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Business Stocks

Home Inns is Getting Expensive

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I mean the stocks, not the motel price. It’s being mentioned by IBD (Investors Business Daily) as No. 1 stock this Monday. IBD publishes 100 stocks every Monday based on its own rating system. Because a lot institutional investors trade stocks based on the IBD (whether there is merits or not is another story), the stock went up again today to $47.

A little background about IBD: IBD was founded by a savvy a stockbroker and writer named William J. O’neil. Here is an introduction about William on wikipedia. He also wrote some books such as “How to make money in stocks”. At one time I took very seriously on IBD’s rating system, but not now. I remember once a friend told me he found the “holy grail” of the stocks: IBD and William O’neal’s books. By the way, I told him at the time I liked to buy Google at about 160 (November 2004), he said “No”.

My point is: I like to read books, newspapers and magazines, listen to radio, or watch TV, but I won’t take all these blindly.      

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Stocks

Turbo Tax Online Discount

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It’s harder to get Turbo Tax discount these days. I used to get discount code in the email since I have been using it to prepare income tax in year 2001. But not lately. Here is a 15% off deal I found at ADP.

(Update 29Jan07) Sun has an incredibly detailed list of tax software. Here is the link.

Categories
China Stocks

Market Cap of Home Inns HMIN

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I made a mistake on the market cap of Home Inns (Rujia, just like home), in my previous post (corrected now). The correct number is stock price * number of shares, or

$44.93 * (32,283,906 / 2 + 5,874,237 )  = $839,479,146
The number of shares 32,283,906 is from its Q3 2006 report. 5,874,237 is the IPO shares on Oct 26, 2006. Note it’s 2006 revenue is about $73 m. So the market cap/sales revenue is about 11.5

Is it high? Yes it’s high among hotel industry. But not high if compared to SINA (also about 10 right now). Note HMIN is growing much faster than SINA these days (70% vs. 30%). I also looked at Baidu’s number, it’s market cap is $4.15 B, and est. 2006 revenue is $106.4 m. The ratio is about 39. BIDU is expected to grow at 68% by WRHambrecht’s James Lee (click on the PDF report). Note growth is only one factor here, we also need to look at the profit margin, etc. if we want to compare apple to apple.

rujia pic

Categories
China Stocks

Blog about China Motels

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Zhao Huan Yan, a Chinese blogger, has an excellent blog about the developments of hotels and motels in China. He put together lots of statistics (numbers) there. The Alexa ranking of hotels is interesting. Again don’t take this too seriously.

Unfortunately (or fortunately for me), it’s all in Chinese.  

Categories
China Stocks

Home Inns Doubled from Debut

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It’s about $44 now. Today IBD published an article about Home Inns. The author’s view is a little too optimistic: as I understand serious domestic competitor includes motel168, besides the Jinjiang Inn. I noticed Jinjiang Inn also offers free broad band Internet now, as this was a key differentiator for Home Inn/Ru Jia in the past. Super 8, the US motel Chain, is also expanding very aggressively in China.

home inns bed check

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Stocks

Swap some Heelys with Crocs

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Did a little adjustment on my portifolio today. Sold 30 shares of Heelys (HLYS) and bought 22 shares of Crocs (CROX). I saw the new product release from Crocs today.

“…the Off Road and All Terrain models in the spring and fall of 2007. The Off Road (MSRP: $39.99) is a rugged outdoor shoe with additional traction and is currently available in women’s sizes (6-12) and men’s sizes (4-13). The model is available in seven color combinations, including chocolate/chocolate and sienna/khaki, new to the shoe’s 2007 color palette. The All Terrain (MSRP: $59.99) is a weatherproof shoe for all-condition performance and stability. The shoe is available in women’s sizes (6-12) and men’s sizes (4-13) in five colors, including the new 2007 color combination of black/black…”

Categories
China Stocks

Focus Media FMCN is hotter than BIDU

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It seems not very intuitive that Focus Media (FMCN), a LCD media advertising company, has done better than Baidu (BIDU), the No. 1 search engine in China. After all , putting up the LCD screen, soliciting the advertising customers, and creating those short films are not high tech as “search engine”, which involves creating a large number of clustered computer, and complicated search algorithm. But this is the reality, Focus Media (FMCN), closed above $80 today amid the new offering of $500 m, the PE (ttm) is about 76, market capital 4.4 B. Since its debut in July 2005 (at 20s), it’s up about 300%.

SH_elevator_ad

How about Baidu (BIDU), it debuted on August 2005 at about $120, and it closed at $124.50 today. Here is the chart. The PE is about 165 and market capital 4.2 B.

Categories
Stocks

Home Inns HMIN on Seekingalpha

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I published an article about Home Inns HMIN on Seekingalpha (Yahoo Finance) today. This was loosely based on my previous post in this blog on Jan 3.

Seekingalpha is a financial (stocks in particular) blog platform, and it’s a Yahoo Finance partner.

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Categories
China

Starbucks in Forbidden City Beijing

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There are lots of talk about the Starbucks store in Forbidden City in Beijing these days. It started in Chinese demestic media, and now it speads all over the world (tonight I saw it on BBC). I happened to take a picture of that Starbucks store during my 2005 visit to Beijing. Personally I also felt it’s in appropriate to have a Starbucks inside the forbidden city. I think they can move the store outside.
China_Trip_Part_1 057

Categories
China Stocks

Home Inns HMIN Yahoo Message Board

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Yes. It’s up and running now. Here is the link. I don’t know exactly how new IPOs got the message board started. It usually takse many requests, and lots of patience.

Oh, don’t take the discussions (especially the price target) too seriously. Because if you believe it and trade accordingly, you may regret later. That being said, I did see some intelligent analyses on the message boards from time to time. But a lot more emotional rants too. You are warned.

No message board for New Oriental (EDU) yet. The funny thing is that Mindray (MR) board was inherited from Morgan Food (used to have ticker symbol MR), and the board works 50% of the time. No wonder Yahoo stock did not do well lately 🙂

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