Ruhnn Holding Ltd (RUHN US) is an e-commerce platform which drives sales through KOLs (key opinion leaders). Ruhnn is the largest internet KOL facilitator in China as measured by revenue, the number of online stores and GMV in 2018 according to Frost & Sullivan. Ruhnn is backed by Alibaba Group Holding (BABA US), an 8.6% shareholder, and is seeking to raise $200 million through a Nasdaq IPO.
However, Ruhnn’s rhetoric does not match its financial performance. On balance, we are inclined to give this IPO a pass.
What the pricing data seems to imply is that consumer prices remain relatively steady but trending slightly downward, likely from weakness in household consumption that mirrors the broader economic trends. Corporate and producer sector data is driven by weakness in commodities and raw materials that seem hard pressed to accelerate in 2019 given the high base effect from 2018.
An underlying issue regarding February data is just how pressurized it is. Between cross armed speculations about trade talk negotiations and the biggest Chinese holiday, it should come as no surprises that February data is underwhelming. Chinese markets are still grappling with a way forward in the trade talk quagmire, but February numbers are in many ways seasonal, due to the holiday snapshot it encompasses.
DAF is a fast growing auto finance company which acquires customers through a network of dealership around China. Its net interest income grew by 66% CAGR from FY2016 to FY2018 while net fees/comms income and profit grew by 39.6% and 61% CAGR over the same period.
However, most of its growth originated from ZhengTong dealers and joint promotion arrangement. Excluding loans from joint promotion arrangement, gross outstanding loan had only grown by 12% CAGR.
In this insight, we will look at the company’s business, analyze the competitive landscape, provide thoughts on valuation, and some questions for management.
Get Straight to the Source on Smartkarma
Smartkarma supports the world’s leading investors with high-quality, timely, and actionable Insights. Subscribe now for unlimited access, or request a demo below.
What the pricing data seems to imply is that consumer prices remain relatively steady but trending slightly downward, likely from weakness in household consumption that mirrors the broader economic trends. Corporate and producer sector data is driven by weakness in commodities and raw materials that seem hard pressed to accelerate in 2019 given the high base effect from 2018.
An underlying issue regarding February data is just how pressurized it is. Between cross armed speculations about trade talk negotiations and the biggest Chinese holiday, it should come as no surprises that February data is underwhelming. Chinese markets are still grappling with a way forward in the trade talk quagmire, but February numbers are in many ways seasonal, due to the holiday snapshot it encompasses.
DAF is a fast growing auto finance company which acquires customers through a network of dealership around China. Its net interest income grew by 66% CAGR from FY2016 to FY2018 while net fees/comms income and profit grew by 39.6% and 61% CAGR over the same period.
However, most of its growth originated from ZhengTong dealers and joint promotion arrangement. Excluding loans from joint promotion arrangement, gross outstanding loan had only grown by 12% CAGR.
In this insight, we will look at the company’s business, analyze the competitive landscape, provide thoughts on valuation, and some questions for management.
In this insight, I’ll run the deal through our framework and comment on valuations.
Get Straight to the Source on Smartkarma
Smartkarma supports the world’s leading investors with high-quality, timely, and actionable Insights. Subscribe now for unlimited access, or request a demo below.
DAF is a fast growing auto finance company which acquires customers through a network of dealership around China. Its net interest income grew by 66% CAGR from FY2016 to FY2018 while net fees/comms income and profit grew by 39.6% and 61% CAGR over the same period.
However, most of its growth originated from ZhengTong dealers and joint promotion arrangement. Excluding loans from joint promotion arrangement, gross outstanding loan had only grown by 12% CAGR.
In this insight, we will look at the company’s business, analyze the competitive landscape, provide thoughts on valuation, and some questions for management.
Meituan Dianping reported 4Q2018 numbers last night. As we covered the company’s IPO and lock-up expiry, we took a close look the company 4Q2018 results and listened in the conference call. While we are encouraged by the company’s strong transaction volume and revenue growth in 4Q2018, we are less bullish given the deceleration of monetization growth. We also note that the company trimmed down the details of reporting, in particular, the operation of its New Initiative segment and hence results were less transparent.
NIO’s 6-month Lock-up expires today and as of the time of this writing the stock is down by 6.6% from the closing price on Friday, March 8. The stock’s share overhang issue have been well covered on the Smartkarma platform by other analysts (see NIO Post-CBS Rally Making TSLA Valuation a Grand Bargain (Price Target =$3) , NIO (NIO US): Lock-Up Expiry – This Could Get Messy) so while we do not see a need to rehash those details in this insight, here are 3 things that we believe every NIO investor and would-be investor should keep in mind about the company especially if one wants to play the Tesla vs. NIO scenario:
Licensing/Regulatory Risk – NIO has an autonomous driving testing license but no EV manufacturing license. An EV manufacturing license issued by the NDRC is required for EV manufacturers to market and sell their products but a 100k unit scale is a main prerequisite. This is a key reason why NIO entered into a 5-year outsourcing relationship with JAC. While this relationship was assumed to be temporary, there could be many hurdles for NIO to actually obtain a license in the coming years should it decide to invest in production facilities again.
Core IP Held by Suppliers – Powertrain technology is held by CATL and the State-owned JAC is listed as the ES8’s manufacturer on the Ministry of Information and Technology website. Continental AG designs NIO’s vehicle suspension and chassis. It is also unclear how much actual development work other than exterior/cockpit design is done in-house at NIO based on publicly available information. Without scale and IP we believe NIO’s bargaining position with its suppliers is weak and displays stronger characteristics of a distributor than a final assembler.
