Original link: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1375
Ruixing, which caused the crisis of confidence in Chinese stocks, stepped out first
On November 7, Ma Ziming, the founder of Snow Lake Capital, who once shorted Luckin, released a research report in the stock community Futu, saying that it is “just a matter of time” that Luckin will surpass Starbucks China. To this end, he has used 15% of Xuehu’s assets under management to buy up Ruixing.
More than two years ago, it was also Xuehu who invested to squeeze Luckin’s performance, bursting the latter’s financial bubble. According to Ranjing Finance’s report at the time, the Hong Kong-based organization commissioned third-party due diligence agencies Jiu Qian and Huisheng to investigate Luckin stores in 38 cities across the country.
More than 1,000 due diligence officers (including part-timers) have verified that Luckin exaggerated the daily number of goods in each store in the third quarter of 2019 and the fourth quarter of 2019 by squatting on the number of people in the store, calling for monitoring, and joining the store work group. at least 69% and 88%.
In February 2020, Xuehu anonymously sent the short-selling report to Muddy Waters, which was then made public by the latter. Two months later, Ruixing admitted to falsifying 2.2 billion yuan in transaction volume (including most of the sales data after listing). On May 15, the Nasdaq exchange made a decision to delist it.
In June, Luckin was delisted from the Nasdaq exchange, returned to the U.S. pink sheet market, which is dominated by small businesses, and paid a fine of $187.5 million for financial fraud. On January 27 this year, Dazheng Capital became the actual controller of Ruixing, the original fraudulent management was cleared, and Guo Jinyi was still the CEO. In March, Ruixing completed debt restructuring and got out of bankruptcy.
Different from Lu Zhengyao’s aggressive style of burning money to expand, Guo Jinyi’s team seems to pay more attention to the refined operation of products and marketing. After two years of hardship, Luckin’s performance has gradually stabilized, and the business highlights written in the prospectus–affordable takeaway coffee, opening small stores with high efficiency, and community-based operations and new ones seem to be taking effect one after another.
Luckin Jiucheng stores are small-scale cache stores of 20-60 square meters, and the grab-and-go model is more suitable for the epidemic environment. At the same time, compared with Starbucks, Ruixing is more sensitive to the taste requirements of local consumers. In the first quarter of this year, Luckin’s operating profit turned positive to 53 million yuan for the first time. The management said that the growth was mainly driven by 34 new products. The “Coconut Cloud Latte” launched in April sold 4.95 million cups in the first week. It sold 24 million cups and became another hot item in the Jisheng coconut series.
In the second quarter, Luckin continued to be profitable, with revenue increasing by 72.4% year-on-year to 3.3 billion yuan and a profit of 240 million yuan. The performance is better than Starbucks China, and also better than the tea of the tea brand Nai Xue. After the number of stores surpassed Starbucks in the fourth quarter of 2021, the growth rate of stores has not slowed down. In the second quarter, 615 new stores were added, a quarter-on-quarter increase of 9.3%, and the total number reached 7,195.
This year, the price of Ruixing’s powder orders has risen by more than 80%. The current share price is about 18 US dollars, and the market value is about 4.4 billion US dollars. In the report, Snow Lake Capital set Luckin’s target price at $46.25 per share and a market value of $15 billion. It is expected that Ruixing will have a net profit of 2.8 billion yuan in 2024, and a price-earnings ratio of 35 times, which is equivalent to Xuehu’s valuation of Starbucks’ China business.
However, the impact of Ruixing’s financial fraud on the overall Chinese concept stocks continues. In May 2020, the U.S. Senate passed the Foreign Company Accountability Act, prohibiting the listing and trading of overseas listed companies that have not passed the inspection of the U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) for three years. (Intern Zeng Xing)
Real estate entrepreneur falls off rich list
The Hurun Research Institute released the “2022 Hurun Rich List” today. The number of entrepreneurs on the list and their total wealth both declined.
This year, a total of 1,305 entrepreneurs with personal wealth of more than 5 billion yuan are on the list, 160 less than last year, and 32 are 100 billionaires, 13 less than last year. The total wealth of entrepreneurs on the list has shrunk by nearly 20% to 24.5 trillion yuan.
Zhong Suisui, the founder of Nongfu Spring, has once again become the richest man in China, with a net worth of 455 billion yuan 17% more than last year. The wealth of the second place Zhang Yiming and the third place Zeng Yuqun has shrunk by nearly 30% compared with last year, and the ranking has not changed.
