For the latest news on U.S.- and Hong Kong-traded Chinese stocks, visit our new Bamboo Works site.
Leading e-commerce firm Alibaba may be heading for a compromise that would allow it to list on the Hong Kong stock exchange, in a deal that would come as a victory for minority shareholders of publicly listed firms. Hong Kong securities officials should be praised for sticking to their principles of protecting minority shareholder rights in this case rather than agreeing to Alibaba’s requests to win this mega-IPO likely to raise billions of dollars. Read Full Post…
Whoever is following online search leader Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) these days certainly doesn’t seem to care much about profits, at least based on the company’s latest results. That’s my conclusion after looking at Baidu’s just-released quarterly report, which showed that Baidu’s profit grew at an anemic 1.3 percent in the third quarter. Perhaps investors were just happy that Baidu posted any growth at all, since global tech giant Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) has just posted its third consecutive profit decline in its latest quarterly report. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on October 30. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════
After shopping around for an investor for much of this year, money-losing video sharing site PPTV has finally found a new patron in retailing giant Suning (Shenzhen: 002024). I’m quite happy to see this latest development in China’s rapidly consolidating online video space, as it means I can finally stop writing about all the latest rumors that have popped up for the last 6 months surrounding PPTV. Rumors of this particular tie-up first emerged about a month ago (previous post), and I’ll admit that this deal doesn’t look particularly attractive to me. Read Full Post…
This week’s Street View zeroes in on Shanghai’s growing love for plastic, which has fueled an explosion of membership, gift, credit and debit cards issued by just about anyone in the retail sector. This strange love of plastic has led government officials in Pudong to take the much-needed step of trying to regulate an unruly group of merchants, some of whom sell cards worth thousands of yuan to consumers and then suddenly close up shop and disappear with the money.
Read Full Post…
As the current earnings season gets into full swing, let’s turn our attention to the latest results that show encouraging signals from both wireless carrier China Telecom (HKEx: 728; NYSE: CHA) and Internet company Sohu (Nasdaq: SOHU). Yet despite the upbeat reports, shareholders have reacted quite negatively to the Sohu results by dumping its stock. That sell-off is probably mostly technical, for reasons I’ll explain soon. Meantime, China Telecom’s shares have languished over the last year, even though in my view it’s rapidly emerging as the shrewdest of China’s 3 major state-run telcos. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on October 29. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════
A new deal that has seen a mid-sized Hong Kong bank purchased by a government entity of the southern city of Guangzhou is raising the interesting prospect that we could soon see a grab for similar banks by Chinese lenders looking to go global. As a financial center with strong cultural and geographic ties to the mainland, Hong Kong is a natural stepping stone for any Chinese bank that might want to move beyond its home turf, where politics dominate many decisions, into Asian markets where profits are the driving factor. That urgency to move abroad could become stronger in the next few years, as China signals it will soon open up the state-dominated banking sector to private investors. Read Full Post…
This year’s shake-up of the online video space is taking yet another turn, with word that Sohu (Nasdaq: SOHU), one of China’s top 3 services, has agreed to buy rival Xunlei’s service called Kankan. If true, this development would be quite exciting, as it would mark the rise of a third major player in the space that is undergoing a major consolidation. Youku Tudou (NYSE: YOKU) remains the industry leader after its formation last year with the merger of China’s 2 largest video sites. Baidu’s (Nasdaq: BIDU) iQiyi is emerging as a strong number 2 after its acquisition of PPS in May for $370 million. Sohu previously operated China’s second largest video sharing service, and a purchase of Xunlei Kankan would comfortably bolster its place as one of China’s top 3 sites. Read Full Post…
A new flurry of e-commerce news bits shows that competition in the sector continues unabated, with no signs of easing anytime soon. Sector leader Alibaba tops the headlines with word that it’s rolling out same-day delivery service for customers of its industry-leading TMall B2C site. Meantime, Yihaodian is drawing on its connections with global retailing giant Walmart (NYSE: WMT) to boost its imported food business amid China’s nonstop series of food-safety scandals. These and similarly aggressive moves are also leading to signs of growing stress, with Jingdong, the second largest operator, making a strange anti-competitive complaint about rival Suning’s (Shenzhen: 002024) recent unified pricing policy. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on October 26-28. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════
