Original link: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1655
Futu and Tiger Securities removed mainland applications, and existing customers were also affected
China’s two largest cross-border Internet brokerages, Tiger Securities and Futu Securities, announced that they will be delisted from mainland app stores within this week. Among them, Tiger Securities was delisted on May 18, and Futu Securities was one day later.
The announcements of the two companies both stated that the removal of the app was to meet the rectification requirements of the China Securities Regulatory Commission for cross-border securities business. On December 30, 2022, the China Securities Regulatory Commission announced that Futu Holdings and Tiger Securities had conducted cross-border securities business for domestic investors without approval, which constituted illegal securities business, so they promoted the rectification of illegal cross-border business development.
The China Securities Regulatory Commission stated that the rectification is based on the idea of ”effectively curbing the increase and dissolving the stock in an orderly manner”. However, foreign institutions are prohibited from accepting incremental capital transfers in violation of China’s foreign exchange management regulations into such investor accounts.
According to China’s foreign exchange management regulations, domestic individuals can purchase foreign exchange equivalent to US$50,000 per year for current account payments such as overseas travel, but cannot be used for capital investment such as real estate and stocks.
Futu Holdings and Tiger Securities provide cross-border stock trading services for mainland clients without any relevant mainland Chinese licenses. Regulatory risks emerged in 2021. At that time, the China Securities Regulatory Commission expressed its regulatory attitude through the media, that is, the relevant cross-border securities business did not comply with the law, and such activities would be regulated in accordance with the law. In November of the same year, executives of Futu Holdings and Tiger Securities Conducted regulatory interviews to clarify regulatory attitudes.
Brokers estimate that Tiger Brokers may be more affected than Futu despite its small clientele. According to a research report by Guotai Junan, about 40% of Tiger Securities’ clients are from mainland China, contributing more than half of the company’s revenue. About 44% of Futu’s revenue in the first half of last year came from its mainland customers. However, Tiger Securities said in a conference call last year that only about 10% of new trading accounts in the quarter came from mainland China.
Analysts predict that based on the regulatory direction of “orderly dissolving stock”, the two cross-border brokerages are likely to see a phased outflow of funds from mainland customers.
In 2022, Futu and Tiger Securities will earn 6.8 billion yuan and 1.57 billion yuan in revenue respectively, with the former making a profit of 2.615 billion yuan and the latter losing 15 million yuan. As of the end of 2022, more than 1.488 million accounts still have assets in Futu Securities, and the total number of opened accounts exceeds 3.23 million. Tiger Securities has approximately 782,000 trading users and 2 million account openings. (Gong Fangyi)
In the past year, 1 million more people in China drove online car-hailing, and 15.5 million fewer people took cars
In the 12 months to April, China added 1.014 million registered ride-hailing drivers and 538,000 new ride-hailing vehicles.
During the period, the monthly average daily order volume under the caliber of the Ministry of Communications recovered to the level of 23 million orders, which was still far from the peak level (the peak value was 26 million orders). But some taxi-hailing platforms and local transportation management departments have seen signs of capacity saturation and announced some adjustment measures.
Starting today (May 16), Changsha will suspend the acceptance of new services for online car-hailing transportation certificates (“vehicle certificates”), and prohibit all taxi-hailing platforms from accessing vehicles without “vehicle certificates”, saying that it will conduct a market capacity assessment in the city. At the beginning of the month, Sanya also suspended the application and issuance of online car-hailing licenses and personal IDs on the grounds that the transportation capacity is becoming saturated and the phenomenon of illegal operations is prominent.
Although Jinan, Suining and other places still accept applications for the qualification of vehicles and drivers, they have warned that the local transportation capacity is saturated. The former said on April 6 that the average daily order volume for bicycles was less than 10, while the latter issued a reminder to “enter the business with caution” this month.
Big platforms saw something different. A person close to Didi believes that the national transportation capacity is becoming saturated. Another person familiar with AutoNavi’s operations said that the continuous growth of orders has exceeded expectations, and there is still a shortage of drivers in core cities. According to our understanding, the average daily active drivers of Didi and AutoNavi are about 3.7 million.
