stlplaceHere is the Q2 results (Xinhua-PRNewswire). Besides revenue and earning, I’m more interested in the following numbers:
— During the second quarter of 2007, Home Inns opened 26 new hotels. As of June 30, 2007, the Home Inns hotel chain consisted of 171 hotels in operation with an additional 63 hotels under development, covering 66 cities in China.
X5?
maybe not?
I found my blog was listed as “200 most influential personal finance bloggers“, No. 182, at Hustler $$$ Blog.
Thanks, Hustler. I have added a link for your Hustler $$$ blog (under “finance”).
WuXi Pharma Tech (NYSE: WX) is a pharmaceutical R&D service company based in Shanghai, and they do work for the pharma giants like Pfizer, Merck, etc. They are the No. 1 player in China and growing fast.
To give some background, here is a discussion thread from trader168.com; and a valuation analysis article from Yahoo (ChinaBio Today).
I’m not in the pharma business but from my observation, pharma R&D outsourcing is a sweet area because of the following trend.
I was thinking about buying some ICBC or BoC shares in Shanghai, but the price difference of the Shanghai and Hongkong (or ADRs in NYSE) kept me from pulling the trigger. Since one Yuan is roughly worth one HKD, why would I pay premium for the A shares if I can get H Shares (or the equivalent US ADRs) for a discount?
Unless the Yuan depreciates (relative to HKD and USD) significantly (it’s possible but unlikely), buying A shares does not make sense to me.
ICBC: 601398 (Shanghai) CNY 6.80; 1398 (Hongkong) HKD 4.80
Bank of China: 601988 (Shanghai) CNY 5.80; 3988 (Hongkong) HKD 3.80
China Life: 601628 (Shanghai) CNY 48.00; 2628 (Hongkong) HKD 30.00; LFC (NYSE) USD 57.41
Note one share of LFC (ADR in NYSE) is worth 15 shares of 2628.HK, the price of 2628.HK is the same as LFC, if we consider this units conversion and HKD/USD conversion.
The main reason for the price difference is the supply and demand: Chinese people have lots of free money (in CNY), but they can only invest inside China. The China capital market has grown significantly, but it still could not meet the demand from flood of domestic investors.
Student studying at KFC, I also see students studying at McDonald. Note in China both KFC and McDonald are fashionable gathering places for middle/high school and college students.
My first Chinese KFC meal in many years, I got headache after eating that 🙁
Last Friday (August 10) we got married at Shanghai Xuhui District marriage license office.
The place we received the certificate and pledge (swear?) our oath.
I got to see Michael on CCTV Channel 2 yesterday. He was participating a show as a guest. The show is about the “entrepreneurs born after 1980s” (Michael was born in 1960s).
I noticed he said something interesting about New Oriental “listed in NYSE”: if I could regret, I wish we haven’t done that. On the surface it seems strange, who does not want to get rich? But I think he meant this: being listed in NYSE is a huge responsibility, if he had known all the pitfalls of “listing in the US” (not just Sabane-Oxly), he would re-consider.
But in reality he couldn’t. Because he is not the sole owner of the company. Both VC (refer to Shao’s blog about VC’s timeline) and his colleagues (many are minority stock holders) wanted to cash out. The company could use the IPO proceeds to expand; note the competition has also heated up too. The “listed in NYSE” will also help them build the brand, globally.
Back to Michael’s reponsibility. As soon as he took money from the Wall Street, he was expected to deliver the financial results to meet the street. He and his team did very well in first two Qs, but they missed the lastest Q. I bet he did not get much good sleep lately, because he needs to make sure next Q will come out OK.
Yesterday, ICBC, Industrial and Commerce Bank of China (6001398.SS), went up 0.57 (just one cent shy of 10%), and closed at 6.37 Yuan. With that price, ICBC exceeded Citibank and became the world largest bank (market cap wise), and closes in Microsoft in terms of market cap (bloomberg).
I remember last time ICBC closed in Citibank was 3 or 4 months ago, but this time it has more sustance (I mean fundamental, or earnings). Chinese banks, along with real estate developers, are on the fire lately and people attribute that to:
1) The rise of the Yuan.
2) The continuing growth of domestic economy, along with rising CPI (inflation) and rising property value. The actual bank interest rate is negative if you consider the inflation (4%).
I placed a market order before the market open. The last time I did something similar is two years ago when the Ninetowns reported that their customers (Chinese goverment) would no longer pay them for the software. They would get a free version instead.
But HLYS did worse in terms of the stock. It closed at 21.99 yesterday, and opened 13.38 this morning. I lost more than $7 per share (bought it 20.95 about two weeks ago).
It seems I haven’t learned my lessons in 2 years. Seriously I felt lucky this time because the gain in other stocks covered the loss. Actually I did made some money on HLYS too (a while ago), today I gave it all back 🙁
Both the CEOs of NINE and HLYS are on my “CEO Hall of Shame” list now. We should all be careful when we put our hard earned money to the stock market: look for good CEOs, real good CEOs.
BTW, I saw 5 analysts downgrade the HLYS today. This time I agree with the analysts.