Low ASP, low margins – NIO’s ASP on the ES8 from what we have seen was $64k per unit in 2018 and $63k per unit in 1Q19 while Tesla’s Model X ASP is about $100k per unit. There is a reason why gross margin at NIO is razor thin and it has more to do with low price point than low volumes in our view.
Given differences between the U.S. and China operating environment for EV makers, we believe Tesla is not a good equity valuation comp for NIO, which is basically a distributor in our view. As such, long term value drivers would most likely come from aftermarket and service revenues, while short-mid term value drivers seem elusive especially in the aftermath of the company’s decision to scrap its production plant investment plans in Shanghai.
The NIO ES8
Source: Company Website
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DAF is a fast growing auto finance company which acquires customers through a network of dealership around China. Its net interest income grew by 66% CAGR from FY2016 to FY2018 while net fees/comms income and profit grew by 39.6% and 61% CAGR over the same period.
However, most of its growth originated from ZhengTong dealers and joint promotion arrangement. Excluding loans from joint promotion arrangement, gross outstanding loan had only grown by 12% CAGR.
In this insight, we will look at the company’s business, analyze the competitive landscape, provide thoughts on valuation, and some questions for management.
Meituan Dianping reported 4Q2018 numbers last night. As we covered the company’s IPO and lock-up expiry, we took a close look the company 4Q2018 results and listened in the conference call. While we are encouraged by the company’s strong transaction volume and revenue growth in 4Q2018, we are less bullish given the deceleration of monetization growth. We also note that the company trimmed down the details of reporting, in particular, the operation of its New Initiative segment and hence results were less transparent.
NIO’s 6-month Lock-up expires today and as of the time of this writing the stock is down by 6.6% from the closing price on Friday, March 8. The stock’s share overhang issue have been well covered on the Smartkarma platform by other analysts (see NIO Post-CBS Rally Making TSLA Valuation a Grand Bargain (Price Target =$3) , NIO (NIO US): Lock-Up Expiry – This Could Get Messy) so while we do not see a need to rehash those details in this insight, here are 3 things that we believe every NIO investor and would-be investor should keep in mind about the company especially if one wants to play the Tesla vs. NIO scenario:
Licensing/Regulatory Risk – NIO has an autonomous driving testing license but no EV manufacturing license. An EV manufacturing license issued by the NDRC is required for EV manufacturers to market and sell their products but a 100k unit scale is a main prerequisite. This is a key reason why NIO entered into a 5-year outsourcing relationship with JAC. While this relationship was assumed to be temporary, there could be many hurdles for NIO to actually obtain a license in the coming years should it decide to invest in production facilities again.
Core IP Held by Suppliers – Powertrain technology is held by CATL and the State-owned JAC is listed as the ES8’s manufacturer on the Ministry of Information and Technology website. Continental AG designs NIO’s vehicle suspension and chassis. It is also unclear how much actual development work other than exterior/cockpit design is done in-house at NIO based on publicly available information. Without scale and IP we believe NIO’s bargaining position with its suppliers is weak and displays stronger characteristics of a distributor than a final assembler.
Low ASP, low margins – NIO’s ASP on the ES8 from what we have seen was $64k per unit in 2018 and $63k per unit in 1Q19 while Tesla’s Model X ASP is about $100k per unit. There is a reason why gross margin at NIO is razor thin and it has more to do with low price point than low volumes in our view.
Given differences between the U.S. and China operating environment for EV makers, we believe Tesla is not a good equity valuation comp for NIO, which is basically a distributor in our view. As such, long term value drivers would most likely come from aftermarket and service revenues, while short-mid term value drivers seem elusive especially in the aftermath of the company’s decision to scrap its production plant investment plans in Shanghai.
REIT Discover is an insight series featuring under-researched and off-the-radar REITs in an attempt to identify hidden gems and gems in-the-making. In this issue, we follow up on the first China outlet mall REIT listed in Singapore, Sasseur Real Estate Investment (SASSR SP) , whose share price is down 7.5% from its IPO price of S$0.80 since its debut on 28 March 2018. Its distributable income exceeded its IPO forecast for FY2018. Annualized distribution per unit (DPU) yield for FY2018 was 9.1% based on current price. Moving forward, FY2019 DPU projection is S$0.06, translating into a DPU yield of 8.1% compared to FY2018. It is likely that the DPU for the projection years are conservative and the REIT manager will endeavour to beat the IPO forecast for FY2019 and even the annualized DPU for FY2018.
Sasseur REIT’s business model differs from other typical retail malls which lease out assets and receive rental income based on an agreed rental rate. Instead, it has structured a complex form of master lease, called the Entrusted Management Agreement (EMA), where it received a percentage of tenants’ sales turnover as the rental. As such, income generated its portfolio of properties are mainly sales-driven and hence may be unstable.
Essentially, the EMA encompasses a set of obligations that binds the sponsor to a two-year income support to Sasseur REIT in exchange for a long-term master lease which limits DPU upside. This is because a large chunk of the portfolio’s potential revenue growth will go to the sponsor.
We are not saying this is all bad; the master lease under the EMA provides income stability to the REIT given that gross revenue is sales-driven. Rather, we acknowledge the resilience of the outlet mall business model as seen from the long and successful track record of Tanger Factory Outlet Centers Inc (SKT US) in the United States and strong growth of Bailian Group’s outlet business in China. What is striking is China’s small outlet market size relatively to the mature regions despite the sheer size of its growing middle to upper-middle class population. This suggests that China’s outlet industry could grow significantly.
