For many years from 2005 to 2016, SPH had been regarded as a blue-chip darling company providing consistent profits and dividends to investors. However, over the recent years, SPH’s performance hasn’t been stellar. The final nail in the coffin occurred on 6 May 2021 when SPH announced to restructure their media business into a not-for-profit entity. Could investors have avoided the huge loss in capital? Instead of blaming the current CEO, I took an objective view to examine what went wrong in the business and when should investors exit.

I share 5 early warning signs of the deteriorating business fundamentals. You can use this as a case study to evaluate stocks in your portfolio, if you are looking to trim off any potentially ‘bad’ stocks.