Haw Par, Singapore's Potential Activist Name After UOI and GE: Activist Intelligence #5

Haw Par is a Singaporean company known for 1) the Tiger Balm brand and 2) its UOB shares worth about S$2.6 billion. It has a fascinating heritage.

Haw Par also shares the name with a theme park with depictions of Hell. The same name is used for the adjacent MRT (subway) station on the Circle Line in Singapore.

With the Tiger Balm brand, Haw Par built its core business in consumer healthcare, selling pain relief patches and lotions, among other healthcare products.

On strategic investment holdings, besides UOB, Haw Par also owns UOL - a property developer related to the UOB Group. Together, the total value amounts to S$3.4 billion ($2.7 billion) which is almost its entire market cap. See screenshot below:

Haw Par itself is currently not targeted by activists but its sister company, United Overseas Insurance (UOI) is. Last year, Mr Ong Chin Woo, a CFA charterholder and individual investor, submitted a formal resolution requesting UOI’s management to distribute its c.4.3 million Haw Par shares (worth S$69 million) directly to shareholders.

Mr Ong claims to represent shareholders with about a 5% stake in UOI. Alas, both UOI and Haw Par are controlled by the Wee family of Singapore’s banking group UOB with their related entities. UOI is 58% owned by the bank UOB while multiple entities own north of 40% stake in Haw Par. So it is hard to out-vote management.

How can activists unlock value in these names? The odds are not high. We shall discuss that later in this post. First let’s recap what activists do.

Activists have honed their skills over decades and they tend to pull some or all of the following levers to drive changes in their investee companies:

• Strategic business advice such as divestment of non-core assets

• Driving metric improvement for operating margins, return on invested capital etc

• Requesting for more shareholder returns by optimizing the balance sheet

• Changing management if they have not delivered results
  

This list is not exhaustive.

In the case of UOI and Haw Par, activists may need to deploy an additional tactic → name and shame to force changes.

Activists can also make use of public opinion to force management to take the right actions. There might also be a chance to use legal actions when things get fired up in the public domain.

Broadly, shareholder activism has succeeded in Korea and Japan. But it is harder in most other Asian countries because families still own majority stakes and legal frameworks are not supportive in most parts of Asia.

Southeast Asia companies are famous for screwing minority investors. However, if there’s any chance activists can succeed, it is in Singapore. That said, it’s still a tall order. Our legal system has not seen many precedents on activist cases.

With that, let’s move into the analysis!

1. Basics

While Haw Par ($HPAR.SP) is known for Tiger Balm, it actually has a property business parked under “Others”. Importantly, the company owns two properties: the Haw Par Centre in Singapore and Menara Haw Par in Kuala Lumpur with value of S$218 million disclosed in company filings.

It also operates Underwater World Pattaya in Thailand, modeled after the Singapore one which is now closed after 25 years of operations. It is unclear how much Underwater World Pattaya is worth though.

Okay, let’s take a look at its financials and ratios.

Financials (Dec 25)

• Net Sales: $176 Billion

• OP: $55 Million, Net Income: $203 Million*

• EBITDA: $76 Million, FCF: $205 Million*

• Sales CAGR: flat, OP growth: 9%

• Net Cash: $614 Million, Market Cap: $2.8 Billion

* Haw Par’s financials are historical no.s as there is a lack of estimates

Financial Ratios

• ROE: 6.3%, ROA: 6.1%

• GPM: 56%, OPM: 34%

• EV/EBITDA: 10.3x, P/E: 12.5x

• Dividend Yield: 2.5%, FCF Yield: 7.7%

Source: Bloomberg

The firm also discloses the following about its healthcare business which is predominantly Tiger Balm. It is a decent business and we calculated some values further below. Recall that in one of our earlier ideas, Japanese OTC drug and skincare firm Rohto Pharmaceutical bought Eu Yan Sang, another Singapore healthcare name, for $800 million!

A couple of points about Haw Par’s OTC healthcare:

• It is a competitive space with so many types of pain relief products on shelves including patches, oral medicine, sprays and what not. To be honest, most of these products may not be clinically proven to be effective, but some people swear by them.

• Haw Par’s products are probably also used as gifts. Tourists buy them and bring home as memory tokens or to give to their older relatives whom they think will use, but probably won’t.

• Tiger Balm products have a unique smell which is so potent that it makes you forget about some pain you might have. Hence, the relief. In recent years, some of their products seemed to smell less potent to appeal to younger buyers.

Haw Par doesn’t really have close peers. In the region, it is compared with Unilever Indonesia ($UNVR.IJ) and Karex Berhad in Malaysia ($KAREX.MK), making condoms. Well sexual health is still part of health…

Guess the other company that comes to mind is Thailand’s Red Bull. Unfortunately, it’s not listed. Michael Fritzell has written about its competitor Carabao: https://www.asiancenturystocks.com/deep-dive-carabao-cbg-tb/

Globally, the closest peer might be Japan’s Hisamitsu ($4530.JP) which was privatized in Jan 2026. The other global name is Reckitt Benckiser Group ($RKT.LN). There might be some Chinese names, more enlightened readers please do share.

The rest of the post is at https://activistintelligence.substack.com/p/haw-par-singapores-potential-activist

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