Month: February 2007

Categories
Business China

Xinhua Finance Media Limited IPO

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Last Updated on February 23, 2007 by stlplace

Found this through my friend thesunsfinancialdiary. I briefly went through their F1 prospectus. I had to admit I’m not in best position to evaluate their business: they have 5 divisions providing services from creating adverstisement to customer research. I can think of a St. Louis based privately held company called Maritz which does something similar: they organized conferences for other companies, send promotional gifts for companies like Nissan, take care of the employee reward etc. One way to analyze Xinhua Finance (symbol: XFML) is comparing each division to a public company does something similar, then adding them up.  

On a related matter, the event marketing services in China is booming. About 2 years ago, during my Jiu Zhai Guo tour, I met a senior executive of a conference organizing company  based in Beijing, I learned about three most popular conference places in China: Shanya (Beach), Dali (Yun’nan), and Jiu Zhai Gou/Chengdu.  

By the way, the parent company of Xinhua Finance Media Limited is traded in Tokyo. Also, the CEO and co-founder of the company is Ms. Fredy Bush, not sure if she is related to the George Bush family…

Categories
Stocks

How Did I Find Growth Stocks

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Last Updated on February 22, 2007 by stlplace

New Oriental (EDU, based in Beijing): every Chinese student came to US for study knows that, no need to say anymore. 

Home Inns (Rujia, HMIN, based in Shanghai): my friend in my hometown told me about this in summer 2004. He is a small business owner and he thinks that Rujia is clean and economical. He would stay there when he visits Shanghai as long as he does not see his foreign clients. I believe business travallers make up more than 50% of Rujia’s business.

Mindray (MR, based in Shenzhen): found out shortly after its IPO. I always liked medical device makers, both from investment and health/science point of view. The barrier of entry is high: unlike English (or IT) training, you put ad on newspaper, hire some English teacher and find students and a classroom, you are good to go. For medical device, you will need R&D talents (hint: graduates from HUST), good sales and customer support, all of which you can not get overnight. The risk: lawsuits, regulatory procedures.

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Categories
Stocks

E-File Tax for Free

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Last Updated on February 22, 2007 by stlplace

From Yahoo, this is the link, by Dory Devlin:

My take on this: if your tax situation is straightford, go ahead and use the free software. But on the other hand, if you buy and sell stocks, have a home business, changed jobs or moved last year,…you will be better off use the paid version. Another catch is the AGI (adjust gross income) requirement (less than $52,000).

(Update 22Feb07) I got my state tax refund today (filed by mail about about 10 days ago). I used Turbo Tax for federal (got 15% off through ADP) and it took about the same time to get refund. Prepare your tax early, even if you need to send in check (you can always hold it by mid April).

Categories
Fun Stocks

Crocs Earning Call

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Last Updated on February 20, 2007 by stlplace

I listened to Crocs earning call this evening. The numbers look good, it beats the Street expecation as I expected. They also raised Q1 2007 and 2007 full year guidance. Some of the interesting developments:

1) Nascar cross licensing (cross sell). Since they started Disney relationship in summer 2006, they expanded to NFL, NCAA football, NHL (looking for Canada market).

2) International: UK did very well, european is the main growth driver now; build up in Brazil now, expect good growth there (products match Brazilian life style well); China and India (may be significant in 2008). Disney relationship expanded from US to many international markets.

3) New shoes and aquisitions. Less dependent on the Beach and Cayman shoes.

Categories
Fun Stocks

It’s OK to Leave Some Money On the Table

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Last Updated on February 26, 2007 by stlplace

I am not talking about the tips in the restaurants; I am talking about the stocks going up after we sell them, doesn’t that happen all the time? Just like it goes down after we bought it? My most recent example is New Oriental (EDU, it seems to me the traders did not take too much time off for the Lunar New Year). And it happened to my friends in China too. The friend was very upset when he told me the story. It seems to us sometimes “not making all the money” feels worse than “losing money”. For instance, if a stock falls after we bought it and we sold it because it never went back the level is was, i.e., we were “under water” the whole time, we may not feel that bad. But on the other hand, if it went up big and we missed the potential big profit, we will feel mad at us 🙂

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Categories
Travel

Reserve a Room in Home Inns

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Last Updated on August 27, 2008 by stlplace

There are two ways to reserve a room in Home Inns (Rujia) Or other China Economy Hotels: by phone (400 820 3333 or 800 820 3333) or use the web (or ask your friend as a 3rd way). For Home Inns, my experience is reserve 2 weeks in advance for some of the “hot” locations such as Xu Jia Hui or Century Park in Shanghai. Unfortunately the reservation page is only in Chinese, but I think they have English speaking representatives on the phone. Alternatively you can use Ctrip and search for Home Inns. I used to get RMB 10 off this way.

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Categories
Stocks

Crocs Knockoffs

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Last Updated on February 19, 2007 by stlplace

There are lots of Crocs Knockoffs on the market these days. I found some on Payless and Target. The price is about half as the real ones. Don’t know the quality and the customer wearing experience though.

Also, I found this CrocFan blog. I added the link under “Blogroll” at the right. And this article on seekingalpha is very bullish for the long term.

Crocs (CROX) is going to report Q4 and full year 2006 results tomorrow. The stock already  moved up last Friday, in anticipation of a blow out quarter and a positive 2007 guidance.

Disclosure: I am long on CROX.    

Categories
Stocks

Sell Used Books on Half and Amazon

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Last Updated on February 18, 2007 by stlplace

I used to sell used books, mostly textbooks on Half.com, an eBay subsidirary. Half does a decent job for me and their commission is reasonable (about 10%?). But I have not enjoyed much success selling books there lately. It could be one of the two reasons: My books are unpopular; Half.com is not popular anymore.

I started to use Amazon Markplace instead. Its commisson is much higher, theSunsFinancialDiary says its commisson for book is as high as 18%. But I am OK with it as long as it sells. My rationale behind this is: book does not increase value as time goes, as matter of fact a textbook loses most of its value when new edition come out; if I don’t read the book for a year, I probablly won’t read it at all, so why not convert that into cash? Same thing can be said for some unused household items.  

On business side, Amazon increasingly looks like a mall (like eBay), instead of a store (like Wal-Mart). Smart move I think.

Categories
China

Happy New Year

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Last Updated on February 17, 2007 by stlplace

The Chinese version, the year of Pig (roar, whatever you want to call it). I am using Keso’s new year card because I can not create a card as good as his 🙂

happy new year pic

Image created by Keso.