Daily Brief Financials: Swire Pacific (B), Jafco Co Ltd, Futu Holdings Ltd, Hana Financial, First Pacific Co, Ethereum, Bitcoin Pro and more

• In August this year, Swire Pacific started a buyback programme for up to HK$4.0 billion worth of their shares (Swire Pacific (A) (19 HK) | Swire Pacific (B) (87 HK)).
• The shares went up. And B briefly outperformed A, but since then, the B/A ratio has fallen and my impression was Swire may have been misinterpreting the buyback rules.
• Swire had been buying both every day. But they’ve been Buying Bs but no As for the last ten days in a row. This begs a few questions.

• Jafco Co Ltd (8595 JP) and Murakami have reached an agreement on a revised tender offer for 16.8 million shares (23.60% of outstanding shares) at JPY2,500 per share. 
• The revised tender offer’s primary purpose remains to facilitate Murakami to tender his 19.53% shareholding at the expense of other shareholders and the misallocation of JPY42 billion (tender cost).
• The justification for the transaction is weak as most of the benefits could have been achieved without it. This calls into question the Board’s ability to enhance value.

• Futu Holdings Ltd (FUTU US) will Dual Primary list on the HKEX (388 HK) by Way of Introduction and the stock is expected to start trading on 30 December.
• Following the changes to the handling of Dual-Primary-listed companies, Futu Holdings Ltd (FUTU US) should be added to the Hang Seng Tech Index (HSTECH INDEX) at the March rebalance.
• Futu Holdings Ltd (FUTU US) should also be added to the HSCI at the March rebalance and should be added to Southbound Stock Connect late July/ early August.

• The all-inclusive CGT will be implemented in 2025. The current partial capital gains tax will be maintained until 2024. And the STT will drop from 0.23% to 0.15% in 2024.
• The critical cause of an arb opportunity on ex-date price correction+dividend yield has been the yearend selling flow on T-1 ex-date for the purpose of tax avoidance by majority shareholders.
• So, from this year to 2024, we should keep an eye on this arbitrage opportunity, which will continue to arise.

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. Kawasan Industri Jababeka
2. China South City
3. China Jinmao Holdings
4. Guangzhou R&F Properties
5. Sunac China Holdings

and more…

Is there still hope for Crypto in 2023? In the next webinar, we speak with Insight Provider Edward Wu on just that, as he shares with us the landscape of the Crypto industry in 2023. From the problems with the current crypto industry, to Ethereum Layer 2 solutions, Edward will share with us his thoughts in this next episode of our Webinar Wednesdays. Have any burning questions about Crypto, DeFi trading or Ethereum Layer 2 solutions? Get them answered in the live Q&A that will conclude the session. 

The webinar will be hosted on Wednesday, 4 January 2023, 17:00 SGT/HKT.

Edward Wu is an experienced financial professional with strong research experience in macroeconomics, credit as well as corporate banking. He is a true believer in the future of Crypto/DeFi and foresee widely adoption of tokenization of real-world assets. He is currently actively researching in the crypto field, mainly focused on DeFi, DAO governance, and tokenomic design.

• Some people think of crypto as purely an investment opportunity. A highly volatile asset class that comes with risk, but eventually the returns will be worth it.
• However, this perception is somewhat naive, as it ignores one of crypto’s biggest use cases: financial freedom.
• The concept of financial freedom is hard to grasp for the privileged of us living in Europe or the US – despite record levels of inflation, we are not financially oppressed, and we can bank on our savings being relatively intact next year.