According to the official caliber, in April, the average daily fulfillment of about 10 orders for registered online car-hailing vehicles nationwide is not much different from the number of orders received by full-time drivers in some core cities we learned from the taxi-hailing platform (12 to 15 orders). The industry is still a long way from capacity saturation.
However, the concentrated release of gradual changes at both ends of supply and demand superimposes seasonal factors, breaking the consistent balance.
The subsidy war that started ten years ago brought online car-hailing to Chinese consumers, and the number of users reached 437 million by the end of last year. This scale is 15.53 million less than that at the end of 2021.
This year, in Shenzhen, Xiamen, Chongqing, Nanjing, Beijing, Shanghai and other places, we heard more than one local online car-hailing driver talk about the pressure of competition, saying that the influx of new drivers has also pushed up the monthly rental price of vehicles.
If the first-tier core cities can still rely on the national business and tourism crowd to drive demand to “adapt” to the increasing capacity, those that mainly serve local residents or typical tourist cities may be saturated in stages. (Gong Fangyi)
The first quarterly report of Chinese concept stocks: Baidu, iQiyi, Yixian E-commerce, Sun Art Retail, MINISO
Baidu’s re-expansion of marketing investment did not affect the growth of profits.
In the first three months of this year, Baidu (excluding iQiyi) achieved 22.998 billion yuan in revenue (+7.58% year-on-year) and 4.091 billion yuan in operating profit (+62.08% year-on-year). While re-expanding marketing investment, the profit margin ( 17.79%) year-on-year and month-on-month increases of 5.98 and 3.05 percentage points respectively. The revenue of the most core advertising business in the quarter was about 16.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6%.
iQIYI’s revenue and membership service revenue reached new highs, mainly due to “Hurricane”.
iQiyi’s revenue in the first quarter of this year increased by 15% year-on-year to 8.3 billion yuan, of which membership service revenue increased by 24% year-on-year to 5.5 billion yuan, both hitting new highs. Thanks to the launch of “Hurricane” and other series, iQiyi’s average daily subscription members increased by 17.3 million in the first quarter. As of March 31, iQiyi had 120 million subscribers. With revenue growth and revenue costs flat year-on-year, iQiyi’s operating profit increased to 1 billion yuan, which has grown for six consecutive quarters.
The skin care segment drove the growth of Yixian’s e-commerce gross profit margin.
Yixian e-commerce revenue in the first quarter fell by 14.1% year-on-year to 765 million yuan, of which revenue from the makeup segment fell by 30% year-on-year, and revenue from the skin care segment increased. In addition to promoting the skin care business with a higher gross profit margin, Yixian E-commerce has also formulated a stricter pricing discount strategy and reduced operating expenses by nearly 40%. In the first quarter, the gross profit margin increased by 5.3 percentage points year-on-year to 74.3%.
Sun Art Retail turned losses into profits in the fiscal year, and opened its first paid membership store in April.
Sun Art Retail released its performance report from March 2022 to March 2023, with revenue of 83.662 billion yuan and net profit of 78 million yuan, turning losses into profits, partly because sales expenses decreased by about 1.8 billion yuan year-on-year, and the expense ratio was nearly 1 percent. Sun Art Retail also disclosed that in the first quarter of this year, differentiated products ranked first in sales of the same category. In 2022, RT-Mart will launch a variety of self-owned brand products such as lime juice, coconut water, and mellow coconut milk. In April this year, Sun Art Retail’s first M member store opened in Yangzhou, and the number of paying members had exceeded 30,000 before the opening.
MINISO’s high-margin overseas business revenue increased by nearly 80%.
In the first quarter of this year, MINISO’s revenue increased by 26.2% year-on-year to 2.95 billion yuan, and its net profit rose 336% year-on-year to 480 million yuan. During the period, overseas revenue increased by nearly 80% year-on-year to 920 million yuan. The management also mentioned that the gross profit margin of overseas business is about 45%, which is significantly higher than that of domestic business. As of March 31 this year, MINISO has 5,514 stores worldwide, including 2,131 overseas stores. The directly-operated stores are mainly distributed in India, Indonesia, the United States, Canada, Singapore, etc., and the agent market further covers the Middle East, North Africa, Latin America, etc. area.
