Original link: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1800
Ali returns to growth
Alibaba, which is undergoing reorganization, delivered a performance that exceeded market expectations. In the fiscal quarter ending in June, Alibaba’s revenue, profits, and number of users resumed growth in an all-round way, and with the official announcement of expanding investment, it has better controlled costs and expenses.
- Total revenue was 207.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.2%;
- Taotian Group’s revenue was 114.9 billion yuan, an increase of 12%. Among them, customer management revenue (commission and advertising revenue) was 79.6 billion yuan, an increase of 10%;
- The gross profit is 91.8 billion yuan, and the profit rate is 39.21%;
- The R&D, sales and administrative expense ratio was about 19%, compared with about 23% in the same period last year, which brought the quarterly operating profit margin to 18.15%, the highest since 2021;
- Daily active users grew 6.5% year-over-year.
In the second quarter of this year, China’s online retail sales of physical goods grew by about 12% year-on-year. Alibaba’s e-commerce business has finally caught up with the broader market. The price was that Taotian Group’s adjusted profit margin (EBITA) fell slightly to 42.9% from 44.1% in the same period last year.
Dai Shan, CEO of Taotian Group, said at the performance meeting that the slow recovery of China’s economy and the gradual increase in the penetration rate of online retail have driven Alibaba’s performance recovery. Seeing that users’ demand for cost-effectiveness and participation is getting higher and higher, so 618 attracts many young people to actively visit and buy.”
Regarding the decline in profit margins, Dai Shan said that the company is closely related to the macro economy and the competition situation. For the greater uncertainty and volatility in the future, capacity building is even more critical. Resolute investment in growth, user experience improvement, merchant business improvement, and merchant service improvement… Today’s investment will definitely bring greater room for growth in revenue and profits in the future.”
Aliyun’s revenue in the current quarter only increased by 4%. Zhang Yong, chairman and CEO of Cloud Intelligence Group, said at the performance meeting that the resumption of offline activities will have an impact on online business, and gave examples of the return of demand for online video, remote work and distance learning. , leading to a decline in traffic demand. He also said declining revenue from top clients was another major impact.
But Zhang Yong believes that the growth opportunities driven by artificial intelligence services have just begun. He said that last quarter, Alibaba Cloud received strong demand for large-scale model training. Using Alibaba Cloud’s low-cost, high-performance infrastructure… not only for our own use, but also for our partners to fine-tune our basic model.” (Gong Fangyi)
Cheung Kong sells property at 20% discount, but not bearish on Hong Kong property market
Last weekend, Cheung Kong’s new real estate in Hong Kong launched hundreds of residential units. The average price is about 17% lower than that of the surrounding second-hand housing, and the cheapest is 23% lower.
People in the industry disagree, pointing out that there are many reasons for this price cut, including the material design, the sea view of the real estate may be blocked by new high-rise buildings, and so on. In March this year, Cheung Kong’s another new property in Hong Kong was released at a price 17% lower than last year. At that time, the chairman of Cheung Kong, Li Zeju, responded, “Fortunately, there were not too many real estate projects added when the land price was high in the past few years.” He also said, “If you have the opportunity to buy cheap land, why not sell it cheaper.” Partially responded to sell-off rumors.
This can well reflect the business style of his father Li Ka-shing, “sell high and buy low” and “do not earn the last copper coin”-in 2013, when Li Ka-shing responded to the “divestment theory”, he called this his “principle of life”. He also mentioned at the time that we should be highly alert to the economic development cycle and business return conditions and make flexible adjustments.
This is true from the bottom-selling Hong Kong property market in 1967, the low-cost takeover of Hutchison Matheson in the late 1970s, the acquisition of oil assets while oil prices plummeted in 1986, and the acquisition of a large amount of land in the Mainland against the trend a few years later. This is also where he was later criticized by people outside the business community.
Since 2010, Li Ka-shing’s companies have rarely acquired land in the mainland, and have successively sold at least 6 commercial real estates located in high-line cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and also sold Hong Kong’s top office building Central Center. Roughly calculated, the funds returned exceeded 80 billion Hong Kong dollars .
At the same time, after the financial crisis in 2008, Li Ka-shing invested at least hundreds of billions of Hong Kong dollars in Europe, and spent more than 200 billion Hong Kong dollars in acquisitions in the UK alone. Base stations, telecom licenses, the second largest mobile telecom operator, natural gas companies, high-end office buildings, the largest chain of bars, etc.
