Singapore Hot Stocks-Venture gains on broker buy calls

SINGAPORE, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Shares of Venture Corp
(VENM.SI) gained as much as 6.8 percent on Friday despite a 94
percent drop in quarterly net profit, helped by bullish analyst
reports about the firm.

Nomura on Friday upgraded Venture, Singapore's largest
electronics contract manufacturer, to "buy" from "neutral"
citing the firm's higher margins and plan to maintain its
dividend of S$0.50 a share.

Other brokerage firms with buy or overweight
recommendations on Venture after the results included Credit
Suisse, Citigroup, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch and
Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp.

Venture said on Thursday its fourth quarter net profits
tumbled 94 percent from a year ago mainly due to
non-operational charges related to fair value and impairment
losses. [ID:nSN2J00573]

By 0233 GMT, Venture was up 6.8 percent at S$4.40,
outperforming the benchmark Straits Times Index which fell 0.9
percent.
(Reporting by Laurence Tan; Editing by Kevin Lim)