Daily Brief Energy/Materials: Hunan Changyuan Lico, Rubicon Ltd and more

• STAR 50 Index is a tech-focused, blue-chip index in Mainland China which tracks the top 50 largest and most liquid names in the STAR market of the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
• In this insight, we take a look at our expectations for potential ADDs and DELs for the STAR 50 index during the March 2024 index rebal event.
• There could be up to four index changes. Some of these are high-conviction changes and some are low-conviction changes.

ArborGen’s H124 results highlighted contrasting trading conditions with challenges in the US offset by a strong performance from Brazil. However, despite the short-term issues, ArborGen remains in prime position to address increasing demand for its seedlings and to continue investment in genetic improvement to drive the switch to sales of higher-value, higher-margin seedlings in both markets. While this process plays out, underlying EBIT is set to increase fivefold in the next two years as we expect gross margins to return to and then exceed historical levels. However, the recent US weakness has led us to trim our DCF valuation from NZ$0.49/share to NZ$0.44, still implying material upside.