“Big shorts” are optimistic about JD.com and Ali in the first quarter
According to the publicly disclosed quarterly position report, Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway cleared four stocks in the first quarter of this year: TSMC, Bank of New York Mellon, U.S. Bank and furniture retailer Restoration Hardware.
At the Berkshire shareholder meeting earlier this month, Buffett praised TSMC as one of the best-managed and most important companies in the world. No company in the entire chip industry can compare with it, but he doesn’t like TSMC’s position.
Apple is still Berkshire’s largest holding, and its share has further increased to 46.4% due to the sharp rise in stock prices. Berkshire increased its holdings of Apple shares by 20.42 million shares in the quarter, an increase of about 2%, and the value of its holdings came to nearly 151 billion U.S. dollars.
Throughout the first quarter, Berkshire bought only $2.87 billion worth of stock and sold $13.28 billion. They newly bought shares in credit card company Capital One, energy investment company Vitesse Energy, and the world’s largest spirits group Diageo (the parent company of brands such as Johnnie Walker and Baileys). In addition, Berkshire significantly increased its holdings of HP and Occidental Petroleum during the quarter, and significantly reduced its holdings of General Motors and Chevron.
Amid the turmoil in the banking industry, Bridgewater, one of the world’s largest hedge funds, sold off U.S. bank stocks in the first quarter. However, the “big short” prototype Michael Burry chose to buy the bottom of the US regional banks, including the collapse of the First Republic Bank on May 1. Since the position report is as of the end of March, it is unclear whether Burry sold shares before the latter’s collapse.
Burry also built positions in JD.com and Alibaba in the fourth quarter of last year, and continued to increase positions in the first quarter of this year. He more than tripled his JD.com stake to 250,000 shares, worth $11 million, in the quarter, and doubled his Alibaba stake to $10 million. The two have become the top two major holdings of Burry’s hedge fund Scion, accounting for a combined 20%.
At present, the life of Chinese e-commerce giants is not easy. JD.com just announced a record low revenue growth rate last week. Analysts are not optimistic about the expectations of Ali, which will soon announce its financial report. However, Burry has always liked to invest against the trend and obtain high returns from it.
In addition, contrary to Buffett, the well-known hedge funds Coatue and Tiger Global Fund both bought TSMC in the first quarter of this year, becoming the largest positions of the two institutions in the quarter. (Qiu Hao)
National Bureau of Statistics: The national economy continues to recover, but the constraints of insufficient domestic demand still exist
Today the National Bureau of Statistics released a series of April economic data, involving real estate, consumption, production, employment and other aspects.
- In the first four months of this year, the national real estate development investment fell by 6.2% year-on-year, which was weaker than the expected -5.7%. Shenwan Hongyuan said it may be limited by financing. In addition, it may also be related to the inventory of new houses. As of April, the cumulative sales area of commodity housing nationwide increased by 2.7% year-on-year, and the area for sale increased by 15.7%.
- Automobile consumption has driven the growth of social zero. In April, social retail sales increased by 18.4% year-on-year. Except for automobiles, social retail sales increased by 16.5% in April, and the two-year average growth rate was less than 3%. The rapid recovery of offline contact consumption has driven the sales of catering enterprises above designated size to increase by 44.6% year-on-year, with an average growth rate of about 10% in two years.
- In April, the added value of industrial enterprises above designated size (annual income of 20 million yuan and above) actually increased by 5.6% year-on-year, which was lower than the market expectation of 9.7%, and the two-year average growth rate fell to 1.3%.
- The headline unemployment rate eased back slightly to 5.2%. Among them, the unemployment rate of youth aged 16-24 rose to 20.4%. According to the research report of Shenwan Hongyuan, the employment preferences of young people have changed, and they are more willing to engage in manufacturing, accommodation and catering industries, and are less willing to enter the traditional construction industry. In the current situation where stable growth mainly depends on infrastructure and real estate, youth employment needs to be improved. further recovery of consumption. (Lin Guangying)
Microsoft buys Activision Blizzard, what are antitrust agencies worried about?
