In this briefing:
- Business Happenings in the Americas that May Be “Below the Radar” – Week Ending January 17, 2019
- The Burden of Too Big Government
- Xiaomi (1810 HK): Dead Money
- Ping An No Longer the Safe Haven – Call for New Lows in Progress
- Meituan Dianping: Core Business Progress Toward Profitability an Overlooked Story?
1. Business Happenings in the Americas that May Be “Below the Radar” – Week Ending January 17, 2019
Highlights of significant recent happenings include:
- Substantive Deep Dive – Canada’s BlackBerry Ltd (BB CN) seeks to be the go-to provider of web Security: Why we believe investors should look at Blackberry as a way to hedge their exposures to the increasing list of companies who are susceptible to adverse impact from security breaches.
- Feeding the Dragon – Chinese buying of US firms brakes abruptly, obliterating the long-term trend, and now Japan has become the second-largest market for outbound M&A globally. Also, South Korean food giant Cj Cheiljedang (097950 KS) is continuing its aggressive expansion into the U.S. market
- Local News on Global Companies – Kroger Co (KR US) and Microsoft Corp (MSFT US) take on Amazon.com Inc (AMZN US) with digital grocery store experiment. “Wal Mart Stores (WMT US) plans to have enough online grocery pickup sites to cover 69% of U.S. households by the end of this month. Alphabet Inc Cl C (GOOG US)‘s proposes a “software-defined network” which is a new method of accessing the internet by removing the need for home routers, for the new Toronto neighbourhood it is planning. Mining companies are cutting back operations in largest coal region in the U.S., and Berkshire Hathaway Inc Cl A (BRK/A US), and Union Pacific (UNP US) will be adversely impacted.
2. The Burden of Too Big Government
From our very own “Austrian” Leigh Skene:
Wars in old times were made to get slaves. The modern implement of imposing slavery is debt. Ezra Pound
Governments used public sector balance sheets to bail out private financial institutions and assist private companies to emerge from bankruptcy in the GFC. These actions transferred credit risk from the private to the public sector, yet falling nominal interest rates minimised, and in some cases froze, the cost of servicing the mounting government debt until late 2016. Since then, many borrowers have paid rising interest rates on increasing amounts of debt. Debt service charges are rising faster than nominal GDP in a growing number of nations as a result. It is estimated that the US federal funding requirement will rise from minus US$ 700bn to US$ 2tr in 2022.
3. Xiaomi (1810 HK): Dead Money
Xiaomi Corp (1810 HK)’s shares are around 43% below the IPO price partly due to the recent well-documented selling of shares following the end of a lock-up period. Ultimately, every share has a “right” value and the investors buying into the recent share placement presumably have the view that the shares are attractive at current levels.
While there is no longer a strong case to sell the shares at current levels, we do not recommend diving head first to buy the shares due to limited upside, potentially worsening market outlook and ongoing share overhang from lockup expiry.
4. Ping An No Longer the Safe Haven – Call for New Lows in Progress
68.30 long entry was recommended to close at the 77-80 area with 80 acting as the macro bull/bear line in our insight Ping An Long Pair Working – Risk of New Lows . The rejection call at 80 was expected to usher in selling pressure to press on new lows.
Ping An’s safe haven status has evaporated and does exhibit future vulnerabilities in HK’s underlying cycle (late Q1 into Q2). In our last insight we outlined that Ping An shows increasing risk that its safer have position will come under pressure and so it has.
New lows are still targeted. The current bounce is knocking on formidable resistance that should be used to sell stale long positions or even take a short bet.
5. Meituan Dianping: Core Business Progress Toward Profitability an Overlooked Story?
- Our deep-dive segment profitability analysis reveals that Meituan Dianping’s (3690 HK) core business (combined food delivery and in-store, hotel & travel) has made good progress toward profitability.
- The ballooning consolidated operating losses mainly stem from new initiatives (particularly car hailing and Mobike).
- Furthermore, lower S&M expenses to sales ratio plus food delivery’s higher take rate suggests that competition with Ele.me is more manageable than anticipated.
- Our SOTP yields intrinsic value of HK$61.07/share, that represents 37% upside potential.
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