Comparing the two, there is a “divestment” controversy. However, after reviewing the company’s financial reports, “Lawan Finance” found that Li Ka-shing’s investment landscape has not changed qualitatively since at least 2015.
At present, the Li Ka-shing family has two major listed companies: Cheung Kong and Cheung Hutchison. The former is mainly engaged in real estate, including residential development, property leasing, etc., while the latter covers retail, ports, infrastructure, telecommunications, and medicine, with different business logics.
The focus of residential development and commercial real estate has always been in the Mainland and Hong Kong. The value of assets other than real estate in Hong Kong has declined, but it is still the home of the Li family, covering almost all businesses. Ports, infrastructure, telecommunications, energy and other basic projects have always been dominated by Europe, and the proportion has expanded. In recent years, there has also been a trend of development to the Middle East and Africa. The retail business is actively expanding in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
In terms of housing development, most of the income comes from the Mainland and Hong Kong. The biggest change in recent years is the decline in income and the reversal of the proportion of the two places. In 2015, Cheung Kong’s property sales (mainly residential) revenue was 40.3 billion Hong Kong dollars, and the mainland accounted for about 60%. By 2022, revenue will drop to 23 billion Hong Kong dollars, of which mainland revenue will drop by about 70%, and the proportion will drop to about one-third.
However, the current business is still mainly in China (Mainland and Hong Kong). The financial report shows that the number of properties under development and to be developed (mainly residential) decreased from 33 in 2015 to 12 in mainland China, 15 in Hong Kong, China, and increased from 3 to 4 overseas, still located in Singapore and the United Kingdom .
Cheung Kong has rarely acquired new land in the Mainland in recent years, but has become active again in Hong Kong. Since 2021, with the decline of land prices in Hong Kong, Cheung Kong has successively auctioned multiple land plots, investing more than 30 billion Hong Kong dollars in two years. The land price of a residential land auctioned at the end of last year exceeded 60,000 Hong Kong dollars per square meter, compared with the previous three. The average annual price is 50% to 70% lower.
In terms of commercial real estate, although there have been news of sales from time to time in the Mainland and Hong Kong in recent years, the business is generally growing. In 2022, Cheung Kong’s property leasing and hotel-related business revenue will be nearly HK$8 billion, nearly double that of 2015.
The financial report shows that among Cheung Kong’s investment or self-use properties (mainly office buildings, shopping malls, and hotels), there are 30 in Hong Kong and 7 in the Mainland, including Shanghai Westgate Plaza, Shanghai Kerry Everbright City, and Beijing Great Wall Hotel. Stablize. Overseas increased from 1 to 3, with locations shifting from the Bahamas to the UK and Ireland.
In addition to real estate, Li Ka-shing’s assets are moving to Europe, Australia and other regions. As mentioned above, CK Hutchison continues to invest in telecommunications, electricity, energy, ports, and retail in Europe, develops infrastructure, energy, and terminals in Canada, and mainly invests in energy in Australia. In addition to acquisitions, it also continues to upgrade and expand existing businesses.
In 2022, CKH Holdings’ total assets in Europe will reach 420.8 billion Hong Kong dollars, an increase of nearly 100 billion Hong Kong dollars compared with 2016. During the same period, assets in Asia, Australia and other regions will also increase by nearly half to 138.8 billion Hong Kong dollars. The proportion of the two in total assets has risen from about 58% six years ago to 67%, and the proportion of the mainland and Hong Kong has also dropped from 15.6% to 10.8%, and the total assets have dropped by more than 20%.
The management has explained the relevant acquisitions many times, and believes that in the volatile political and economic environment, investing in public utilities, essential consumption and services in developed countries will help maintain profitability and stable cash flow.
However, the market believes that as countries become more cautious, it will be difficult for Chinese companies to acquire these basic industries on a large scale. At the end of 2018, CKH Holdings’ proposed acquisition of the Australian energy company APA was rejected by the local Ministry of Finance. Thereafter, there were almost no similar large-scale acquisitions in Europe and Australia.
Since 2020, CKH Hutchison has begun to expand in the Middle East and Africa, including building terminals in Egypt, winning two local world-class port concessions, acquiring ports and oil sands projects in Saudi Arabia, and investing in logistics parks, etc.