At 29% gearing ratio, Sasseur REIT has additional debt headroom of S$283mn to tap on its right-of-first-refusal (ROFR) pipeline of assets to grow its S$1.5bn initial portfolio. Even without inorganic growth, two of its properties, representing 43% of total portfolio valuation, are relatively new assets in their third year of operation, suggesting strong potential for growth. Sasseur REIT looks promising based its results in the last three quarters. Sasseur REIT’s premium P/NAV of 1.03x at the point of listing was surprisingly expensive given that its properties are non-prime outlet malls in China’s Tier-Two cities. P/NAV has since fallen to an attractive 0.8x.
Get Straight to the Source on Smartkarma
Smartkarma supports the world’s leading investors with high-quality, timely, and actionable Insights. Subscribe now for unlimited access, or request a demo below.
Meituan Dianping reported 4Q2018 numbers last night. As we covered the company’s IPO and lock-up expiry, we took a close look the company 4Q2018 results and listened in the conference call. While we are encouraged by the company’s strong transaction volume and revenue growth in 4Q2018, we are less bullish given the deceleration of monetization growth. We also note that the company trimmed down the details of reporting, in particular, the operation of its New Initiative segment and hence results were less transparent.
NIO’s 6-month Lock-up expires today and as of the time of this writing the stock is down by 6.6% from the closing price on Friday, March 8. The stock’s share overhang issue have been well covered on the Smartkarma platform by other analysts (see NIO Post-CBS Rally Making TSLA Valuation a Grand Bargain (Price Target =$3) , NIO (NIO US): Lock-Up Expiry – This Could Get Messy) so while we do not see a need to rehash those details in this insight, here are 3 things that we believe every NIO investor and would-be investor should keep in mind about the company especially if one wants to play the Tesla vs. NIO scenario:
Licensing/Regulatory Risk – NIO has an autonomous driving testing license but no EV manufacturing license. An EV manufacturing license issued by the NDRC is required for EV manufacturers to market and sell their products but a 100k unit scale is a main prerequisite. This is a key reason why NIO entered into a 5-year outsourcing relationship with JAC. While this relationship was assumed to be temporary, there could be many hurdles for NIO to actually obtain a license in the coming years should it decide to invest in production facilities again.
Core IP Held by Suppliers – Powertrain technology is held by CATL and the State-owned JAC is listed as the ES8’s manufacturer on the Ministry of Information and Technology website. Continental AG designs NIO’s vehicle suspension and chassis. It is also unclear how much actual development work other than exterior/cockpit design is done in-house at NIO based on publicly available information. Without scale and IP we believe NIO’s bargaining position with its suppliers is weak and displays stronger characteristics of a distributor than a final assembler.
Low ASP, low margins – NIO’s ASP on the ES8 from what we have seen was $64k per unit in 2018 and $63k per unit in 1Q19 while Tesla’s Model X ASP is about $100k per unit. There is a reason why gross margin at NIO is razor thin and it has more to do with low price point than low volumes in our view.
Given differences between the U.S. and China operating environment for EV makers, we believe Tesla is not a good equity valuation comp for NIO, which is basically a distributor in our view. As such, long term value drivers would most likely come from aftermarket and service revenues, while short-mid term value drivers seem elusive especially in the aftermath of the company’s decision to scrap its production plant investment plans in Shanghai.
REIT Discover is an insight series featuring under-researched and off-the-radar REITs in an attempt to identify hidden gems and gems in-the-making. In this issue, we follow up on the first China outlet mall REIT listed in Singapore, Sasseur Real Estate Investment (SASSR SP) , whose share price is down 7.5% from its IPO price of S$0.80 since its debut on 28 March 2018. Its distributable income exceeded its IPO forecast for FY2018. Annualized distribution per unit (DPU) yield for FY2018 was 9.1% based on current price. Moving forward, FY2019 DPU projection is S$0.06, translating into a DPU yield of 8.1% compared to FY2018. It is likely that the DPU for the projection years are conservative and the REIT manager will endeavour to beat the IPO forecast for FY2019 and even the annualized DPU for FY2018.
Sasseur REIT’s business model differs from other typical retail malls which lease out assets and receive rental income based on an agreed rental rate. Instead, it has structured a complex form of master lease, called the Entrusted Management Agreement (EMA), where it received a percentage of tenants’ sales turnover as the rental. As such, income generated its portfolio of properties are mainly sales-driven and hence may be unstable.
Essentially, the EMA encompasses a set of obligations that binds the sponsor to a two-year income support to Sasseur REIT in exchange for a long-term master lease which limits DPU upside. This is because a large chunk of the portfolio’s potential revenue growth will go to the sponsor.
We are not saying this is all bad; the master lease under the EMA provides income stability to the REIT given that gross revenue is sales-driven. Rather, we acknowledge the resilience of the outlet mall business model as seen from the long and successful track record of Tanger Factory Outlet Centers Inc (SKT US) in the United States and strong growth of Bailian Group’s outlet business in China. What is striking is China’s small outlet market size relatively to the mature regions despite the sheer size of its growing middle to upper-middle class population. This suggests that China’s outlet industry could grow significantly.
