stlplacePacific Epoch is a boutique investment research firm based in Hongkong (and Shanghai?). I read its China financial news from time to time, and liked its content.
It also provide services and reports to institutional investors. This is the price tag for translating a Chinese article, $5000 (to see a bigger pic, click below).
Man, I want to be that lucky translator 🙂
(Update July 19) CNNMoney has an article about Mindray (the original article was on IBD).
(Original) The annual report is out. You can get it from its IR Home. From first glance, it’s looking sharp (I mean, the graphic design).
Second quarter results will be announced on August 6 after US market close (8 AM August 7 Beijing Time). Dial-in details for the earnings conference call are as follows:
Hong Kong: +852-3002-1672
US Toll Free: +1-800-901-5213
International: +1-617-786-2962
Passcode for all regions: Mindray
Stock is on sale today, so I went ahead and added a little more.
BTW, CnAnalyst has a nice table listing many US traded Chinese ADRs’ earning date.
China. Hot. Housing market in China? Red hot. Put an “e” (hint: eBay) before that? Sizzling. So do we jump into this sizzling (hot) IPO, just by looking at its name and its business, the residential real estate brokage in China? The answer is obviously No.
First a little bit history on Chinese residential housing market. Like many things else, China’s housing market is not market-driven until middle 1990s. Before that most people in cities got assigned apartments by their “Danwei” (employer). Housing was part of the benefit, just like healthcare, provided by the goverment. So what’s the problem here? The housing market was vastly under-developed, and average people have small living spaces. I remember when I worked for a state owned manufacturing company in Shanghai after graduation from college (1993), it would take me 10 years in the waiting line to get “a small apartment” from my “Danwei”, if I’m lucky to get one at all. One of my coworker (and his wife, kid) lived in a 2 bedroom apartment with his bro’s family, his parents, i.e., totally 8 people shared the little 50 square meters (about 550 square foot).
(Pic above: brokers near Zhongshan Park: Ji Feng Yi Ju and ColdWell Banker, the US chain)
in Japan. I read this news from MSN that McDonald is going to open McCafe stores in Japan. Quote the news:
“The Japan unit of U.S.-based McDonald’s Corp. will launch 15 pilot “McCafe” stores in the Tokyo area on August 29, according to a company release. The stores, the burger chain’s first foray into the coffee shop business, will offer low-priced beverages to lure more families, the release said. McDonald’s said it will consider opening McCafes across Japan in the next fiscal year.
The cafe business in Japan has been shrinking and stood at 1.052 trillion yen ($8.61 billion) in 2006, down 5 percent from the previous year. Still, sales at specialty coffee shops like Starbucks have soared. The Seattle-based coffee chain, which first opened a store in Japan in 1997, has almost 700 stores across the country and saw sales jump 16 percent last year to 78.9 billion yen ($646 million).”
I bought my first stock back in 1994 when I worked for a manufacturing company in Shanghai, and I got to buy 250 shares when the company went public. After that between 1996 and 1997 I did some trade in stocks because at that time the Chinese stock market was very hot, if not as hot as the Chinese market a few months ago. But these are mostly speculations, I know the PE ratios, but that’s about all the financial analysis I did (I think many retail investors in China these days are still at that level, to them stock is not too different from a lottery ticket).
Fast forward to year 2002, I got a little money after I joined the work force. The US stock market was not good. But I did learned more about personal finance, mostly through reading Kiplinger, do my own tax, etc. Kiplinger mentioned this Sharebuilder, a discount broker through which one can buy factional stocks (e.g, 10.5 shares of GE), the idea was a person put a fixed amount of money to buy stocks each month, after a while that amount will grow to some meaningful amount (say, buy a car or something).
Dai Tou Da Ge, the Chinese famous stock blogger, got arrested by the goverment for “illeagally enaged in financial advising activities”, according to Sina news.
So what do we learn from this?
1) If some one claims he/she can predict the stock market with 90% accuracy. Run, run away as fast as you can.
2) If something is too good to be true, especially some techniques claims “making sure money in stock market”, that’s usually a scam.
There are many financial scams, unfortunately, there are always people fall for that.
I bought some NINE (Ninetowns) shares for the 3rd time last Dec. for two reasons:
1) It’s getting into B2B business. A successful example of B2B in China is Ma Yun’s Alibaba, which has done well (at least generated lots of buzz), and is planning to go IPO in Hongkong this year.
2) Duan Yongping, the founder of BuBuGao, the successful investor who won the bid to have lunch with Warren Buffett last year, bought sigificant shares of NINE last year.
Bought a little SNCI today. It’s a company makes hearing aids. I read it from Kiplinger’s Personal Finance August Issue in the weekend. Did a little research including reading its annual report. This is my speculative play, I put my bet on it because I think some of the positives include:
1) The company sold its unprofitable unit (Tympany) recently. Meanwhile, it’s trying to expand distribution and retail channel.
2) US baby boomers (people born from 1946 to 1964) are near retiring age. As we know, older people are big customers of hearing aids.
3) There are lots of consolidations in this industry lately.
I don’t take this is a China play, although on my flight from PVG to ORD in the May, I met an engineer who works for an OEM supplier for hearing aids (in Suzhou). It seems hearing aids market is at infancy stage in China.
I also sold the NINE (Ninetowns) today: took my second loss this year, the first is XFML.
Today, Fredy Bush, the CEO of Xinhua Finance and Xinhua Finance Media Limited (XFML), released a letter to counter the recent media coverage of “the mystery of Xinhua Finance”. Quote the letter:
— Over the years the media has criticized Xinhua Finance as being too
close to the Xinhua News Agency and the government of China; now they
are criticizing us for not being close enough. The fact is, we have a
20 plus 10 year exclusive agreement signed in 2000 with the China
Economic Information Service of the Xinhua News Agency and that has not
changed. This has been publicly disclosed on numerous occasions.
1) PTC woes: last week Goldman Sachs, the No. 1 broker in the US (and world), upgraded PTC (a PLM software vendor) to “buy”, and raised its target from $22 to $24. On July 5, PTC says it’s going to miss the 3rd revenue estimates. I guess the GS analyst would be pretty upset by PTC now.
2) Samsonite being sold again: you may have seen its bags (laptop bag, luggage bag for air flight) in many palces. According to bloomberg, Samsonite found its 5th owner in 21 years. If you look at its 10 year chart, the stock lost 96.57% of its value in 10 years. For comparison, Coach (COH) was up 1853% in last 7 years. One thing I am aware: Coach’s bag is usually more expensive than Samsonite’s.
3) eLong no longer offer “vacation package”: according to PcPop, eLong (Nasdaq: LONG) pulled out of this market amid competition from Ctrip (Nasdaq: CTRP). I checked out eLong tours page, it appears they still have it for now.