Domestic strength, regional opportunities

<p>This week, our Host, Thilan Wickramasinghe opens to a broadly positive risk backdrop, with a &quot;very successful&quot; US-China meeting ahead of next week&#39;s Trump-Xi summit lifting Asian equities and Wall Street futures. Against this backdrop, the team hunts for structural winners in Singapore and the region.</p><p>The show leads with our REITs Analyst Miaomiao Liu, fresh back from visiting Sasseur REIT&#39;s China outlets, covering the differentiated Liu (flagship, premium-skewed) and Bishan (mass-market) assets, the stock&#39;s 11% pullback despite outperforming the FTSE ST REIT Index by nearly 30%, and three emerging positives: trading-down-not-out consumer behaviour, a fast-growing VIP omni-channel base, and one of the sector&#39;s strongest balance sheets.</p><p>Next up is our Economist Brian Lee, who unpacks August&#39;s NODX surge — nominal growth of 46% YoY, the strongest pace in nearly 40 years — driven by AI-related server and semiconductor demand, alongside accelerating loan growth pushing up domestic rates, a 3-month SORA forecast rising to 1.6% by end-2026, and his call for MAS to hold policy steady at the October meeting.</p><p>In corporate action, Thilan runs through our Telcos Analyst Husseini&#39;s BUY on Grab, unpacking the US$1.5bn Atomi acquisition, its potential US$200-220m EBITDA contribution by 2028, and a raised 2028 adjusted EBITDA target of US$1.7bn, alongside our new initiation on ISF Group, a Malaysian water-infrastructure play riding the data centre boom, rated BUY with a RM0.98 target price and roughly 33% core profit CAGR through 2028.</p><p>Wishing you a profitable trading week ahead!</p>