Month: October 2006

Categories
Business China

Mindray Medical International

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Last Updated on August 1, 2007 by stlplace

OK, enough about the Home Inns (HMIN) and New Oriental (EDU), both of which are well known consumer brands based in Shanghai and Beijing respectively. On Sept 26, a not so well known medical device company based in Shenzhen (by Hongkong), did IPO on NYSE and it was well received by the investors. The company is Mindray Medical International, ticker symbol MR. It’s not the first Chinese medical device maker listed in the US. China Medical (CMED) came to NASDAQ about a year and half ago. But this MR is much bigger.  I looked at its F-1 form, and it seems like a solid company.

mindray logo picture 

Some key numbers:

Continue reading “Mindray Medical International”
Categories
China Stocks

China Net Companies Q3 06 Earning Calendar

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on November 1, 2006 by stlplace

It seems all these China stock bloggers are taking vacations 🙂

Click on the date it will bring you to the “events” page of the stock; you can add the event to your “Yahoo Calendar” if you like.

Baidu: Nov 1 (Oct 31 evening US time)

Ctrip: Nov 8

Netease: Nov 6

Sina: Nov 2

Sohu (done): Oct 26

China Medical: Nov 13

Mindray Medical: Nov 16

Home Inns: ???

Categories
Career China

Engineers Needed

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on October 31, 2006 by stlplace

Saw this from haiguinet, I thought it’s a good one. The original article is here.

=================================================

深圳美企诚聘

找人真难,急煞老总!!!深圳美企诚聘品质工程师, 制造工程师,ERP / JD Edward 实施顾问
各位大侠有好人选可以推荐给我们吗?
我们公司不差,条件不低.可几个engineering level 的职位找了一年了,不知为何就是找不到人.
看来,制造业已经不是一将难求了,好兵帅克都难找啊!难道所有的人都跟着安校长去做了投行?

全球最大的消毒类一次性医疗仪器和耗材的供应商，现诚邀有潜质之精英加盟本公司：

1、Quality Engineer（品质工程师）
理工科本科以上学历；3年以上医疗器械行业, 或电子,五金, 注塑行业QA工作经验，了解医疗器械行业质量体系标准ISO13485及其它相关法规者优先考虑；良好的团队合作精神与沟通协调能力；英文读写良好，电脑操作熟练。
2、Manufacturing Engineer（制造工程师）
理工科本科以上学历；有三年以上注塑、五金方面的工作经验；曾从事过工装夹具的设计，会熟练使用Auto CAD；有医疗器械行业工作经验，熟悉医疗器械行业者优先考虑；良好的团队合作精神与沟通协调能力；英文良好，电脑操作熟练
3、ERP / JD Edward Implementation Consultant (ERP / JD Edward 实施顾问)
两年以上JDE Enterprise one系统实施经验，熟悉JDE ERP系统设计及数据库，能独立设计实施方案并带领实施完成，英语熟练，能用英语与美国同事沟通，有在JDE公司工作背景者优先考虑。财务、制造模块实施顾问要求有良好的财务、制造流程知识及工作经验
==========================================

It appears to me good engineers (mechanical, electrical, etc.) are badly needed in China these days. Besides designing and manufacturing, procurement is also a big one. I heard a guy took a procurement job in Shanghai and went back recently.

Categories
Saint Louis Travel

Cheap air ticket to Shanghai

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on August 27, 2008 by stlplace

AA is doing a promotion of flight from US to Shanghai (PVG). A ticket from St. Louis to Shanghai is just $688 (before tax); the full ticket will be about $850 including tax. There are some restriction such as (from AA.com):

  • Reservations are required. Tickets must be purchased at least 7 days prior to departure or within 3 days of making reservations, whichever comes first, but no later than 11:59 p.m. November 2, 2006 (CST).
  • Fares are valid for outbound travel through February 10, 2007. Return travel must be completed by March 27, 2007.

    • But I think it’s still a good deal. This offer is good for most Midwest and Eastern US cities (transfer at Chicago).

    I remember when I took the China Eastern from Shanghai to St. Louis, the one-way ticket was about $700. Note at that time gas price was about 80 cents per gallon. Now with gas price at $2.00 (after the recent pull back), the air ticket to China is going at the other direction. No wonder the airline companies are not making money. One reason is the competition. Nine years ago there is no direct flight from Chicago to Shanghai. Now we have two daily flights. Anyway as a consumer I won’t complain. I just can not understand the airline stocks went up so much lately. I guess they are still making money 🙂

    Categories
    China Stocks

    Stock Lesson VII

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Last Updated on October 30, 2006 by stlplace

    Next Microsoft. Next Bill Gates. Next Google. Next…

    We all want to get the hold of “next big thing” before it becomes real, don’t we? Think about this, the stock of Cisco, the networking and communication company, increased 73 times from 1990 to 2000 in 10 years. The Microsoft stock’s performance was similar. 

    From time to time, when a young company came up with some cool product or service, and performed well in the market and financially, people will praise it as “next Microsoft”, and think its founder will be next Bill Gates. The reality is, except Google, no company has come close to Microsoft in past 10 years. But sometimes we innocent investors (like me) fell into this trap.