At 29% gearing ratio, Sasseur REIT has additional debt headroom of S$283mn to tap on its right-of-first-refusal (ROFR) pipeline of assets to grow its S$1.5bn initial portfolio. Even without inorganic growth, two of its properties, representing 43% of total portfolio valuation, are relatively new assets in their third year of operation, suggesting strong potential for growth. Sasseur REIT looks promising based its results in the last three quarters. Sasseur REIT’s premium P/NAV of 1.03x at the point of listing was surprisingly expensive given that its properties are non-prime outlet malls in China’s Tier-Two cities. P/NAV has since fallen to an attractive 0.8x.
In our Discover HK Connect series, we aim to help our investors understand the flow of southbound trades via the Hong Kong Connect, as analyzed by our proprietary data engine. We will discuss the stocks that experienced the most inflow and outflow by mainland investors in the past seven days.
We split the stocks eligible for the Hong Kong Connect trade into three groups: component stocks in the HSCEI index, stocks with a market capitalization between USD 1 billion and USD 5 billion, and stocks with a market capitalization between USD 500 million and USD 1 billion.
In this insight, we will highlight PICC and Xinyi Solar.
Get Straight to the Source on Smartkarma
Smartkarma supports the world’s leading investors with high-quality, timely, and actionable Insights. Subscribe now for unlimited access, or request a demo below.
Meituan Dianping reported 4Q2018 numbers last night. As we covered the company’s IPO and lock-up expiry, we took a close look the company 4Q2018 results and listened in the conference call. While we are encouraged by the company’s strong transaction volume and revenue growth in 4Q2018, we are less bullish given the deceleration of monetization growth. We also note that the company trimmed down the details of reporting, in particular, the operation of its New Initiative segment and hence results were less transparent.
NIO’s 6-month Lock-up expires today and as of the time of this writing the stock is down by 6.6% from the closing price on Friday, March 8. The stock’s share overhang issue have been well covered on the Smartkarma platform by other analysts (see NIO Post-CBS Rally Making TSLA Valuation a Grand Bargain (Price Target =$3) , NIO (NIO US): Lock-Up Expiry – This Could Get Messy) so while we do not see a need to rehash those details in this insight, here are 3 things that we believe every NIO investor and would-be investor should keep in mind about the company especially if one wants to play the Tesla vs. NIO scenario:
Licensing/Regulatory Risk – NIO has an autonomous driving testing license but no EV manufacturing license. An EV manufacturing license issued by the NDRC is required for EV manufacturers to market and sell their products but a 100k unit scale is a main prerequisite. This is a key reason why NIO entered into a 5-year outsourcing relationship with JAC. While this relationship was assumed to be temporary, there could be many hurdles for NIO to actually obtain a license in the coming years should it decide to invest in production facilities again.
Core IP Held by Suppliers – Powertrain technology is held by CATL and the State-owned JAC is listed as the ES8’s manufacturer on the Ministry of Information and Technology website. Continental AG designs NIO’s vehicle suspension and chassis. It is also unclear how much actual development work other than exterior/cockpit design is done in-house at NIO based on publicly available information. Without scale and IP we believe NIO’s bargaining position with its suppliers is weak and displays stronger characteristics of a distributor than a final assembler.
Low ASP, low margins – NIO’s ASP on the ES8 from what we have seen was $64k per unit in 2018 and $63k per unit in 1Q19 while Tesla’s Model X ASP is about $100k per unit. There is a reason why gross margin at NIO is razor thin and it has more to do with low price point than low volumes in our view.
Given differences between the U.S. and China operating environment for EV makers, we believe Tesla is not a good equity valuation comp for NIO, which is basically a distributor in our view. As such, long term value drivers would most likely come from aftermarket and service revenues, while short-mid term value drivers seem elusive especially in the aftermath of the company’s decision to scrap its production plant investment plans in Shanghai.
REIT Discover is an insight series featuring under-researched and off-the-radar REITs in an attempt to identify hidden gems and gems in-the-making. In this issue, we follow up on the first China outlet mall REIT listed in Singapore, Sasseur Real Estate Investment (SASSR SP) , whose share price is down 7.5% from its IPO price of S$0.80 since its debut on 28 March 2018. Its distributable income exceeded its IPO forecast for FY2018. Annualized distribution per unit (DPU) yield for FY2018 was 9.1% based on current price. Moving forward, FY2019 DPU projection is S$0.06, translating into a DPU yield of 8.1% compared to FY2018. It is likely that the DPU for the projection years are conservative and the REIT manager will endeavour to beat the IPO forecast for FY2019 and even the annualized DPU for FY2018.
Sasseur REIT’s business model differs from other typical retail malls which lease out assets and receive rental income based on an agreed rental rate. Instead, it has structured a complex form of master lease, called the Entrusted Management Agreement (EMA), where it received a percentage of tenants’ sales turnover as the rental. As such, income generated its portfolio of properties are mainly sales-driven and hence may be unstable.
Essentially, the EMA encompasses a set of obligations that binds the sponsor to a two-year income support to Sasseur REIT in exchange for a long-term master lease which limits DPU upside. This is because a large chunk of the portfolio’s potential revenue growth will go to the sponsor.
We are not saying this is all bad; the master lease under the EMA provides income stability to the REIT given that gross revenue is sales-driven. Rather, we acknowledge the resilience of the outlet mall business model as seen from the long and successful track record of Tanger Factory Outlet Centers Inc (SKT US) in the United States and strong growth of Bailian Group’s outlet business in China. What is striking is China’s small outlet market size relatively to the mature regions despite the sheer size of its growing middle to upper-middle class population. This suggests that China’s outlet industry could grow significantly.