European Union regulators announced on Monday that they had approved Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, in sharp contrast to the attitudes of their British and American counterparts. Britain vetoed the deal last month, and the U.S. is also leaning against it. In order to meet regulatory requirements, Microsoft has previously promised to license many of Activision Blizzard’s blockbuster games to rival cloud platforms in the next 10 years.
US regulators are mainly concerned about whether Microsoft will use its dominant position to limit the mainframe market. They mentioned that Microsoft has a history of acquiring game companies and using them to suppress other game console manufacturers. With this acquisition, Microsoft may boost its own game console sales by adjusting game prices, reducing the experience of games on other consoles, and even restricting the shelves.
The U.K. is concerned about the nascent sector — a takeover that could cement Microsoft’s dominance in cloud gaming — saying the EU’s approval decision was wrong. Britain insists that Microsoft’s proposal is not open enough to cover different business models. Its previous proposal included Microsoft selling the franchise rights of Activision Blizzard’s popular games, but was rejected by Microsoft.
The EU believes that the UK has exaggerated Microsoft’s cloud gaming market share. According to the EU, the acquisition is actually beneficial to the development of the industry. At present, none of Activision Blizzard’s games can be played on the cloud platform. The acquisition will bring growth and innovation, and Xbox’s current market share is still very small. Microsoft has no reason not to let Activision Blizzard’s games Sign in to other platforms, which can significantly reduce revenue.
Cloud gaming is an emerging technology that does not rely on hardware configuration, but only relies on a remote server to stream the game to the player’s display. In 2022, the global video game market size is about 220.8 billion US dollars. The scale of cloud games in the same period was about 1.43 billion US dollars, and the agency expects to grow to 24.37 billion US dollars by 2030.
Early last year, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, the largest acquisition in the history of the technology industry. According to the laws of different countries and regions, if the local business of the merger and acquisition parties reaches a certain scale, it generally needs to obtain the anti-monopoly approval of the country. At present, the acquisition has been approved by the European Union, Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and other regions, and its success depends mainly on the United States and the United Kingdom. (Gong Fangyi)
OTHER NEWS
Central Bank: The triple pressure of demand contraction, supply shock, and weakening expectations has been eased.
The central bank released today the first quarter of 2023 China’s monetary policy implementation report, pointing out that the triple pressure of China’s demand contraction, supply shocks, and weakening expectations has been eased, but it must also be noted that the domestic economy’s endogenous driving force is not strong and demand is still insufficient, while the global Affected by economic slowdown, high inflation, and tightening policies of major central banks. The report mentioned that in the next stage, we will implement a sound monetary policy, improve cross-cycle adjustments, focus on supporting the expansion of domestic demand, pay attention to marginal changes in price trends, coordinate financial support for the real economy and risk prevention, and use policy development financial tools to drive private investment, etc. wait.
The number of new crown cases in Beijing surpassed that of influenza for two consecutive weeks.
According to the weekly epidemic report released by the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, since the 17th week of 2023 (April 24-30), the number of new crown infections in the city has surpassed influenza for two consecutive weeks and returned to the number one legal infectious disease. In the seventh week of this year (February 6-12), the number of flu cases surpassed the number of new crown infections for the first time.
In less than half a day for the closed beta, Midjourney China’s server is not enough.
At 6:00 pm on May 15th, Midjourney, a Wenshengtu application, launched an internal test of the Chinese version of the service on the QQ channel. At 1 am today, Midjourney’s Chinese administrator issued an announcement “Due to a large number of users joining, the server will be upgraded at 1 am – 9 am”.
In the QQ channel of the Chinese version of Midjourney, the default image generation engine is version 5.1 recently released by Midjourney, which is optimized for Chinese. The image can be generated by inputting “/imagination+keyword” by the user. Newly registered users have 25 free credits, and there are three paid subscription prices: 68 yuan, 198 yuan, and 398 yuan per month, which are close to the price of the English version.
In April, the sales volume of joint venture car companies Volkswagen and GM stopped falling first, and the overall wholesale volume fell month-on-month.
