Month: July 2007

Categories
Business

Ineresting article about Mindray

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Last Updated on July 30, 2007 by stlplace

I found this one from China Business Feature. Some of the interesting paragraphs:

How they started the R&D of medical devices?
“But unlike other distributors, Xu Hang, who holds a degree in medical engineering, started independent innovation of some products in 1992. Mindray’s first products included China’s first single-parameter blood oxygen saturation monitor. “At the time, as China’s hospitals had never used Chinese-made devices, they preferred the imported multi-parameter monitors. So our products did not sell well,” says Xu. Customers didn’t try Mindray’s equipment until 1995 because of problems in technology, quality and sales service. In the early stages of its development, Mindary was basically an opportunist. It hadn’t gone deep in researching the industry. It would generally sell anything that appealed to the market. It even sold products that had nothing to do with medicine.”

Market acceptance:
“Despite its success, Mindray still faces “discrimination” on international markets. In the Middle East, for example, American products are always chosen in the first place, and then those from Japan and Korea. Chinese products are given a very low priority. But the situation has been slowly changing since Mindray was listed. “Agents that we couldn’t contract with before are now coming to us,” claims Xu. The listing made Mindray more popular and trustworthy in overseas markets. Xu hopes to build on that trust with an international brand image for Mindray – that’s why he chose the NYSE instead of the NASDAQ.”

Continue reading “Ineresting article about Mindray”
Categories
China Stocks

Got Yuan?

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Last Updated on July 25, 2007 by stlplace

Yuan CNY RMB Pic

It’s the Chinese Yuan (CNY), or Ren Ming Bi (people’s money). In early march, when I was in Shanghai, one USD is worth 7.72 Yuan, now it’s about 7.56 Yuan, a loss of about 2% in about 4 months. It appears this trend is not going to stop for a while. This is scary if you happen to make money in USD, save it USD and plan to retire one day in China. Because the dollar may drop faster than the rate of saving. So how do we play this?

Besides buying Chinese real estate, or buying the A-shares in Shanghai or Shenzhen (or H-shares in HK), there are other options. The mutal funds with a focus on China, or Chinese ADRs (stocks) traded in NYSE or Nasdaq. Some of the well known names include:

FXI: the full name is iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 Index, you can see its holdings here: it’s basically a basket of Chinese red chips traded in HKSE, such as CNOOC (CEO), Petro China (PTR), China Mobile (CHL), China Life (LFC). Those stocks are also traded as ADRs in NYSE (you may click on the ticker above to check out each stock).

LFC: on the surface LFC is a life insurance company in China. It’s more than that. It actually is a holding company of many domestic companies. For instance, it has significant stakes of MingShen Bank (600016), and Citic Securities (600030), both of them are listed in Shanghai Securities Exchanges (SHSE).

Both FXI and LFC have done very well lately, as you may know, because of the red hot Chinese stock market. I don’t personally own them. But my friend Sun has LFC, and it has done very well for him (of course he bought it long time ago so his cost is much lower). I think those two are good options if one doesn’t want to spend much time on stocks: keep in mind if you plan to hold it for long time, you can wait for a pull back to build your position.

Categories
China Stocks

EDU: missed 5 cents

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Last Updated on July 24, 2007 by stlplace

in its fiscal Q4 2007 earning. The analysts were expecting 1 cent, while EDU reports loss of 4 cents. Ouch, that’s even worse than last week’s Google’s miss (3 cents).

Seriously, I don’t think missing a few pennies is not big deal for long term investors. But the reason behind the miss is more important. In EDU’s case, on the surface it’s the seasonality: the late arrival of Chinese New Year this time push sales from fiscal Q4 to Q3.

I did listen to its conference call (7 AM!), here are a few highlights:

1) The English training still is the main revenue source and growth driver, that includes: oversea test preparation (students enrollment increased from 35,000 in fiscal 2006 to 58,000 in 2007) ; kids English; middle school students English.

2) New growth area: other subjects (math, physics, chemstry etc.) for middle school students; pre-school kids education (not limit to English).

3) Tier one, tier two: plan to add more learning centers in tier one cities (Beijing, Shanghai), note Shanghai is the fastest growth city; it won’t open many schools in tier 2 cities (mostly kids English) where it did not get good name recognition (this strategy is opposite to Home Inns’).

The stock got punished today as people were expecting a block buster number. I don’t bet on earnings these days, nor will I try to catch the falling knife here. I think a 30% growth is good if they can sustain the growth for a while, but the street obviously expects more.

Categories
Business Fun

YouTube and CNN

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Last Updated on July 24, 2007 by stlplace

made history today. I am talking about the YouTube CNN Democrats Presidential Canidates debates.

While people are talking about who won the debates, I think both Google (GOOG) which owns YouTube, and CNN (owned by Time Warner, TWX) won this thing.

Finally YouTube starts to get serious? And CNN is fun to watch (especially for Gen Y)?

Categories
China Stocks

Home Inns and Mindray

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Last Updated on July 23, 2007 by stlplace

MR closed above HMIN the first time since its IPO last Sept. MR closed at 30.89, while HMIN closed at 30.81.

This comparison is mostly for fun. But seriously I do think HMIN is increasing under competitive pressure in China. Here is another hotel chain, Hanting Hotels, founded by Ji Qi, the co-founder of Ctrip and Home Inns. Recently it raised $85 m from VC, this is no small change considering Home Inns raised about similar amount last Oct. through IPO. In last two years Hanting Hotels targeted mostly business travellers who are willing to pay more than CNY 268, but this has changed since early this year, as they entering into the budget hotels arena (head to head against HMIN). In the past HanTing’s profit margin is about 5% higher than HMIN. Of course one can argue that the “budget hotels” pie in China is growing too, so all the players will benefit. I am curious to learn more about this as I’m coming back to China very soon.