    Continue reading “Stock Lesson VII”
    Categories
    Fun

    Words from Fortune Cookie

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    Last Updated on October 30, 2006 by stlplace

    Just for fun… 

    The power you desire lives in your heart. (yesterday)

    Next week at this time, something good is coming your way! (today)

    Categories
    Saint Louis

    Cardinal won the World Series

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    Last Updated on October 29, 2006 by stlplace

    And today they had a big parade in the downtown St. Louis, from Union Station to the Busch Stadium. I took the newly completed metro link from Brentwood to the Stadium; and it took an hour to get there because there are too many people taking the train. Unlike the metro (subway) in Shanghai, the light railway here was not designed for that many people: it only has two cars; people here are not willing to move closer to let more people in (spoiled American?); I did see the parents have to leave the train in the middle because their kid got sick. You know Americans are all used to the A/C and bigger rooms at home and in the car. Other than that, the Parade and celebration is great for the city and the region. It’s 24 years since this town won last World Series. An interesting number in Chinese zodiac, isn’t it?

    cardinals parade       

    Among the Cardinal players, I think I like David Eckstein the most. Here is what he said after got the MVP award.

    “No one believed in us, but we believed in ourselves,” Eckstein told reporters. “It was a total team effort.

    Categories
    Business China

    New Oriental and Yu Minghong

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    Last Updated on November 1, 2006 by stlplace

    Amid all the craziness of Home Inns Ru Jia’s IPO, another well known Chinese company did IPO on NYSE on early Sept, that’s New Oriental Education group. For Chinese students seeking study abroad in the US in 1990s, New Oriental is nothing new. Although I have not attended their classes because at that time their classes are still limited to Beijing, I did got the vocabulary book nicknamed “Hong Bao Shu”. The book was edited by Mr. Yu Minghong, who also founded the school. From what I heard, when Mr. Yu speaks in the classroom, it’s pretty much like a rock star performs in the stage (or Bill Gates speaks in the stadium for his Microsoft employees).

    I did not pay enough attention on its IPO because I was in China at that time. Now I have a little time to look at its F-1 forms, quarterly report, web page, listen to the conference call and reflect what I heard about the English education in China. I believe it is a good company and its stock may be a good long term investment. Compared to Home Inns’ position in China, I think it has a more dorminant position. But there is negatives too: it’s very dependent on Mr. Yu, both as owner (to set vision) and as management (execution, operation), I don’t know how can he manage that? Also it is not Wall Street friendly as Home Inns because Mr. Yu is not known to Wall Street (unlike Home Inns founders, they already made name from Ctrip).   

    Categories
    Business Web

    Its the capitalism

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Last Updated on October 27, 2006 by stlplace

    Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, surprised the IT/software world again yesterday with the Unbreakable Linux annoucement of “support of Red Hat Linux support and charge less than Red Hat does”. That news crushed the Red Hat stock today, it went down 24%. There are many good technical blogs explains and discusses Oracle’s move. Here is blog one and two. I am going to put it in plain English terms and share some of my thoughts on Open Source and Linux movement.

    So Oracle is the guy who sells beer at baseball stadium, and Redhat sells peanuts. Sometimes they work together (parter) because a customer needs both beer and peanuts. They are happy because they both make money; Oracle makes more money because it has a higher sales revenue and profit margin. One day this Oracle guy decides to roll out its “Larry” brand peanuts, at half the price Redhat guy sells. As much as customers like Rehat’s personality, many customers decided to buy peanuts from Oracle.

    Seriously, I think this is a big blow to the Open Source and Linux movement. Open source and linux have been buzz words in the technology world in recent years, partly because of people don’t want to see Microsoft taking all the market share, partly because its superior technology. Note many innovations are made by volunteering programmers all over the world, for the benefit of the technology community. IBM, the big blue, also put great effort behind Linux development for competition reasons (hint, to compete with Microsoft). To be fair, Oracle also contributed the Linux development in the past. Of course Redhat is the biggest player in the Open Source world: unlike all the proprietary software companies keep the source code inside company and derive revenues from software licensing, Redhat shares its source code with the community and solely derives its revenue from support and service. Now with Oracle’s jump into the ring, where is Redhat’s future? The following is what I saw from Redhat web site.

    Continue reading “Its the capitalism”
    Categories
    Business

    Shopping for Shoes II

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Last Updated on October 25, 2006 by stlplace

    I bought my second pair of shoes on the web. You may wonder how can I buy the shoes without trying out in the store. Yes I did. I found out the price is much cheaper in the online store, $85 vs. $130. I felt pretty bad for the store clerk who showed me the product. But again I am not a rich guy now. As you may know, the world second richest man Warren Buffett also uses coupon at the “Diary Queen” store. By the way, he owns the Diary Queen Inc. So essentially he is putting money from the left pocket to the right  🙂  

    This is my first shoes purchase from web. Online shopping (and banking) is nothing new to me. Amazon started it with books and CDs about 10 years ago. The interesting part is, with the development of e-commerce, we can now combine both the web and brick mortar stores to buy almost anything online: from appearel, cosmetics, electronics, shoes and even cars. This does not mean the real store will phase out. I think they need to provide more value (better service, better price, more choices) if they want to compete with the online stores. In other words, they have to earn it. Otherwise, people will just go online and buy everything from Amazon. Also, the stores both have online and offline presence such as WalMart, Best Buy and Target will have some advantages providing customer services (compare to pure online stores).  

    For those curious minds, I got this Johnston Murphy Shuler Bicycle Toe from Zappos. 

    johnston murphy shuler bike