55That's a 96% drop, mainly because income from a Hong Kong subsidiary's internet
- 7:01marketing just vanished. Right.
- 7:03So they lost external revenue streams while aggressively slashing internal costs.
- 7:08And, you know, here's the hidden bad news.
- 7:12The metric management probably hopes you don't look at too closely.
- 7:15Which is? Total comprehensive loss.
- 7:17So while the statutory loss before tax improved, the total comprehensive loss
- 7:21actually increased significantly by almost 85%. So explain that.
- 7:25What exactly is total comprehensive loss, and why is it worse here than the standard net loss?
- 7:30It's generally seen as a better measure of the true economic change in a company,
- 7:35because it includes non-cash items that net loss often excludes.
- 7:38Like currency fluctuations.
- 7:40Exactly. Things like currency translation differences. In this case,
- 7:43the total comprehensive loss went from S$94,000 last year to S$175,000 this
- 7:48year. So what caused that big divergence?
- 7:51It happened because Q1 of 2024 included a positive currency translation difference of S$128,000.
- 7:59That was absent this period.
- 8:01So when you strip out that favorable currency swing from last year,
- 8:04the current performance looks dramatically worse. It does.
- 8:08It shows the company's actual financial health deterioration is much deeper
- 8:12than that statutory net loss figure suggests. That contextualizes it perfectly.
- 8:16So they look better on the P&L because of temporary interest savings,
- 8:20but their underlying economic health is demonstrably worse.
- 8:23That's the takeaway. Let's shift to the balance sheet then, because the group's
- 8:26financial health here appears...
- 8:28Tenuous. Net assets, that's the book value of the company, have decreased sharply. Very sharply.
- 8:34Dropping from S$248,000 just three months prior in June 2025 to only S$73,000 in September.
- 8:42That is a quick burn of equity. The rapid erosion of net assets is alarming,
- 8:46and their liquidity position, it really confirms the danger.
- 8:49Let's talk about working capital.
- 8:50Their negative working capital position, meaning their short-term liabilities
- 8:53exceed their short-term assets, it worsened. It grew from negative S4.59 million
- 9:00dollars to negative S4.76 million dollars.
- 9:03So they're falling further behind on their ability to pay immediate bills. That's right.
- 9:08Their current liabilities increased by S112,000 dollars, mainly from other payables and accruals.
- 9:14At the same time, they were pulling in cash where they could,
- 9:18you know, decrease in current assets by selling off inventory and collecting receivables.
- 9:22So they're slowing down cash spend, but their obligations are piling up faster.
- 9:26Faster than they can liquidate assets, yes. I know. And cash flow is struggling, too.
- 9:30Net cash used in operating activities increased. They used S$38,000 this quarter,
- 9:35leaving them with only S$109,000 in cash reserves.
- 9:38Okay, this is where it gets really, really interesting, because we have to circle
- 9:41back to that initial disclaimer of opinion you mentioned. Yes, it all connects.
- 9:44We're reporting on September 2025, yet the integrity of this balance sheet is
- 9:48still tainted by unresolved audit issues from the 2022 financial year. Three years ago.
- 9:53This isn't just paperwork, is it? this is what could fundamentally crater the
- 9:56remaining book value of the company if they can't fix it. Absolutely.
- 10:00The company is actively wrestling with two major unresolved items related to asset valuations.
- 10:07First, they have to deal with the impairment of website development costs. What's the story there?
- 10:13Specifically, there was a S-403,000 loss recorded back in 2022.
- 10:19It was for a planned Korea project that was abandoned. Okay.
- 10:23Now, the company is still endeavoring to provide sufficient evidence to auditors
- 10:26to support the carrying value of the remaining website development costs if
- 10:30they fail. They face more write-downs. Exactly.
- 10:33And the second issue relates to internal financing, right? Correct.
- 10:36The impairment assessment of a loan to a subsidiary and amounts due from subsidiaries.
- 10:41These are internal debts. And the auditors are questioning them.
- 10:43Management still needs to provide the auditors with appropriate audit evidence
- 10:47to support their assumptions for those impairment assessments.
