China

Brief China: Futu Holdings IPO Trading Update – Might Be Trading a Little Too High and more

In this briefing:

  1. Futu Holdings IPO Trading Update – Might Be Trading a Little Too High
  2. New Century Hotel (浙江開元酒店) Trading Update – Low Free Float, Poor Liquidity
  3. Tesla’s Plan B 2.0; Y Not
  4. National People’s Congress/Political Loyalty/Trade War/Huawei Sues

1. Futu Holdings IPO Trading Update – Might Be Trading a Little Too High

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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.

2. New Century Hotel (浙江開元酒店) Trading Update – Low Free Float, Poor Liquidity

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Zhejiang New Century Hotel Management Group (1158 HK) (NCH) raised about US$136m at HK$16.50 per share, just slightly below the mid point of its IPO price range. We have previously covered the IPO in:

In this insight, we will update on the deal dynamics, implied valuation, and include a valuation sensitivity table.

3. Tesla’s Plan B 2.0; Y Not

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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.

Not to mention that shiny new Tesla stores suddenly going dark may appear ominously similar to retail stores going out of business seen increasingly all over the country–a bad look for Tesla, especially given customers already are spooked by its escalating quality, reliability, and service problems (see “Musk and Weird Q3 Developments Are Driving Investors to Telsa’s Rivals” and “Tesla – Dave’s Not Here, and Musk Won’t Leave” and “Tesla: Down to the Wire” and Tesla – Truth and Consequences).

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.”

Continue reading for Bond Angle analysis.

4. National People’s Congress/Political Loyalty/Trade War/Huawei Sues

China News That Matters

  • Still faster than most of the world
  • Stick with Xi, if y’know what’s good for ya
  • Trade deficit grows as war drags on 
  • 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.

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