According to data from Choice and Wind, sales of SAIC Volkswagen and SAIC GM rose 9% and 27% month-on-month to 88,000 and 80,000 vehicles in April, respectively. Sales of Changan Ford, Honda (Dongfeng + GAC), and Toyota (FAW + GAC) decreased MoM. Among them, China is the only market where Volkswagen saw a month-on-month growth in April. According to previous data released by the Passenger Federation, the wholesale volume of mainstream joint venture car companies in April fell 17% month-on-month to 530,000 vehicles. In recent years, joint venture vehicles have faced competition from domestic new energy vehicles. In February this year, a number of joint venture car companies cut prices to ease inventory pressure.
Ford plans to scale back investments in China to focus on commercial vehicles and battery technology.
Recently, Ford CEO said in an interview with the media that “the future (China) strategic direction will be less and more concentrated investment”, focusing on commercial vehicles to reduce capital risks. He declined to comment on rumors on Monday that Ford China would cut 1,300 jobs. A Chinese person from Ford said a few days ago that “our costs are not competitive.”
The CEO believes that “if there is a new round of investment in China’s electric vehicles, there is no evidence or data that Western companies can win.” The market winners are not traditional car companies, but BYD, Tesla, Great Wall, etc. Changan Ford’s April sales fell 10% MoM to 14,000 vehicles. Ford’s China sales fell below 500,000 vehicles for the first time last year, and its market share has halved to 2 percent since 2016.
But at the same time, he also added, “We don’t want to leave China like other companies, because the battery technology and user digital experience here are one of the best in the world.” The company announced in February this year that it will produce batteries using CATL technology in its new $3.5 billion factory in Michigan, USA. At the same time, Ford also plans to export electric vans, a joint venture with Jiangling Motors, to emerging countries.
HEYTEA co-branded FENDI, this year has co-branded 12 times.
Heytea and the luxury brand FENDI have jointly launched new drinks, and have cooperated with 12 brands this year. In this joint venture, HEYTEA launched the “FENDI Joy Yellow” drink. The drink paper cups and coasters used FENDI’s iconic yellow color and brand LOGO. This is the first joint cooperation between HEYTEA and a luxury brand. HEYTEA has cooperated with brands across many fields this year, including Tesla, Midea Refrigerator, Netease Cloud Music, etc. In addition, Heytea has also jointly launched the “Urban Culture and Tourism Series” refrigerator magnets with 11 local cultural and tourism departments including Guangzhou.
Xianyu will charge software service fees to high-frequency large-value transaction sellers.
The second-hand trading platform Xianyu will charge software service fees to sellers who carry out high-frequency and high-value transactions. This is the first time that Xianyu has charged transaction fees to sellers. This policy will come into effect on June 6 this year. If the seller generates more than 10 orders within a month and the cumulative transaction amount is greater than 10,000 yuan, the seller needs to pay the software service fee. Xianyu will deduct the fee payable by the seller in real time every month, and charge 1% of the actual transaction value of the order for each order exceeding the fee threshold.
Shiseido China’s revenue fell.
Shiseido’s net sales in the first quarter of this year increased by 2.6% year-on-year to 240 billion yen (approximately US$1.78 billion), of which US sales increased by 30% year-on-year, Japan increased by 8%, and China’s sales fell by 2.9% year-on-year to US$393 million. The company said that in order to boost sales, the strategy in the Chinese market will change from being mainly driven by large-scale promotions to one that is close to user needs and emphasizes brand and product value.
The first Chanel store in Central China will open in Zhengzhou.
Luxury brands are accelerating their entry into China’s second-tier cities. According to Jiemian News, Chanel has recently surrounded Dennis David City in Zhengzhou. The store was formed by the merger of Max Mara and Dolce&Gabbana in the past. It may open at the end of this year. Earlier, Dior’s first store in Henan has also been enclosed in the same shopping mall and is expected to open at the end of this month. Dennis David City opened in 2015. It is developed and operated by Zhengzhou Dennis Department Store, with a construction area of about 400,000 square meters. It is one of the largest and most high-end shopping centers in Zhengzhou. In March last year, the opening day of the first store of Hermes Henan in the mall caused a large number of customers to line up, and the products in the store were almost sold out.