Hurun, chairman and chief research officer of Hurun Report, said that this year, the traditional industry has gained momentum, and the wealth of the richest man, Zhong Suisui, is almost the sum of the wealth of Zhang Yiming and Zeng Yuqun. Li Ka-shing surpassed Ma Huateng for the first time in five years, and Qin Yinglin of animal husbandry surpassed Ma Yun for the first time.
A total of 293 entrepreneurs fell off the list this year, which is the largest number of losers over the years. The real estate industry has the largest number of bosses who fell off the list, accounting for 14%. The number of people on the list in the real estate industry has decreased from 50% 20 years ago to this year. of less than 10%. The wealth of Yang Huiyan, the actual controller of Country Garden, has decreased by 110 billion yuan compared with last year, and is the richest person who has shrunk the most. The second most is Tencent Ma Huateng. (Qiu Hao)
China’s natural gas consumption fell in the first three quarters, but the pressure to ensure supply in winter is still great
The beginning of winter has passed, and the winter is accelerating across the country. Affected by the uncertainty of temperature, the contradiction between supply and demand in some time periods, the risks brought by the international energy crisis and the difficulty in storing natural gas, Wang Biao, director of the sales operation department of CNPC East, predicts that the pressure on the supply of natural gas will increase this winter and next spring.
Domestic natural gas demand mainly comes from city gas, gas for power generation and industrial gas. Air temperature is a key factor affecting natural gas demand. This winter’s ‘triple’ La Niña events bring uncertainty to climate change. According to the forecast of the National Meteorological Administration, the temperature from December to February in most parts of the country this year is 1-2 degrees Celsius lower than normal, and the temperature in January is 1-2 degrees Celsius higher than normal.
According to data from PetroChina, the monthly sales growth rate of natural gas in the winter peak reached 9%, which was higher than the overall growth rate in winter. At the same time, the demand for high-moon and high-day winters has increased, reaching 780 million cubic meters per day and 830 million cubic meters per day in the past two years, and is expected to exceed 900 million cubic meters per day this year.
The interruption of Gazprom’s supply caused an energy crisis, and European countries frantically purchased liquefied natural gas (LNG) around the world to make up for the gap, pushing up international gas prices. Weakening demand and rising prices led to a year-on-year decrease of 12.23 million tons of LNG imported into China in the first three quarters. According to the National Development and Reform Commission, in the first nine months of this year, national natural gas consumption fell by 1.4% year-on-year to 269.48 billion cubic meters.
Natural gas storage in China mainly relies on underground gas storage and liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal storage tanks. By the end of 2021, there are 26 underground gas storage depots and 22 LNG receiving stations. The effective gas storage capacity of all gas storage facilities accounts for 6.35% of the total natural gas consumption.
Therefore, although the apparent consumption of natural gas in China has declined year-on-year this year, the bottleneck of gas storage capacity may not be able to supply 100% gas when the peak gas consumption in winter comes.
In 2021, China will surpass Japan to become the world’s largest importer of LNG, with a foreign dependence rate close to 50%. China’s largest source of imported LNG is Australia, and the imported pipeline natural gas mainly comes from Turkmenistan, Russia, Kazakhstan and other countries. In the first half of this year, 40% of China’s imported natural gas was pipeline gas and 60% was LNG. (Intern Zeng Xing)
New evidence that electric car companies are betting on high-voltage fast charging
On November 7, Sanan Optoelectronics announced that its subsidiary Hunan Sanan’s silicon carbide chips sold a long order worth 3.8 billion yuan, and the buyer was a new energy vehicle company. Silicon carbide is a new type of semiconductor material. Because of its high-voltage resistance, it is regarded by the industry as a necessity for electric vehicles to invest in high-voltage fast charging routes.
According to the latest data from the Passenger Federation, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in China has risen to 30% in October. But range anxiety is still the core reason why many users reject electric vehicles. In theory, there are two ways to solve mileage anxiety. One is to increase the battery capacity and extend the battery life; the other is to speed up the energy replenishment (charging) efficiency.
If the actual battery life is compromised by factors such as temperature, the nominal battery life of many electric vehicles is actually equivalent to that of fuel vehicles, but the gas stations that can be seen everywhere and the energy-replenishing efficiency of filling up the fuel in 10 minutes will still make charging half the time. Electric cars from hours pale in comparison.