At 29% gearing ratio, Sasseur REIT has additional debt headroom of S$283mn to tap on its right-of-first-refusal (ROFR) pipeline of assets to grow its S$1.5bn initial portfolio. Even without inorganic growth, two of its properties, representing 43% of total portfolio valuation, are relatively new assets in their third year of operation, suggesting strong potential for growth. Sasseur REIT looks promising based its results in the last three quarters. Sasseur REIT’s premium P/NAV of 1.03x at the point of listing was surprisingly expensive given that its properties are non-prime outlet malls in China’s Tier-Two cities. P/NAV has since fallen to an attractive 0.8x.
In our Discover HK Connect series, we aim to help our investors understand the flow of southbound trades via the Hong Kong Connect, as analyzed by our proprietary data engine. We will discuss the stocks that experienced the most inflow and outflow by mainland investors in the past seven days.
We split the stocks eligible for the Hong Kong Connect trade into three groups: component stocks in the HSCEI index, stocks with a market capitalization between USD 1 billion and USD 5 billion, and stocks with a market capitalization between USD 500 million and USD 1 billion.
In this insight, we will highlight PICC and Xinyi Solar.
Crude has been gradually reconnecting with its supply-demand fundamentals, and the impact of highly disciplined OPEC cuts just two months into the group’s production restraint deal is becoming evident in relatively stable prices. Through much of last week, crude prices firmed and stood their ground even as global stock markets were skidding.
However, oil is not completely out of the shadows of the global economic sentiment. Crude prices were whiplashed last Friday along with the equity markets as a fresh wave of gloom and doom from the European Central Bank’s downward revision of eurozone growth projections rattled investors. Earlier in the week, China set off fresh alarm bells, by officially revising down its 2019 GDP growth target to 6-6.5%, while Premier Li Keqiang warned that the country’s economy faced a “tough struggle” ahead.
Nonetheless, benchmark Brent and WTI crude futures resisted the lows plumbed during intraday trading Friday, to close marginally higher on the week. While global oil demand growth forecasts remain tentative, supply fundamentals are clearly firming. Output from 11 of OPEC’s 14 members that agreed to collectively curb output by around 812,000 b/d starting January this year almost reached 100% of the target in February.
The race to the compliance finish line was helped by Saudi Arabia, which is slashing its output way beyond its commitment. Meanwhile, the three OPEC members exempted from the latest round of production cuts — Iran, Libya and Venezuela — are also under-delivering. That amounted to OPEC-14 production plunging by around 1.7 million b/d compared with the high of last October.
OPEC will need to be careful not to over-tighten the market, as happened through the first half of last year. We believe the group will be cautious on that front, given its experience of 2018, when it was forced to make two policy U-turns in the space of six months.
Get Straight to the Source on Smartkarma
Smartkarma supports the world’s leading investors with high-quality, timely, and actionable Insights. Subscribe now for unlimited access, or request a demo below.
NIO’s 6-month Lock-up expires today and as of the time of this writing the stock is down by 6.6% from the closing price on Friday, March 8. The stock’s share overhang issue have been well covered on the Smartkarma platform by other analysts (see NIO Post-CBS Rally Making TSLA Valuation a Grand Bargain (Price Target =$3) , NIO (NIO US): Lock-Up Expiry – This Could Get Messy) so while we do not see a need to rehash those details in this insight, here are 3 things that we believe every NIO investor and would-be investor should keep in mind about the company especially if one wants to play the Tesla vs. NIO scenario:
Licensing/Regulatory Risk – NIO has an autonomous driving testing license but no EV manufacturing license. An EV manufacturing license issued by the NDRC is required for EV manufacturers to market and sell their products but a 100k unit scale is a main prerequisite. This is a key reason why NIO entered into a 5-year outsourcing relationship with JAC. While this relationship was assumed to be temporary, there could be many hurdles for NIO to actually obtain a license in the coming years should it decide to invest in production facilities again.
Core IP Held by Suppliers – Powertrain technology is held by CATL and the State-owned JAC is listed as the ES8’s manufacturer on the Ministry of Information and Technology website. Continental AG designs NIO’s vehicle suspension and chassis. It is also unclear how much actual development work other than exterior/cockpit design is done in-house at NIO based on publicly available information. Without scale and IP we believe NIO’s bargaining position with its suppliers is weak and displays stronger characteristics of a distributor than a final assembler.
Low ASP, low margins – NIO’s ASP on the ES8 from what we have seen was $64k per unit in 2018 and $63k per unit in 1Q19 while Tesla’s Model X ASP is about $100k per unit. There is a reason why gross margin at NIO is razor thin and it has more to do with low price point than low volumes in our view.
Given differences between the U.S. and China operating environment for EV makers, we believe Tesla is not a good equity valuation comp for NIO, which is basically a distributor in our view. As such, long term value drivers would most likely come from aftermarket and service revenues, while short-mid term value drivers seem elusive especially in the aftermath of the company’s decision to scrap its production plant investment plans in Shanghai.
REIT Discover is an insight series featuring under-researched and off-the-radar REITs in an attempt to identify hidden gems and gems in-the-making. In this issue, we follow up on the first China outlet mall REIT listed in Singapore, Sasseur Real Estate Investment (SASSR SP) , whose share price is down 7.5% from its IPO price of S$0.80 since its debut on 28 March 2018. Its distributable income exceeded its IPO forecast for FY2018. Annualized distribution per unit (DPU) yield for FY2018 was 9.1% based on current price. Moving forward, FY2019 DPU projection is S$0.06, translating into a DPU yield of 8.1% compared to FY2018. It is likely that the DPU for the projection years are conservative and the REIT manager will endeavour to beat the IPO forecast for FY2019 and even the annualized DPU for FY2018.
