When I read “SIA’s fiscal third-quarter net profit roughly quadrupled to S$202.6 million from S$50.1 million for the corresponding quarter a year earlier.”.. wow i thought SIA is back to its good old self of making a lot of monies.

On further reading, I realised i skipped four important words, “BOOSTED by exceptional gains”!!!! The operating profit from its day-to-day activities continues its downward slide.

How significant was the exceptional gains? And where did these exceptional gains come from? Not from betting on the correct direction of oil price given their massive hedging loss of S$216 million.  Not from SIA Cargo’s 16% stake in China Cargo Airlines given its impairment loss of S$63.6m.

The pretty headline is actually due to Tiger. SIA engineered the remeasurement gain of $119.8m by raising its stake from 40% to 56% and thus consolidating Tiger into its books only AFTER getting Tiger to flush out all its acid assets. A very clever piece of work indeed!!