The pivot inevitably raises hard questions about strategy, risk and where the company sees its next phase of growth.
That an old hand like Sam Goi, long rooted in food manufacturing and property, would steer GSH into Bitcoin mining and digital infrastructure services is striking in itself. Best known as Singapore’s popiah king, Goi is GSH’s executive chairman and controls slightly more than half of the company, which is under pressure to turn the corner after five straight years of losses.
GSH’s property foray into Malaysia and China over the years has been marked by divergent fortunes, with each market throwing up its own mix of bright spots and disappointments.
Its hospitality assets in Malaysia include the Sutera Harbour Resort in Kota Kinabalu, which comprises two five-star hotels, and the 70-villa Sutera@Mantanani Resort in Sabah. Its residential portfolio comprises a couple of seafront condos in Kota Kinabalu and two luxury developments in Kuala Lumpur.
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For now, Malaysia’s prospects look favourable. Robust tourism, boosted by visa-free entry for Chinese nationals and the lead-up to Visit Malaysia 2026, is keeping GSH’s hotels busy. Meanwhile, sustained foreign-buyer interest, helped by a more relaxed long-term residency programme called Malaysia My Second Home, is expected to underpin demand for the company’s residential developments.
The situation in China is quite the opposite. The property market there remains weak, with prices still falling, sales sluggish and developers under financial strain. Oversupply and low buyer confidence continue to weigh on demand.
GSH’s sole residential project in China is the 1,600-unit Yuhu Singapore International Gardens condo in Chongqing’s Bishan district. It also owns the 200-room New World Chongqing Hotel, which opened last year and sits right next to the condo.
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Financial drag
GSH’s financial performance for the past five years has been anything but steady. A large part of that was due to the Covid pandemic, which delayed construction and decimated travel. Even so, lumpy revenue is inherent in property development, as project timing and completion milestones rarely follow a smooth annual rhythm.
Hefty finance costs are another major drag. Ranging from $20 million to $30 million annually for the last five years, these expenses exceeded GSH’s gross profits for 2021 and 2022, and ate into 89%, 56% and 55% of its gross profits for 2020, 2023 and 2024, respectively.
Even before the pandemic, finance costs chewed through 33% to 62% of gross profits from 2017 to 2019. The situation has barely changed. For the first six months of 2025, GSH incurred finance expenses of $15.4 million, more than half of its gross profit. Net gearing as at June 30 this year was 1.02 times.
The steep finance costs stem in large part from GSH’s active fundraising over the years to shore up its balance sheet, refinance obligations, and position for new opportunities. One of its most sizeable initiatives is an $800 million multi-currency medium-term note programme established in 2018.
Rights issues have also been launched, although GSH diverged from the norm in recent years by issuing coupon-bearing convertible bonds rather than shares, a move likely aimed at minimising near-term dilution and mitigating weakness in its share price.
The company has also raised capital through commercial paper — a form of short-term, unsecured debt — listed on ADDX and SDAX, digital exchanges that offer tokenised private-market and real estate investments to accredited and institutional investors.
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New controlling shareholder
GSH’s latest cash call is a $112 million placement of new shares to a private company known as Capitalwise Global. This is the entity that will spearhead its foray into the new business. The placement concluded last month, giving Capitalwise an 18.5% stake, which makes it GSH’s second-largest shareholder after Goi. Of the $112 million, $35.4 million is earmarked for the new venture, while the rest will be used to pare debt.
Based on GSH’s enlarged share base following the placement, property developer Far East Organization and Indonesian-born tycoon Stephen Riady’s Lippo Capital saw their holdings slip below 5% and are no longer substantial shareholders.
Incorporated in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), Capitalwise is described by GSH as being in the business of “identifying and investing in high-growth opportunities, with the aim of generating long-term capital appreciation and a focus on strategic investments in innovative financial and technological ventures, while seeking to capitalise on emerging market trends and disruptive innovations”.
It’s a mouthful that doesn’t really say much. Capitalwise’s track record and financial profile have also not been disclosed. What’s known is that Capitalwise is a recently incorporated holding company owned by three individuals — Zhou Guanfeng, Pham Thi My Hanh and David Chiang Kuo-Wei — although details about them have not been made public.