On the other hand, it’s far more difficult to enter into the medical device business where Mindray is in, that’s one thing I liked about this business.

Last but not least, Starbucks will raise the price of its beverage by 9 cents starting next week.

Categories
Fun Stocks

My investing Journey II: late 2003

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Last Updated on July 23, 2007 by stlplace

Today I saw in the news that Opsware (OPSW) is bought out by HP. Interestingly, OPSW is one of the first stocks I bought in my Scottrade account. The reason I bought it is simple: it’s being mentioned in the Kiplinger Personal Finance magazine, and its founder and CEO Marc Andreessen is the developer and the co-founder of Netscape. Opsware is software/solution provider for data centers, it did not turn out to be a blockbuster, but I did get moderate return on this one (in a few months).

Another stock I traded is GE, the well known US conglomerate which makes things from aircraft engines to trains. I bought it at around 29, and sold it at 32 a few months later (same for OPSW). Today it’s at about 40. The GE stock did not do too much in past four years, the great bull market. But it started to move up lately. Some people argue that when large cap stocks (like GE) move up, we are at the last stage of bull market. Let’s see.

Back to Opsware, it’s Mr. Andreessen’s second baby. It’s not as spectacular as the Netscape IPO, but notheless did bring some values to share holders if they are patient to hold it for 4 years (from $5 to $14). It’s interesting to see the “serial entreprenurs” such as Neil Shen, Ji Qi co-founded Ctrip, Home Inns, and working on the next big idea now. But typically if someone hits something really big, it’s hard to create the “second baby” exceeding the first one. Bill Gates and Jeff Bezo both has one baby: Microsoft and Amazon. Steve Jobs is an exception: he co-founded both Apple and Pixar, the animation company created Toy Stories, and Finding Nemo.

Categories
Fun

Weekend random discussions

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Last Updated on July 22, 2007 by stlplace

1) Walmart and Sam’s club: my friend thinks wal-mart has the lowest price for most things. He is looking for a mattress, and he asked why “Wal-mart does not carry the mattress”? I think the implied meaning is: he can be sure getting a deal if it’s sold in Walmart.

I know many people have similar perceptions about Walmart and Sam’s club: they think the price at Walmart is always lowest. A while ago, I read from a report this is not always the case. But Walmart obviously created a good impression (price advantage) on many consumers.

2) Isn’t Hyundai made in Korea? While at a parking lot, a few guys looked at my Nissan Altima, and their Hyundai Sotana (both are black), they mistook my car also as Hyundai’s. So we started the conversation: oh, your car is Nissan, it’s Japanese. Our car is Hyundai, it’s made in Korea. My reply: well, actually my Nissan Altima is made in the USA, and I believe Hyundai made cars in the USA too. So we got a little discussion about the cost, the union, etc.

Categories
China Stocks

Wang Shi and Vanke

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Last Updated on July 22, 2007 by stlplace

Among Chinese CEOs, I think Wang Shi is real good. I read his book “Road and Dream” lately. Very impressive. Consider what he and his team has done in last 20 years: from nowhere to No. 1 residential real estate developer in China; more importantly, they create a “Vanke” community, the kind of community Chinese middle class are enjoying.

IMG_3774

He talked many things in that book, some of the things I liked:

1) Don’t seek abnormal profit margin: he said Vanke will only do the project with less than 25% profit margin. More recently he is talking about the bubble in Chinese real estate market. Will other real estate company’ chairman say that? Unlikely.

2) Organization and efficient: as a company grows, it will usually become less efficent. The cost of management rises. If a company does not pay attention to this, eventually its internal cost will exceed the money it could make. In other words, it will no longer be profitabble. How to stay nimble as company growing big is very important.

Wang Shi Vanke

Interestingly, Wang Shi’s wife got into the “stock insider sell” controversy lately. You know what did Wang Shi do? He returned the profit from the stock sell to the company.

From management point of view, Vanke is solid because it already has a team of professional managers. Mr. Wang gave up day to day operations and CEO title to someone else, and is enjoying “mount climbing”, partitipating “Boss town”, giving speeches, etc.

Categories
Fun

Bill Miller’s childhood story

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Last Updated on July 23, 2007 by stlplace

From CNNMoney, the full article is here:

I was nine years old, and I walked in to see my father reading the financial pages of the newspaper. And they didn’t look like the sports pages or the comics or whatever.

So I asked him what they were. And he said they were financial pages.

And I said, “What does that mean?” And he said, “Well, these are stocks.”

I said, “What’s a stock?” And he said, “Well, look at this thing. See this thing? This represents a company.” And he said, “And see this ‘+ .25’?”

And I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Well, that means that if you own this company, one share of it, which cost you like ten dollars, then if you owned it yesterday, then today you have 25 cents more than you had yesterday.”

Continue reading “Bill Miller’s childhood story”
Categories
Fun

Week in review 07-15 to 07-21

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Last Updated on July 20, 2007 by stlplace

1) StrengthTrader listed the greatest investors of all time (in Chinese). Among them I am familar with Buffett, Fisher and Lynch. I think Bill Miller is the Peter Lynch in current Mutual Fund world.

2) Alibaba is hiring, they are adding 2,000 people by the end of 2007. Meanwhile, Ali’s little bro Ninetowns is shrinking, they are laying off people after recent acquisition.

3) Save $10 off Crocs through CrocFans.com.

4) Investor Trip Starbucks experience. My comment: it’s about experience, not just about coffee (i.e., coffee buyers at McDonald and Dunkin Donuts are different groups).

5) Sun’s Financial Diary’s “Pay ourselves first”. I remember seeing one of the guest on CNBC “Millionare Inside” said similar things. Well, Sun has made significant progress on this aspect too. Very good job.