Sasseur REIT’s business model differs from other typical retail malls which lease out assets and receive rental income based on an agreed rental rate. Instead, it has structured a complex form of master lease, called the Entrusted Management Agreement (EMA), where it received a percentage of tenants’ sales turnover as the rental. As such, income generated its portfolio of properties are mainly sales-driven and hence may be unstable.
Essentially, the EMA encompasses a set of obligations that binds the sponsor to a two-year income support to Sasseur REIT in exchange for a long-term master lease which limits DPU upside. This is because a large chunk of the portfolio’s potential revenue growth will go to the sponsor.
We are not saying this is all bad; the master lease under the EMA provides income stability to the REIT given that gross revenue is sales-driven. Rather, we acknowledge the resilience of the outlet mall business model as seen from the long and successful track record of Tanger Factory Outlet Centers Inc (SKT US) in the United States and strong growth of Bailian Group’s outlet business in China. What is striking is China’s small outlet market size relatively to the mature regions despite the sheer size of its growing middle to upper-middle class population. This suggests that China’s outlet industry could grow significantly.
At 29% gearing ratio, Sasseur REIT has additional debt headroom of S$283mn to tap on its right-of-first-refusal (ROFR) pipeline of assets to grow its S$1.5bn initial portfolio. Even without inorganic growth, two of its properties, representing 43% of total portfolio valuation, are relatively new assets in their third year of operation, suggesting strong potential for growth. Sasseur REIT looks promising based its results in the last three quarters. Sasseur REIT’s premium P/NAV of 1.03x at the point of listing was surprisingly expensive given that its properties are non-prime outlet malls in China’s Tier-Two cities. P/NAV has since fallen to an attractive 0.8x.
In our Discover HK Connect series, we aim to help our investors understand the flow of southbound trades via the Hong Kong Connect, as analyzed by our proprietary data engine. We will discuss the stocks that experienced the most inflow and outflow by mainland investors in the past seven days.
We split the stocks eligible for the Hong Kong Connect trade into three groups: component stocks in the HSCEI index, stocks with a market capitalization between USD 1 billion and USD 5 billion, and stocks with a market capitalization between USD 500 million and USD 1 billion.
In this insight, we will highlight PICC and Xinyi Solar.
Crude has been gradually reconnecting with its supply-demand fundamentals, and the impact of highly disciplined OPEC cuts just two months into the group’s production restraint deal is becoming evident in relatively stable prices. Through much of last week, crude prices firmed and stood their ground even as global stock markets were skidding.
However, oil is not completely out of the shadows of the global economic sentiment. Crude prices were whiplashed last Friday along with the equity markets as a fresh wave of gloom and doom from the European Central Bank’s downward revision of eurozone growth projections rattled investors. Earlier in the week, China set off fresh alarm bells, by officially revising down its 2019 GDP growth target to 6-6.5%, while Premier Li Keqiang warned that the country’s economy faced a “tough struggle” ahead.
Nonetheless, benchmark Brent and WTI crude futures resisted the lows plumbed during intraday trading Friday, to close marginally higher on the week. While global oil demand growth forecasts remain tentative, supply fundamentals are clearly firming. Output from 11 of OPEC’s 14 members that agreed to collectively curb output by around 812,000 b/d starting January this year almost reached 100% of the target in February.
The race to the compliance finish line was helped by Saudi Arabia, which is slashing its output way beyond its commitment. Meanwhile, the three OPEC members exempted from the latest round of production cuts — Iran, Libya and Venezuela — are also under-delivering. That amounted to OPEC-14 production plunging by around 1.7 million b/d compared with the high of last October.
OPEC will need to be careful not to over-tighten the market, as happened through the first half of last year. We believe the group will be cautious on that front, given its experience of 2018, when it was forced to make two policy U-turns in the space of six months.
Haidilao International, the largest Chinese cuisine player by valuation, was listed on September 26th last year and lock-up expiry will be on March 26th. The stock has returned 24% since listing.
As it heads into lock-up expiry, we will examine Haidilao’s shareholder structure and potential shares up for sale.
Haidilao was included in the Hong Kong Connect Scheme on December 10th, 2018 and shares held by mainland investors have been consistently increasing.
But we think Haidilao’s valuation has built in a perfect growth scenario.
Risk of de-rating for Haidilao warrants a short position.
Smartkarma supports the world’s leading investors with high-quality, timely, and actionable Insights. Subscribe now for unlimited access, or request a demo below.
Tesla Motors (TSLA US) has changed its mind, again, and now reportedly is putting on hold plans to close hundreds of its mostly newly opened stores and lay off thousands more employees–at least until the end of the month.
Employees, customers, suppliers, and investors still are reeling over Tesla’s startling decision, announced February 28th, to move immediately to online-only sales, a dramatic reversal of strategy still in place as of the 2018 10-K filing on February 19th in which the company had touted growth via recent store expansions and substantial additions planned globally going forward.
Tesla explained that even with now three substantial price cuts on all its cars and now three significant layoffs since last summer, it must slash costs even more to support the launch of its long overdue $35,000 base version of the flagship Model 3 (see my report Tesla’s New Plan: Buy Before You Try).
I warned clients that Tesla’s stunning strategy reversal seemed driven more by alarming cash consumption plus much weaker than expected sales and profit margins already apparent in what is shaping up to be a disastrous first quarter–troubling trends that may continue. However, as I noted, it also costs money to close stores, get out of leases (good luck with that), fire employees and redistribute remaining staff, and sell off fairly new equipment at steep losses.