- 10:50If the auditors decide, those internal loans aren't recoverable.
- 10:54It's another major balance sheet write-down.
- 10:56And given that their net assets are already down to just $73,000,
- 11:01a major write-down could easily wipe out their entire equity position.
- 11:05So just to sum it up, management is fighting for survival on three fronts.
- 11:10They're battling a massive revenue collapse. They're trying to manage cash flow
- 11:13with temporary cost cuts.
- 11:15And at the same time. Simultaneously trying to convince auditors that historical
- 11:18asset valuations are actually sound. It's an incredible amount of pressure.
- 11:22So given this deeply challenging backdrop, what does management say about the
- 11:26next 12 months? What is their path ahead?
- 11:29Well, the commentary really highlights just how stuck they are in their existing
- 11:32markets. Let's look at the outlook for each business segment. Okay.
- 11:37For distribution, while they acknowledge Singapore's strong logistics sector,
- 11:41they face, and I'm quoting, material challenges.
- 11:44Because a major customer has scaled down operations in Singapore since 2021.
- 11:48That foundational business is just gone. So their strategy is just buy new customers.
- 11:54It is. They're focused on the high-risk, expensive strategy of finding new domestic
- 11:59and overseas customers to replace that lost volume.
- 12:02And the luxury goods segment, the watch trading, I mean, they went to nil revenue this quarter.
- 12:07The outlook is bleak, according to their own words.
- 12:10They cite weak consumer sentiment, uncertainties in Hong Kong tourism,
- 12:14and growing competition as global luxury brands shift focus towards mainland China.
- 12:19So what's the strategy there? They recognize they're in a highly adverse market,
- 12:23and their strategy is simply to differentiate and expand operations to other geographical areas.
- 12:30That sounds like hopeful boilerplate when you've just recorded zero revenue.
- 12:34It does. And finally, the loan financing segment is similarly crowded.
- 12:38The market is facing increased competition from the growth of the credit market
- 12:42and the rise of virtual banks in Hong Kong.
- 12:44And the plan is... Again, the focus is placed entirely on exploring new customers
- 12:48in Hong Kong, a very, very competitive space.
- 12:51It sounds like a survival strategy built on immediate painful cuts and just
- 12:55the hope of expansion into markets that are already shrinking or getting more competitive.
- 12:59There's no underlying market strength they seem to possess right now.
- 13:03And of course, no dividend was declared or recommended as the company is deep
- 13:07in a loss making position. And surprisingly.
- 13:09So that brings us to the summary of this deep dive for you.
- 13:13Incredible Holdings LTD is, I think it's fair to say, in a highly precarious position.
- 13:19They showed a massive near-total revenue decline of 95% across all segments,
- 13:25driven by unforgiving competition and market contraction.
- 13:29And that top-line failure was masked. It was, masked by aggressive but temporary
- 13:34cost-cutting, most notably that $70,000 swing created by the interest-free loan period.
- 13:41And if we look at the bigger picture, this is a company fighting for structural
- 13:45survival in all three core segments while also trying to execute those temporary cost efficiencies.
- 13:51And the critical factor is that they're attempting all of this while dealing
- 13:54with these serious, complex, unresolved audit issues.
- 13:58Issues that relate to core balance sheet items that date back three years and
- 14:01that could force massive write downs if they cannot provide the evidence to their auditors.
- 14:05This all raises a really important question. And that leads us to our final
- 14:09provocative thought for you to consider.
- 14:12Incredible Holdings is relying heavily on maintaining these razor-thin cost
- 14:16controls and desperately trying to find new customers in these fiercely competitive
- 14:20markets. A very difficult position.
- 14:22So, given that a significant component of their secured borrowings,
- 14:25specifically that HKD 7.6 million component,
- 14:29is collateralized by two properties, how long can they sustain these high-stakes,
- 14:34largely artificial cost-saving efforts before external market pressures and
- 14:38their dramatically worsening negative working capital position force them to
- 14:42make critical, perhaps necessary,
- 14:44asset-related decisions regarding those underlying properties.
- 14:46That is the real challenge I had.