stlplaceFriday evening I attended the New Year celebration at Olin School of Business, Washington University. It was organized by Greater China Club. Very well orchestrated, although the party is a bit late since New Year was Feb 18.
I remember a few months ago our friends Indian students celebrated their Dawali. I think both groups did well in showing the Olin and Wash U. community the Chinese and Indian culture. It seems to me the business students really know marketing in the States 🙂
Apple and Cisco settled the dispute around the iPhone trademark, according to Mac News. One interesting comment I can not stop laughing is:
“if Apple leaves the table smiling, you better check your wallet.”
Seriously, I agree with the author Cisco guys are smart too. “Consumers are so with Apple these days, it would have been bad for Cisco, because consumers don’t want to see a company that’s going against Apple.”
I want to note that Cisco is going after the consumer markets these days. As you may noticed from the TV ads and Scientific Atlanta (TV setbox) acquisition.
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…
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.
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).
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.
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 🙂
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.
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.
Source: Google CN and Yahoo China (Why did not baidu come up with something?)
I noticed Yahoo (US version) has lots of pictures about Lunar New Year. While Chinese young generation are embracing the western holidays such as Christmas and Valentine’s Day (in some ways western holidays are overshadowing the most important Chinese holiday), western world started to honor the traditional Chinese holiday. Is that a sign of “globalization”? We should be happy living in such an interesting time.