Developed countries are relatively open to retail business. In 2019, Changsha acquired Greene King, the UK’s largest chain of pubs and wineries, and took the long-term property lease behind it. In the first half of this year, with the recovery of consumption after the epidemic, the revenue of the tavern business was nearly 10.4 billion Hong Kong dollars, accounting for nearly 46% of Cheung Kong’s total revenue, replacing residential sales as the largest source of income.
More than half of CK Hutchison’s retail business revenue comes from Europe, but it has been more active in Southeast Asia and the Middle East in recent years. Watsons will open its first store in Vietnam in 2019, its first store in the Middle East in Dubai in 2020, cooperate with Grab to develop online and offline retail business in Southeast Asia in 2021, open its first store in Saudi Arabia, and open 12 stores in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates in 2022 new store.
As for Mainland China, retail has always been an important sector second only to real estate. From 2014 to 2022, the number of retail stores in the Mainland will increase from 2,088 to 3,836, and the global share will increase from 20% to 24%. However, more than 300 stores were closed last year, partly due to the impact of the epidemic.
In recent years, Watsons has also successively launched beauty concept stores in the Mainland. It has cooperated with Yonghui and Tencent to open luxury beauty concept stores in Shanghai, Xi’an, Wuhan, and Chongqing. Last year, it also added health and life in more than 1,200 stores. dedicated area to provide healthcare products and services in response to increasing competition. (Lin Guangying)
Focus revenue growth but lower than market expectations, dragged down by real estate and household customers
Focus Media disclosed its results for the first half of 2023 on the evening of the 9th. Revenue increased by 13.7% year-on-year to 5.52 billion yuan, which was lower than the market consensus. Thanks to cost reduction and efficiency enhancement, net profit increased by nearly 60% to 2.23 billion yuan.
Focus mainly operates advertising spaces in office buildings, community buildings, and movie theaters, and its income is the advertising fees paid by merchants. The more offline advertisements are placed, the better the merchants’ expectations for the future will be.
In terms of industries, the revenue contributed by daily consumer goods customers increased by 30% year-on-year, entertainment and leisure, and transportation customers increased by 23% and 47% respectively, corresponding to the popularity of offline activities, tourism, and new energy vehicle sales this year.
Real estate and home furnishing customers have contracted the most, and the advertising revenue contributed by them has almost halved year-on-year. The Internet has dropped by more than 10% year-on-year, and its proportion has dropped from 22% before the epidemic to 11%. However, the industry believes that with the normalization of platform supervision and intensified competition, Internet customers will gradually resume investment.
The management mentioned in the performance report that the external environment is still challenging, but also emphasized its own industry advantage. In the second quarter of this year, Focus accelerated the expansion of advertising spots, with a net increase of nearly 60,000 elevator LCD screens, reaching a total of 892,000, and nearly 1,000 cinema screens.
However, sales expenses did not expand as expected, with a year-on-year growth rate of 14.6% in the first half of the year, only slightly faster than revenue. In the same period last year, under the pressure of profitability, Focus quickly abolished sales staff, during which sales expenses fell by more than 30% year-on-year. (Lin Guangying)
Nobody wants to do hard work, UPS offers truck drivers an annual salary of $170,000
On Tuesday’s earnings call, international delivery giant UPS said its full-time drivers could make as much as $170,000 a year in salary and benefits at the end of a new five-year contract. Part-time employees earn at least $25.75 an hour and receive full health insurance and pension benefits.
According to the statistics of the US Social Security Administration, the per capita annual salary of the United States in 2023 will be 83,000 US dollars, and the per capita annual salary of dentists and engineers will be 159,000 US dollars and 91,000 US dollars respectively. UPS truck drivers will enter the high-income group.
This kind of treatment is what the labor side has worked hard to win. UPS has 340,000 truck drivers who belong to Teamsters (the international fraternal union of truck drivers). Affected by inflation, the price of goods in the United States has more than doubled. However, according to the union chairman, UPS’s salary renewal offer is “insulting in nature”, causing dissatisfaction among truck drivers. In addition, truck drivers have long been dissatisfied with unequal pay for equal work and no air conditioning in their trucks.