Tesla probably hasn’t seen the light–it’s just received as of March 1st a desperately needed cash infusion by finally securing overdue funding for Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory 3 which has been under construction since January (see Tesla – Shanghai Surprise). Unfortunately, the four banks in Tesla’s new “China Loan Agreement,” which the company announced on Thursday with a rare 8-K filing, committed only to fund a one-year limited purpose loan for up to 3.5 billion yuan ($521 million). This is barely enough time or cash to get the Shanghai assembly plant up and running–much less also stave off the current cash crunch.
But Tesla must keep up appearances as well as bolster its liquidity through at least the end of the quarter as it gets ready to reveal Thursday evening the long-awaited Model Y–though I suspect this won’t result in a massive burst of cash from new reservations as Tesla hopes.
Years of robbing Peter to pay Paul hasn’t produced a sustainable growth model for Tesla, mostly because its business strategy still is better described as, “Wow, we didn’t see that coming.”
I’ll see you and raise you: Huawei sues Washington
In my weekly digest China News That Matters, I will give you selected summaries, sourced from a variety of local Chinese-language and international news outlets, and highlight why I think the news is significant. These posts are meant to neither be bullish nor bearish, but help you separate the signal from the noise.
Meituan Dianping (3690 HK)‘s shares currently trade 18% below its IPO price of HK$69.00 per share. Meituan will announce its 4Q18 results on Monday, 11 March 2019, after market close. Notably, Meituan’s six-month lock-up period expires on 19 March 2019.
We believe that should Meituan deliver a strong 4Q18; it will likely not experience Xiaomi Corp (1810 HK)’s share price collapse after the end of its six-month lock-up period.
Gross capital flows lead World shipping activity by 4 months
Capital flows have been slowly rising since June 2018: in February they jumped
Reinforces out pro-Asia and pro-China investment message
Get Straight to the Source on Smartkarma
Smartkarma supports the world’s leading investors with high-quality, timely, and actionable Insights. Subscribe now for unlimited access, or request a demo below.
REIT Discover is an insight series featuring under-researched and off-the-radar REITs in an attempt to identify hidden gems and gems in-the-making. In this issue, we follow up on the first China outlet mall REIT listed in Singapore, Sasseur Real Estate Investment (SASSR SP) , whose share price is down 7.5% from its IPO price of S$0.80 since its debut on 28 March 2018. Its distributable income exceeded its IPO forecast for FY2018. Annualized distribution per unit (DPU) yield for FY2018 was 9.1% based on current price. Moving forward, FY2019 DPU projection is S$0.06, translating into a DPU yield of 8.1% compared to FY2018. It is likely that the DPU for the projection years are conservative and the REIT manager will endeavour to beat the IPO forecast for FY2019 and even the annualized DPU for FY2018.
Sasseur REIT’s business model differs from other typical retail malls which lease out assets and receive rental income based on an agreed rental rate. Instead, it has structured a complex form of master lease, called the Entrusted Management Agreement (EMA), where it received a percentage of tenants’ sales turnover as the rental. As such, income generated its portfolio of properties are mainly sales-driven and hence may be unstable.
Essentially, the EMA encompasses a set of obligations that binds the sponsor to a two-year income support to Sasseur REIT in exchange for a long-term master lease which limits DPU upside. This is because a large chunk of the portfolio’s potential revenue growth will go to the sponsor.
We are not saying this is all bad; the master lease under the EMA provides income stability to the REIT given that gross revenue is sales-driven. Rather, we acknowledge the resilience of the outlet mall business model as seen from the long and successful track record of Tanger Factory Outlet Centers Inc (SKT US) in the United States and strong growth of Bailian Group’s outlet business in China. What is striking is China’s small outlet market size relatively to the mature regions despite the sheer size of its growing middle to upper-middle class population. This suggests that China’s outlet industry could grow significantly.
At 29% gearing ratio, Sasseur REIT has additional debt headroom of S$283mn to tap on its right-of-first-refusal (ROFR) pipeline of assets to grow its S$1.5bn initial portfolio. Even without inorganic growth, two of its properties, representing 43% of total portfolio valuation, are relatively new assets in their third year of operation, suggesting strong potential for growth. Sasseur REIT looks promising based its results in the last three quarters. Sasseur REIT’s premium P/NAV of 1.03x at the point of listing was surprisingly expensive given that its properties are non-prime outlet malls in China’s Tier-Two cities. P/NAV has since fallen to an attractive 0.8x.
In our Discover HK Connect series, we aim to help our investors understand the flow of southbound trades via the Hong Kong Connect, as analyzed by our proprietary data engine. We will discuss the stocks that experienced the most inflow and outflow by mainland investors in the past seven days.
We split the stocks eligible for the Hong Kong Connect trade into three groups: component stocks in the HSCEI index, stocks with a market capitalization between USD 1 billion and USD 5 billion, and stocks with a market capitalization between USD 500 million and USD 1 billion.
In this insight, we will highlight PICC and Xinyi Solar.
Crude has been gradually reconnecting with its supply-demand fundamentals, and the impact of highly disciplined OPEC cuts just two months into the group’s production restraint deal is becoming evident in relatively stable prices. Through much of last week, crude prices firmed and stood their ground even as global stock markets were skidding.
