Daily Briefing: SPH market value falls behind NYT; Cryptocurrency startup raises $9m

And here are two huge REITs that are trading with a 12-month low.

From Tech in Asia:

Luno – founded and registered in Singapore, but now headquartered in London with satellite offices in the city-state and Cape Town – offers an ewallet for storing, converting, and transacting bitcoin. It also facilitates purchase and sale of bitcoin and provides an exchange for trading digital currencies, as well as enterprise services including merchant integration and open APIs for developers.

Luno Wallet and Luno’s bitcoin buying and selling features will be available in Europe, though its exchange service will not.

Today’s series B injection follows an undisclosed investment from Singapore’s Venturra Capital in December 2015, and a series A round six months earlier, which saw South African media company Naspers lead a US$4 million investment also joined by DCG. Luno had previously raised US$800,000 from backers including Ariadne Capital and Bitcoin Opportunity Corp.

Read more here.

From The Motley Fool:

In its FY16/17 full year result, Starhil Global reported that its gross revenue declined marginally by 1.5% year-on-year whilst net property income (NPI) dropped by 2% during that period. Distribution per unit (DPU) was down 5% year-on-year as a result of the weaker financial performance.

The weaker performance was due to a weaker performance in Australia and China, offset by growth in Malaysia. On the other hand, occupancy rate of 95.5% in FY16/17 was slightly ahead from FY15/16. Yet, the 95.5% rate is still one of the lowest seen over the past decade.

Presently, the trust is trading at S$0.75. This gives a 6.52% distribution yield and a price to book ratio of 0.82.

Read more here.

From Bloomberg via Yahoo!:

Singapore’s leading newspaper publisher had a market capitalization that was larger than that of The New York Times Co. — until this month.

Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. saw its market value fall below that of its better known U.S. peer for the first time in 12 years, with outstanding shares at S$4.1 billion ($3.07 billion), about $60 million less than the publisher of the New York Times.

Read more here.