Beginning on April 17 this year, UPS and the union began labor negotiations to replace the original agreement that expired on July 31. During the negotiations, the truck drivers union put forward five demands: increasing part-time wages, increasing full-time jobs, solving excessive overtime problems, canceling unreasonable wage systems, and ensuring workplace safety.
The union treasurer said that if no agreement is reached by July 31, he will lead his 340,000 UPS employees to strike on August 1. The proposal was overwhelmingly supported by truck drivers.
UPS transports 24 million packages a day, accounting for a quarter of the daily packages in the United States, and the cost of a 10-day shutdown will be as high as $7 billion. The market had previously worried that the strike of UPS drivers would paralyze most of the package delivery system in the United States, and even fall into a large-scale logistics disruption.
After tense negotiations, the two sides made preliminary progress in negotiations in June this year, and reached an agreement on issues such as installing air conditioners for delivery trucks. But UPS insisted on hiring a large number of temporary workers who work on a piece-by-hour basis, and the union insisted on fighting for the benefits of regular employees for its members.
However, on July 25th, affected by the fact that the balance of supply and demand for truck drivers in the United States was still tilted towards the demand side, the union compromised and reached a tentative agreement with UPS to increase the annual salary and benefits of UPS full-time drivers to $170,000, and agreed to increase the hourly wages of part-time employees. Raise above $25.75.
After the tentative agreement was announced, UPS became a popular employer, with job applicants up more than 50%. But according to media analysis, it is not easy to become a UPS driver. You must first become a package sorter. These jobs are low-paid and part-time. Even if you can succeed as a driver, you start as a junior clerk, working long hours and carrying heavier packages.
Supply chain publication “Logistics Management” consulting analysts pointed out that the impact of the announcement of the interim agreement on carriers is uncertain, but it may lead to an 8% increase in UPS freight rates. UPS also recently lowered its revenue and profitability forecast for the second half of this year due to more expensive labor. (Intern Hong Chenyi)
OTHER NEWS
CDC: In July, 491 new cases of monkeypox were confirmed in mainland China.
In July this year, 491 new confirmed cases of monkeypox were reported in 23 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) in mainland China (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan), which was significantly more than the 106 cases in June. According to China CDC, the cases are all male, 96.3% are identified as men who have sex with men, the risk of transmission through other contact methods is low, and close contacts other than same-sex contacts have not been infected. 89.2% of the cases were discovered by active medical consultation. Most of the cases had typical clinical manifestations, mainly including fever, herpes, and enlarged lymph nodes. There were no severe cases or deaths.
From September onwards, WeChat mini-programs need to be filed first before being put on the shelves.
On August 9, the WeChat public platform issued a notice. Starting from September 1, WeChat applets that have not been put on the shelves must be filed before they can be put on the shelves. Those that have been put on the shelves need to complete the filing before March 31 next year. Carry out clearance in accordance with relevant regulations. Alipay also announced today that it will soon launch ICP filing related services to assist developers in completing the filing of Alipay applets.
Country Garden expects a net loss of RMB 45 billion to RMB 55 billion in the first half of the year.
Country Garden issued an internal announcement on the 10th, expecting a net loss of 45 billion to 55 billion yuan in the first half of this year. The reason is that due to the impact of the decline in real estate sales, the gross profit margin of the real estate business has decreased, the property impairment has increased, and foreign exchange fluctuations have caused the expected net loss. Exchange losses. Country Garden mentioned that the combination of multiple unfavorable factors has led to difficulties in sales and open market financing. Future measures include: fully ensuring cash flow security, minimizing expenditures, and shareholders and family members providing support through borrowing and buying bonds.
Kuaishou will upgrade creator support and service policies.
On August 10, Kuaishou Guanghe Creators Conference was held in Shanghai. It was announced at the meeting that different support policies and services will be launched for full-volume creators, high-quality creators and MCN institutions, including: simplifying the opening threshold for monetization; providing richer monetization forms through the launch of Magnetic Wanhe and upgrading the photosynthesis plan. It is reported that in the past year, more than 22 million creators have earned a total of nearly 90 billion yuan in revenue from Kuaishou. In the past six months, the total revenue of Kuaishou creators has increased by 24% year-on-year.
New Oriental Hangzhou offline center was reported for violation of double reduction.