The number of passengers of Spring and Juneyao Airlines in April returned to the level of the same period in 2019.
The passenger traffic of Chinese airlines is recovering to varying degrees. Among them, the passenger turnover of Juneyao Airlines and Spring Airlines exceeded the level of the same period in 2019 by nearly 10%, and Air China and China Eastern Airlines also reached 90% and 80% of the same period in 2019. In terms of capacity input, China Eastern Airlines recovered to 90% of 2019, and Air China, Spring and Juneyao all exceeded the level of the same period in 2019.
The price of laboratory monkeys in the United States is 15 times more expensive than before the epidemic.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US imported 20,270 laboratory monkeys from China in 2019, accounting for about 60% of its total imports. Later, due to the epidemic, the export of Chinese experimental monkeys was blocked. By 2020, this number dropped to 3723. According to investment bank Evercore, the current price of experimental monkeys in the United States has risen from about US$4,000 to US$7,000 before the epidemic to US$55,000 to US$60,000 each.
The mRNA universal flu vaccine has entered early clinical trials and may be able to prevent multiple flus.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced Monday that it is recruiting patients to participate in early clinical trials of a universal flu vaccine based on mRNA technology. Because flu viruses change so quickly, people now need a new vaccine each year to maintain immunity. Scientists hope the new vaccine will protect against many types of flu and provide long-term immunity. During the epidemic, the mRNA new crown vaccine demonstrated its advantages in this regard.
A 1958 Milgauss Rolex watch fetched $2.5 million at auction.
A Rolex Milgauss watch produced in 1958 was auctioned for 2.24 million Swiss francs (about 2.5 million US dollars), breaking the record for the most expensive Rolex watch also set by Milgauss. It is reported that the buyer is Rolex, who may want to collect it as an archive or put it in a museum. The Milgauss series was launched in 1956. The selling point is that it can tell the time accurately even under a strong magnetic field, and it is designed for scientists. However, sales are not as good as models such as deep-sea divers, racers, and pilots.
Open AI founder’s new company has raised $100 million.
Worldcoin, founded by Open AI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, has recently received $100 million in financing. Founded in 2019, the company has its own Worldcoin cryptocurrency, and users can use universal iris scans to establish, identify, and use their own cryptocurrency. People familiar with the matter said it was remarkable that Worldcoin received such a sum of money at this time, given the string of setbacks in the cryptocurrency industry in the past year.
Altman said in 2021 that if cryptocurrencies are widely used around the world, it will be more able to stimulate application innovation. The first problem is to let everyone have the same cryptocurrency. Worldcoin plans to issue 10 billion Worldcoin encrypted coins. Users can get Worldcoin for free by scanning their irises and establishing their identity. The sooner they register, the more they will get. But it also raised a lot of questions, the most discussed is the privacy risk – “would you be willing to exchange your iris data for cryptocurrency?”
Ofo’s small yellow car refund interface can no longer be opened, and the founder wants to open a chain coffee shop in New York.
According to media reports, Dai Wei, the founder of ofo, founded a chain coffee shop About Time Coffee in the United States. Ms. Chen, CEO of the company, said that Dai Wei is mainly involved in building the team and contacting investors, and does not participate in daily operations. The company’s current valuation exceeds US$40 million, and it has received US$10 million in investment from IDG China and ZhenFund.
The company has opened at least five stores in New York, four of which are in prime locations. The average daily sales volume of a single store is about 800 cups. The CEO said that “we have a proven Chinese model”, including online order + in-store pick-up mode, free 5 cups after registration, the main low price of $4/cup (less than $5 Starbucks), signature pearls Coffee trending on social media, creative packaging and more.
Ofo’s small yellow car was out of service in 2018 due to capital chain problems. In February this year, the deposit refund interface on the client side could no longer be opened, and the customer service and company calls could not be connected. According to estimates by industry insiders, at least 16 million people still have no refunds, and the amount exceeds 1 billion yuan.
(Picture from Bloomberg: About Time’s coffee is made on-site and sealed in a jar)
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