Zhou led discussions with GSH before both companies came together. Goi is described in GSH’s circular as “already familiar” with Zhou from past interactions. Evidently, Capitalwise seemed dead set on working with GSH: it paid 25 cents for each placement share, nearly 65% above GSH’s last traded price one working day before both sides signed the share subscription pact.
An independent firm hired by GSH to conduct due diligence on Capitalwise gave the BVI entity the all-clear. That wasn’t enough for one of GSH’s independent directors, though. Wendell Wong, a former deputy public prosecutor and currently a managing director at law firm Drew & Napier, felt the scrutiny fell short and opposed the new venture.
An echo that warrants caution
Property developers turning to digital asset mining is not entirely new in Singapore. The comparison that leaps immediately to mind is Hatten Land, a Malaysia-focused developer that made an extremely public pivot into crypto mining during the pandemic.
Hatten installed mining rigs across its malls, announced blockchain initiatives, and hyped its transformation into a digital-asset player. Regulators and investors took notice, not least because the pivot seemed disconnected from its core real estate challenges.
Fast forward to today, Hatten, which has been under judicial management since August last year, is seeking salvation through a recently announced $24 million reverse takeover of a Singapore construction company.
The point is not that GSH will follow the same trajectory. But it’s hard to ignore the similarities between the two companies: both confronted slow property markets, both sought to reinvent themselves through digital assets, and both relied heavily on external partners to supply mining expertise.
Dependent by design
In this regard, Capitalwise has a management services agreement with GSH that empowers it to take charge of the new business. This entails overseeing operations, performance, compliance and conflict checks, and transferring know-how to GSH under a full operational mandate.
In a nutshell, GSH is effectively outsourcing most of the strategic and operational execution of the new business to Capitalwise. This arrangement will run for three years and can be extended for another three. In return for its services, Capitalwise will receive annual management fees of up to $650,000 from GSH.
Structurally, the outsourcing model encoded in the management services agreement tilts control heavily toward Capitalwise. Although the pact gives GSH oversight rights, operational authority sits with Capitalwise.
This creates a potential misalignment of incentives: Capitalwise receives fixed management fees regardless of mining profitability, while GSH absorbs the operational risks and ultimately leaves shareholders bearing the strategic risk.
Also, while Capitalwise has provided initial funding of $35.4 million for the new business, particularly for Bitcoin mining, additional outlays will be borne by GSH. Moreover, although the management services pact is governed by Singapore law, enforcing judgments against foreign entities, such as those in the BVI, can be tricky.
What to make of it
It’s easy to view GSH’s pivot as an act of desperation, but that would be too simplistic. The company is clearly seeking new growth vectors to stem years of losses. Digital infrastructure is a broad, fast-growing space, and Bitcoin mining, while volatile and resource-intensive, offers the appeal of high upside.
Still, while Capitalwise has skin in the game, having invested $112 million in GSH, the key question remains: is this transformation truly strategic or opportunistic?
On the one hand, the bulk of the placement proceeds — $76.3 million — will go some way in easing GSH’s interest burden and lowering its net gearing. According to its latest regulatory filings, the group has borrowings of about $504.4 million, of which $289.9 million is due within a year. Commercial papers are the biggest item among these short-term liabilities.
On the other hand, without deep in-house expertise and with execution outsourced to a BVI partner, the pivot does not yet resemble a carefully built long-term strategy. It feels more like an attempt to capture momentum in a hot sector, one that swings wildly with global crypto cycles.
GSH’s diversification into digital asset mining is as bold as it is risky. It could well be the reinvention that unlocks new growth. It could just as easily become another case study about a property group overextending into a sector it doesn’t fully understand.
The pivot represents a bet not merely on Bitcoin or digital infrastructure but on an external partner, an unfamiliar industry, and a management model that places operational control outside the company’s hands.
For shareholders, the next chapter will hinge on a few things: whether Capitalwise can deliver, and whether GSH can build enough internal competence — and do so fast enough — to avoid repeating the mistakes of others, like Hatten. Until then, cautious optimism may be the best-case posture. And caution, in this case, should carry more weight than optimism.