According to Zhejiang News, New Oriental’s offline center in Hangzhou has been shut down suddenly recently. On August 4, the whistleblower came to a learning center in Hangzhou New Oriental and asked as a parent whether they could conduct junior and senior high school subject training. The staff responded that at present, senior high schools can conduct supplementary lessons in Chinese, mathematics, and English, and junior high school classes are currently online. The next half. In the video released by the whistleblower, he stated that the practice of remedial lessons should be eradicated in Zhejiang. New Oriental headquarters has yet to respond. The staff of Hangzhou New Oriental said that all campuses have been shut down at the request of the education department since the afternoon of the 7th, and it is not yet clear when classes will resume.
Yum China achieved a net profit of US$486 million in the first half of the year, a year-on-year increase of 166%.
Recently, Yum China released its 2023 interim performance announcement. From January to June this year, Yum China’s total revenue was US$5.57 billion, a year-on-year increase of 16%. Its two major brands, KFC and Pizza Hut, saw revenue and restaurant profit margins grow in the first half of the year. KFC’s revenue in the first half of the year was 4.182 billion US dollars, an increase of 15.8% over the same period last year. According to official data, the “Crazy Thursday” promotion drive sales on Thursday were 50% higher than other working days. Pizza Hut’s revenue was US$1.151 billion, an increase of about 15% over the same period, and the restaurant’s profit margin reached 13.3%. According to the announcement, the increase in revenue was due to an 11% increase in same-store sales, a net addition of self-operated restaurants and a significant reduction in temporarily closed restaurants.
Companies such as Baidu, Tencent, and Ali have ordered $5 billion in chips from Nvidia.
The Financial Associated Press quoted sources as saying that Baidu, ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba placed an order with Nvidia for about 100,000 Nvidia A800 processors worth US$5 billion. These chips are critical to artificial intelligence systems. In addition, these companies also purchased $4 billion in Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs). Nvidia A800 is Nvidia’s exclusive processor for China, the purpose is to solve the new semiconductor export regulations of the US Department of Commerce to replace the A100 GPU.
The price of raw materials fell, and the unified gross profit margin increased by 1 percentage point year-on-year.
In the first half of this year, unified revenue increased by 4.5% year-on-year to 14.6 billion yuan, of which beverages increased by 12.3% to 9.3 billion yuan, and food sales fell by 8.7% to 4.9 billion yuan, partly due to the decline in sales of instant noodles as the epidemic subsided. According to the announcement, due to the price drop of some raw materials and the adjustment of product structure, the gross profit increased by 8% to 4.5 billion yuan, and the gross profit margin increased by 1 percentage point. Last year, due to rising prices of palm oil and flour, Uni-President’s gross profit margin fell by 3.6 percentage points.
The United States restricts investment in three advanced technology fields in China.
According to The Paper, U.S. President Biden signed an executive order on “restrictions on investment in China” on Wednesday (9th) local time, which will strictly limit U.S. investment in China’s sensitive technology fields. The report content includes:
- Authorizes the U.S. Department of the Treasury to prohibit or restrict U.S. investment in China in three areas, including semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technology, and artificial intelligence systems.
- U.S. companies are required to notify the U.S. government of their investment in China in other technology fields.
- Restricted “investors” include US citizens, permanent residents, etc.
The executive order, which is expected to be implemented next year, will be preceded by multiple rounds of public comments.
SMIC’s revenue picked up.
In the second quarter of this year, SMIC’s sales revenue increased by 6.7% month-on-month to US$1.56 billion, and its capacity utilization rate rebounded by more than 10 percentage points to 78.3%, but the gross profit margin continued to decline by 0.5 percentage points to 20.3%. The company expects that the output will continue to increase in the third quarter, and the sales revenue in the second half of the year will be better than that in the first half.
Disney will significantly increase the price of Disney+, Hulu streaming services.
From October 12 this year, the monthly fee for the ad-free Disney+ service will rise to $13.99, an increase of more than 27%; the monthly fee for the ad-free version of Hulu will rise to $17.99, an increase of about 20%. Disney said the purpose of raising prices on streaming services is to steer consumers toward cheaper, advertised versions of the services, since subscription prices for those services won’t change. In addition, Disney will also crack down on the account sharing of Disney+ and Hulu. Before that, Netflix took measures to crack down on the sharing of account passwords to curb the reduction of paying members, and achieved certain results. In after-hours trading that day, Disney shares rebounded slightly.
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