I’ll wrap up this week with a couple of items from the car world, one of which has Japan’s Nissan (Tokyo: 7201) adding fuel to China’s looming auto glut while the other has yet another Chinese buyer helping forestall the long and tortured death of Sweden’s bankrupt Saab. My personal favorite among these 2 stories is Saab, as it’s quite a colorful saga; but Nissan is clearly the bigger of the items, so I’ll start with a look at the news that the Japanese automaker is planning to build a $785 million new plant in the northeastern port city of Dalian. (English article) The new plant is part of a broader plan to invest 30 billion yuan in China by 2015 previously announced by Nissan, China’s second biggest car brand and the most aggressive of Japan’s 3 major automakers in China. The new plant, being built together with Nissan’s China partner Dongfeng Motor (HKEx: 489), will initially have capacity to build 25,000 cars per year when it opens in 2015, but will expand rapidly to a a hefty 240,000 vehicles by 2017, according to a foreign media report, citing an unnamed source. This kind of rapid expansion, despite a recent cool-down in China’s auto market, is being seen throughout China’s auto industry, with most of the big foreign automakers including Ford (NYSE: F), BMW (Frankfurt: BMWG) and General Motors (NYSE: GM), all announcing major new initiatives over the last couple of years. I have no doubt that market growth will eventually accelerate again, and recent signs from Beijing indicate that could happen soon as it considers new incentives to boost sales. But the addition of new capacity for another 1 million or more vehicles looks a bit big to me for a market unlikely to sell more than 10 million vehicles this year; that means we could see lots of idle capacity in the next few years, forcing some weaker players, especially the domestic brands, to leave the market. Meantime, Saab, which is now in bankruptcy and hasn’t produced any cars since last year, is being sold to a Sino-Japanese partnership that plans to turn the brand into an electric car specialist. (English article) I’ve never heard of either the Chinese company, a Hong Kong-based firm called National Modern Energy Holdings, or the Japanese partner, Sun Investment. But I expect this pair are looking to buy the Saab name and perhaps some of its technology if the deal actually gets completed, and then they would probably shut down Saab’s money-losing Swedish operations completely. A more likely scenario would see this latest agreement collapse, just like an earlier rescue package that saw 2 other Chinese firms try and fail to buy the company. (previous post) Regardless of the final outcome, it does seem like the Saab brand may be destined to live on in China — an ironic development since the name is virtually unknown in the market.
Bottom line: Nissan’s latest plan for a massive new plant in northeast China marks the latest sign of a supply glut building for China’s auto sector.
Related postings 相关文章:
◙ Dwindling Demand Fuels Car Inventory Build-Up 中国汽车库存增加或引发价格战
There are a few interesting telecoms tidbits out today, led by what seems to be an increasingly redundant refrain of the latest woes being faced by quickly fading telecoms equipment superstars Huawei and ZTE (HKEx: 763; Shenzhen: 000063), who are now the subject of a new security probe by US politicians. ZTE is also in the headlines for its own announcement of an interesting new tie-up in the teleconferencing space, which is part of its ongoing drive to diversify into less controversial products beyond its core networking equipment business. And last but not least, Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) is flexing its muscles in China by getting local Internet search leader Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) to agree to an unusual revenue-sharing agreement in exchange for inclusion of Baidu’s search engine in a new China-friendly iPhone. Let’s start with the Huawei and ZTE news, which has the US House of Representatives questioning the pair about how they do business in a bid to determine what, if any, security risk their network equipment might pose to unsuspecting buyers. (
I haven’t written for a while about the embattled solar sector, but a press release about a new solar plan by Swedish furniture giant IKEA caught my attention and looks worth a mention as a possible new bright spot for this otherwise struggling industry. In fact, I was originally going to just ignore the announcement, which will see IKEA install solar panels at its China locations to supply 10-15 of the power needs for its stores and 100 percent of needs for its distribution centers. (
Alibaba appears to be feeling the pinch that has hit most of its major rivals over the last year as they engage in a nonstop game of cutthroat competition, with news that China’s e-commerce leader is doing the once unthinkable: offering discounts. At the same time, media are reporting the company has also become the latest entrant to the online book-selling business, again reflecting the overheated competition that has gripped the market as everyone battles with everyone else in just about every major product category. To understand the significance of this latest news, we need to look first at Alibaba’s e-commerce model, which is quite different from that of its major rivals like Jingdong Mall, which also goes by the name of 360Buy, and Dangdang (NYSE: DANG). Whereas nearly all of its major rivals directly sell their merchandise to consumers, Alibaba uses a model that see it acting as middleman for other online retailers by letting them set up shops on its online TMall platform, formerly known as Taobao Mall. That means that Alibaba, as a middleman platform operator, has largely avoided the recent price wars infecting most of its rivals, whose margins have plummeted as they offered steep discounts to maintain their market position. Now it appears that Alibaba is also feeling some of this price-war pain, as the company reportedly prepares to help the merchants on its TMall platform by providing $47 million in rebates for sales of their various electronics, from cellphones to televisions and air conditioners. (
The literature unit of online game giant Shanda Interactive seems determined to move forward with its plan for a New York IPO despite a weak investor climate, landing $15 million in new funds from venture investor Orbis as it forges ahead. This kind of late-stage investment is clearly designed to generate some buzz for an offering that looks slightly interesting to me, but may still have limited appeal for the average Wall Street investor worried about recent volatility in US-listed China stocks after a series of accounting scandals last year. This latest investment also seems aimed at setting a valuation for the unit, Shanda Cloudary, again as Shanda Interactive looks to raise as much cash as possible to help pay down its big debt from its own recent privatization. (