However, oil is not completely out of the shadows of the global economic sentiment. Crude prices were whiplashed last Friday along with the equity markets as a fresh wave of gloom and doom from the European Central Bank’s downward revision of eurozone growth projections rattled investors. Earlier in the week, China set off fresh alarm bells, by officially revising down its 2019 GDP growth target to 6-6.5%, while Premier Li Keqiang warned that the country’s economy faced a “tough struggle” ahead.
Nonetheless, benchmark Brent and WTI crude futures resisted the lows plumbed during intraday trading Friday, to close marginally higher on the week. While global oil demand growth forecasts remain tentative, supply fundamentals are clearly firming. Output from 11 of OPEC’s 14 members that agreed to collectively curb output by around 812,000 b/d starting January this year almost reached 100% of the target in February.
The race to the compliance finish line was helped by Saudi Arabia, which is slashing its output way beyond its commitment. Meanwhile, the three OPEC members exempted from the latest round of production cuts — Iran, Libya and Venezuela — are also under-delivering. That amounted to OPEC-14 production plunging by around 1.7 million b/d compared with the high of last October.
OPEC will need to be careful not to over-tighten the market, as happened through the first half of last year. We believe the group will be cautious on that front, given its experience of 2018, when it was forced to make two policy U-turns in the space of six months.
Haidilao International, the largest Chinese cuisine player by valuation, was listed on September 26th last year and lock-up expiry will be on March 26th. The stock has returned 24% since listing.
As it heads into lock-up expiry, we will examine Haidilao’s shareholder structure and potential shares up for sale.
Haidilao was included in the Hong Kong Connect Scheme on December 10th, 2018 and shares held by mainland investors have been consistently increasing.
But we think Haidilao’s valuation has built in a perfect growth scenario.
Risk of de-rating for Haidilao warrants a short position.
Futu Holdings Ltd (FHL US)‘s IPO was priced at the top-end at US$12/ADS raising a total of US$160m, including the US$70m raised from General Atlantic via a concurrent private placement.
In my earlier insights, I looked at the company’s background, past financial performance, scored the deal on our IPO framework and compared it to Tiger Brokers:
In this insight, I will re-visit some of the deal dynamics, comment on share price drivers and provide a table with implied valuations.
Get Straight to the Source on Smartkarma
Smartkarma supports the world’s leading investors with high-quality, timely, and actionable Insights. Subscribe now for unlimited access, or request a demo below.
In our Discover HK Connect series, we aim to help our investors understand the flow of southbound trades via the Hong Kong Connect, as analyzed by our proprietary data engine. We will discuss the stocks that experienced the most inflow and outflow by mainland investors in the past seven days.
We split the stocks eligible for the Hong Kong Connect trade into three groups: component stocks in the HSCEI index, stocks with a market capitalization between USD 1 billion and USD 5 billion, and stocks with a market capitalization between USD 500 million and USD 1 billion.
In this insight, we will highlight PICC and Xinyi Solar.
Crude has been gradually reconnecting with its supply-demand fundamentals, and the impact of highly disciplined OPEC cuts just two months into the group’s production restraint deal is becoming evident in relatively stable prices. Through much of last week, crude prices firmed and stood their ground even as global stock markets were skidding.
However, oil is not completely out of the shadows of the global economic sentiment. Crude prices were whiplashed last Friday along with the equity markets as a fresh wave of gloom and doom from the European Central Bank’s downward revision of eurozone growth projections rattled investors. Earlier in the week, China set off fresh alarm bells, by officially revising down its 2019 GDP growth target to 6-6.5%, while Premier Li Keqiang warned that the country’s economy faced a “tough struggle” ahead.
Nonetheless, benchmark Brent and WTI crude futures resisted the lows plumbed during intraday trading Friday, to close marginally higher on the week. While global oil demand growth forecasts remain tentative, supply fundamentals are clearly firming. Output from 11 of OPEC’s 14 members that agreed to collectively curb output by around 812,000 b/d starting January this year almost reached 100% of the target in February.
The race to the compliance finish line was helped by Saudi Arabia, which is slashing its output way beyond its commitment. Meanwhile, the three OPEC members exempted from the latest round of production cuts — Iran, Libya and Venezuela — are also under-delivering. That amounted to OPEC-14 production plunging by around 1.7 million b/d compared with the high of last October.
OPEC will need to be careful not to over-tighten the market, as happened through the first half of last year. We believe the group will be cautious on that front, given its experience of 2018, when it was forced to make two policy U-turns in the space of six months.
Haidilao International, the largest Chinese cuisine player by valuation, was listed on September 26th last year and lock-up expiry will be on March 26th. The stock has returned 24% since listing.
As it heads into lock-up expiry, we will examine Haidilao’s shareholder structure and potential shares up for sale.
Haidilao was included in the Hong Kong Connect Scheme on December 10th, 2018 and shares held by mainland investors have been consistently increasing.
But we think Haidilao’s valuation has built in a perfect growth scenario.
Risk of de-rating for Haidilao warrants a short position.
Futu Holdings Ltd (FHL US)‘s IPO was priced at the top-end at US$12/ADS raising a total of US$160m, including the US$70m raised from General Atlantic via a concurrent private placement.
In my earlier insights, I looked at the company’s background, past financial performance, scored the deal on our IPO framework and compared it to Tiger Brokers:
In this insight, we will update on the deal dynamics, implied valuation, and include a valuation sensitivity table.
Get Straight to the Source on Smartkarma
Smartkarma supports the world’s leading investors with high-quality, timely, and actionable Insights. Subscribe now for unlimited access, or request a demo below.
