Sheng Siong's venture into china is met with lacklustre and lukewarm response. Any potential upside or should i hold off investing?

Shared the various strategy and business updates that Sheng Siong has done and what made it different from the other grocery companies.

The main priority is staff and customers and everything they have done is towards those two.

Concerning their China venture, it is still a wild guess and the risk is low compared to the upside.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPRlRw2uGG4&fea...

I will hold off for now. Even though it is a business that is familiar to most Singaporeans, and we would likely have experience with SS from a customer's perspective, I have some concerns...

1) Unsustainable Growth Strategy
The strategy of pursuing growh from opening more stores is unlikely to be sustainable if it means opening more of the same types of stores they have currently.
This is limited by the (small) size of theocal market, compounded by the presence of other brick & mortar competitors going after similar group of target customers. It is a matter of time stores get close enough to canibalise sales from one another. Groceries are commodities, and hence sensitive to prices. If I have 3 shops selling the same thing that I need within 5min walking distance, I will just go to the lowest price provider.

2) Store layout and management
The stores differentiate themselves from other groceries providers by having separate dry and wet segments. I think this segregation works well with the senior generation, and the population of this bracket is shrinking. It can work for now, but management should use this time to revamp their stores to cater to the next generation of customers, which is the people currently in the 30's or 40's.

3) Venture into online sales
This can be a good way for SS to address the concerns highlighted in 2). However, I am able to discern how well their online strategy will be executed currently. Online sales can give them an opportunity to get the younger demographics on board, with low upfront costs since the infrastructure to support the newly acquired customers are largey in place.

4) Uncertainty in Overseas Expansion
The recent foray into China has not produced any results to cheer about. This was probably a way to mitigate effects of concerns highlighted in 1). However the overall strategy and the execution of it has not been convincing thus far. Chinese customers may also require some time to switch from their grocercies incumbents to SS.

Until I see some signs of that, I am watching this stock, but prefer to stay on the sideline. The current valuation is not cheap enough for me to bear the above uncertainties.