Category: Stocks

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Stocks Web

RedHat is moving to NYSE

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It’s not news any more. There are many discussions on the Yahoo message board. Basically Redhat, which is traded on NASDAQ under “RHAT”, is applying the move to NYSE, the good old New York Stock Exchange, under ticker symbol “RHT” on Dec 12. I think it’s a proactive and smart move from RedHat management. Generally NASDAQ is a more volatile market than NYSE; and it’s especially true for RedHat stocks lately because of all these news. This move won’t get rid of all the day traders or short sellers, but it should help.

Of course, the most important things of all, is continue to provide the product and service the customers want. Here is a survey of CIOs and RedHat ranked No. 1 overall.

You can see the news here.

Disclosure: I do own RedHat stocks.

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China Stocks

More about Home Inns and Mindray

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Home Inns (HMIN) and Mindray (MR) both reported their Q3 earning last week. I listened to both the conference calls. HMIN obviously did better with revenue growth: RMB 160.4 m, 106.3% year over year growth. Mindray’s revenue growth was 21.6% because of the anti-corruption campaign in Chinese hospitals. I think that growth factor determined the stock PE ratio at this time, HMIN is 162, MR is 51.

Personally I think one quarter’s number could be misleading. So let’s look at the first 9 months number. Mindray revenue growth is 41.4%; Home Inns is 125% (from RMB 176 m to RMB 396 m). So once again HMIN is the winner here. The reason again is HMIN is growing like crazy these days. They opened 25 new hotels in Q3 and have 56 hotels in development. But I still have some doubts in its growth.

1) Home Inns room rate RMB 180 is not expensive in China coastal area (where it got started), it could be a bit expensive in central and western part of the China, when we consider the wage difference here.

2) Competition: it’s heating up. Besides Jinjiang Star, Motel 168, Super 8, Home Inns’s founder Ji Qi started another chain called Hanting, which is slightly expensive than Rujia (Home Inns), and targeted business travellers.

So the question is: will HMIN’s growth be sustained for a while? My bet is their brand will help them grow for a while, but like anything else in business, nothing can grow 100% forever 🙂 

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Stocks

It’s deja vu all over again

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E-future, a not well known Chinese company, set a record for Chinese stocks traded in the US. Its stock went from $10 to $43 in 4 days. In another words, in 4 days it “accomplished” what Google’s stock accomplished in 2 years: from $100 to $400. It seems like I missed a golden opportunity to get rich fast. But on the serious side, I think there are lots of bubbles involved. I looked at the price of 3 well known Chinese IPO stocks, the New Oriental (EDU), Mindray (MR) and Home Inns (HMIN), they are all trading at about PE 50 (ttm) now. Note HMIN and MR will report tomorrow and Thursday, we’ll see the stock get a reality check after that: if it beats, it will go to the moon; otherwise it will go back to the earth 🙂

I am also looking at the NyMex, New York Mercantile Exchange’s IPO this Friday, should be as hot as today’s Google. I bought NyMex’s competitor, Interconntinental Exchange (ICE), on Nov 17 2005 (and sold it the next day), the ICE has been gone from $38 to $97 in about a year 🙁  

PS, the SEC filing of E-future can be found here.

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China Stocks

Basics for Investment

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I happened to see this “Investment 101” from forun web site, a very small (boutique) research firm. Wish I had read it before jump into market 3 years ago. Oh well, I know even if I read it, I would forget it and make the same mistakes. A lot times we have to learn the lesson the hard way.

It’s an interesting story to find this research firm. So I was listening to the conference call of Ninetowns, the stock I bought at its IPO and bought it again today. An analyst from forun called in and talked in English with a heavy Chinese accent. Sometimes when he got stuck, he used Mandarin with strong Hunan accent . The CEO of Ninetowns can not speak English. So they talked in Mandarin. Another SVP of Ninetowns did the translation. There are only two analysts called in for the questions. The other guy Dick Wei from JP Morgan, is also ethnic Chinese. Note JP Morgan was the underwriter of its IPO in Dec 2004.   

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Stocks

Trade of the Day

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I sold the remaing Symantec (SYMC) stocks today and I bought an old stock for me: the Ninetown Digital (NINE, recently changed name to Ninetown Internet). Here are my reasoning.

