Daily Brief Consumer: Seven & I Holdings, Wynn Macau Ltd, Rakuten Inc, Starbucks Corp, Midea Group Co Ltd A, Yum! Brands Inc, Estee Lauder Companies Cl A, Comcast Corp Class A and more

• Earlier today, Seven & I Holdings (3382 JP)’s board decided to sell the underperforming department store business Sogo Seibu to the SoftBank Group controlled Fortress Investment Group for around ¥200bn.
• The sale of Sogo & Seibu looks like a positive development from all angles, but it could be already priced in as the rumours were there from February 2022 onwards.
• Meanwhile, there are downside risks to Seven & I shares in the short term from falling gas prices and rising inflation in the US.

Lucror Analytics Weekly Wraps provide an overview of all Morning Views comments and reports published by our analyst team in the past week, and also showcase a list of the most-read reports.

In this Insight:

1. China Jinmao Holdings
2. Guangzhou R&F Properties
3. Sunac China Holdings
4. Evergrande
5. Central China Real Estate

and more…

• Financial results were largely as expected with good news in fintech on a return to double-digit revenue growth but continued steep losses in mobile
• Mobile subscriptions fell by 280K (-9% over two quarters) as users of free plans churned off keeping YoY growth to 2%
• The company is keen on the potential once platinum band spectrum is available but that is up to two years away

• While the world moves on from the events of 2020 and the pandemic fades through the rear-view mirror, a cluster of fallout still clings to Starbucks, the world’s largest coffee retailer.
• The operational stress of the pandemic, as well as concerns over in-store safety1 , catalysed demand for unionisation in the company’s most integral market, the United States.
• Since the first store won its union vote in Buffalo, New York, in December 2021, over 330 stores in 38 states have filed for an election, yielding more than 250 successfully unionised stores.

• Inside is a recap of movements in the last week relating to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange -Shanghai and Shenzhen Northbound Connect facilities, broken down by company and industry.
• Overall, net inflowover the past week was ~US$0.26bn, split between Shanghai (+US$0.08bn) and Shenzhen (+US$0.18bn).
• The largest inflows were into Midea Group (000333 CH) and Shenzhen Mindray Bio-Medical Electronics (300760 CH). The largest outflows were in China Yangtze Power  (600900 CH) and Kweichow (600519 CH).

• Yum Brands’ stock has been on a solid upward trajectory off-late after the company reported an impressive top-line growth this quarter.
• Even though it missed out on earnings, the company achieved a 10% system sales increase, supported by 6% unit growth and 5% same-store sales growth which did drive positive sentiment in the markets.
• KFC did an excellent job of accelerating transaction growth through its omnichannel strategy, which helped to improve comps sequentially from the previous quarter.

• Estee Lauder has shown some reversal in the past few days despite delivering a mixed set of results.
• Besides, 13 brands had organic growth, growing by high single digits to account for more than half of their organic sales.
• Overall, we remain neutral on Estee Lauder and maintain our ‘Hold’ rating with a revised target price.

• Comcast delivered an all-around beat in its recent results and its performance in its Cable Communications business in the third quarter remained impressive.
• However, it operates in a turbulent business environment in terms of increased competition from the new entrants as well as depressed move activity.
• Comcast has recently unveiled an ambitious broadband initiative promising to pass 50 million businesses and homes with the combination of Wi-Fi and 10G-enabled broadband by 2025.