Symantec moved up quite a bit in past serveral months. It reported good earning in Q2, but missed a penny in Q3 due to some weakness in Europe. I think it’s a solid company and may do well in Q4. Note enterprise software companies usually do more sales in Q4 because of end-of-year spending (so is the Wall Street expectation, so don’t expect a big pop). Another reason is Symantec is just too big for me to understand, its main business is from enterprise (storage, security, compliance etc), not just the Norton Anti Virus or Internet Security for individual customers. By the same token, as the world No. 5 software company (by market capital, behind Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and Adobe), its stock just does not move too much compared to smaller software companies. I think it’s good for mutual funds or people who just want to get average return without doing much homework.

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Stocks

Words of Wisdom

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Words from Warren Buffett’s interview, mostly regarding his opinion on the markets, the full article is here.

…Common stocks are part of a business. Markets are there to serve you, not to instruct you. You can often find a couple of companies that are out of line. Find one; get rich. Most people think that what the stock does from day to day contains information, but it doesn’t. It isn’t just something that wiggles around. The stock market is the best game in the world. You can take advantage of people who have no morals. High prices inside of a year will typically be 100% of the low price. Businesses don’t change in value that much. That is simply crazy. There are extreme degrees of fluctuation, and Mr. Market will call out the prices. Wait until he is nutty in one direction or the other. Put in a margin of safety. Don’t find a bridge that says no more than 10,000 pounds when you have a 9800 pound vehicle. It isn’t a function of IQ, but receptivity of the mind.

When investing you don’t have to invest in all 10,000 companies available, you just have to find the one that is out of line. Mr. Market is your servant. Mr. Market is your partner and wants to sell the business to you everyday. Some days he is very optimistic and wants a high price, others he is pessimistic and will sell at a low price. You have to use this to your advantage. The market is the greatest game in the world. There is nothing else that can, at times, get this far out of line with reality. For example, land usually only fluctuates within a 15% band. Negotiated transactions are less volatile. Some get this; others don’t. Just keep your wits about you and you can make a lot of money in the market… 

BTW, words from Fortune cookie today, “A new hat will brighten your day give you an updated look”.

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China Stocks

China Net Companies Q3 06 Earning Calendar

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It seems all these China stock bloggers are taking vacations 🙂

Click on the date it will bring you to the “events” page of the stock; you can add the event to your “Yahoo Calendar” if you like.

Baidu: Nov 1 (Oct 31 evening US time)

Ctrip: Nov 8

Netease: Nov 6

Sina: Nov 2

Sohu (done): Oct 26

China Medical: Nov 13

Mindray Medical: Nov 16

Home Inns: ???

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China Stocks

Stock Lesson VII

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Next Microsoft. Next Bill Gates. Next Google. Next…

We all want to get the hold of “next big thing” before it becomes real, don’t we? Think about this, the stock of Cisco, the networking and communication company, increased 73 times from 1990 to 2000 in 10 years. The Microsoft stock’s performance was similar. 

From time to time, when a young company came up with some cool product or service, and performed well in the market and financially, people will praise it as “next Microsoft”, and think its founder will be next Bill Gates. The reality is, except Google, no company has come close to Microsoft in past 10 years. But sometimes we innocent investors (like me) fell into this trap.

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China Stocks

Home Inns IPO Date

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I could not find the offical date for the IPO date. The only thing official is it will debut this week. Since now it’s 12:50 PM Eastern Time, I don’t think it will go out today. That means we only have 2 days left.

Sohu has an aritlcle which did mention it will go on Oct 26 evening Beijing time. But it also says it’s the Oct 25 US day time. So go figure.

Also, the yahoo Finance is up for “HMIN”, although there is no content.

Incidentally, the World Series game 4 is rained out today. My sympathy to those people who paid “pretty penny” for the tickets. I heard the tickets start from $500 on the market.

PS, according to Sohu, the price for Home Inns share is $13.80 and it will go out Oct 26. This thing is as intense as  the baseball World Series 🙂  

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China Stocks

Bubble is building

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Home Inns (Rujia, ticker symbol HMIN), which is due to IPO this week, is getting $ 1.0 billion orders for its $ 95 million listing (7.9 million shares in the range of $ 10 to 12, with over allocatement option of 1.185 million shares). See the article from Reuters here. Does anyone has the order vs. offering ratio (a.k.a. supply vs demand) for Baidu (BIDU)?  

As of now I still don’t know the exact date of its IPO. But I saw this lastest SEC filings. From most sources it appears Oct 25 Wed is the debut date.

If you know Chinese, here is the coverage from Sohu.

rujia home inns