Most electric vehicles today still operate at 400 volts, but if the electric drive system is upgraded to an 800-volt architecture, charging speeds can be at least doubled.
In 2019, Porsche enabled the 800-volt drive system on its electric car Taycan, which can be “charged for 5 minutes and run for 100 kilometers” in the words commonly used by mobile phone brands today. The Xiaopeng G9, which went on sale in September this year and is also equipped with an 800-volt main drive, claims to be twice as fast as the Taycan.
During the first quarter earnings call, Tesla senior vice president Drew Baglino said that given the 800-volt architecture used in rival Porsche Taycan, Audi e-tron GT, Kia EV6, Hyundai Ioniq 5 and other models, Tesla will 800 volt systems are indeed being developed. One of the obstacles hindering its progress is that Tesla’s existing 35,000 charging stations are too expensive to upgrade.
Domestic car companies have a “late-mover advantage” in this regard, provided that their deployment of charging piles keeps up with their commitments. Li Auto said it plans to build more than 3,000 super fast charging stations across the country by 2025, and GAC Aian also said that it will build 2,000 super charging stations in 300 cities across the country by then. (Qiu Hao)
Is it different this time? The cryptocurrency market is in crisis again
Carmen Reinhardt, chief economist of the World Bank, once wrote the book “This Time is Different: Eight Hundred Years of Financial Crisis History”. This time is different”, each time crushed by a ruthless reality.
To a certain extent, the cryptocurrency market is almost the same as the interpretation of the market.
Under the “promotion” of Zhao Changpeng, the founder of Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, the world’s seventh largest cryptocurrency exchange, was caught in a liquidity crisis, fell into a credit crisis, had huge asset prices, passive deleveraging, and accelerated cryptocurrency prices. A vicious cycle of decline. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has been bailing out bankrupt cryptocurrency companies before, and now his company is in a liquidity crisis.
At the beginning of the month, the cryptocurrency information website CoinDesk wrote that FTX has a close business relationship with Alameda, a hedge fund also founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, whose assets of more than 10 billion US dollars are mostly composed of FTX digital tokens and use them as loan collateral. . Such a relationship could easily make both companies and the associated tokens prosper and lose both.
Investors fed up with the volatility in the cryptocurrency market this year pulled out of the FTX digital token market. The most powerful is undoubtedly Zhao Changpeng. On Sunday, he said on Twitter that he had decided to sell $530 million worth of FTX digital tokens in response to a “recent disclosure.” On the 7th, Changpeng Zhao said that asset sales are one of the risk management methods learned from the LUNA coin slump.
On the other hand, Sam Bankman-Fried believes that Changpeng Zhao is trying to attack his peers, and the Alameda hedge fund said the company’s assets are much higher than the figures reported by CoinDesk and the liquidity is abundant. The price of the FTX digital token has plummeted by 30%. (Gong Fangyi)
OTHER NEWS
BYD announced a new brand name for high-end positioning.
BYD, which has locked in the top sales of electric vehicles this year, released its high-end brand “Looking Up” on November 8, and the product price is expected to reach one million yuan. By the end of October, BYD had sold 1,397,800 electric vehicles during the year, with a market share of 27.87%. Converted based on BYD’s mid-year report on auto revenue and sales, the average vehicle sales price for the current period was about 170,300 yuan.
Apple suspends Goertek’s 3.3 billion AirPods orders.
Goertek announced this evening that it received a notification from a major overseas customer to suspend the production of one of its smart acoustic complete products, which is expected to affect this year’s revenue of no more than 3.3 billion yuan. Such a statement basically locks in that Apple suspends Goertek’s AirPods orders. The main reason for market speculation is that Goertek’s production data is falsified. According to the Financial Associated Press, Goertek has laid off some hourly and temporary workers and will no longer recruit in the near future.
Foxconn overweight cars.
According to media reports, Foxconn plans to invest $170 million in truck startup Lordstown to help it increase production of its first model, the Endurance, and the two sides will jointly develop the first electric vehicle. At present, Foxconn has obtained several OEM orders in the mid-to-low-end auto market in the United States and Thailand, and has released five “Model” series models. It is still sticking to the goal set two years ago to capture a 10% market share of the global electric vehicle market between 2025 and 2027.
Atour Hotel plans to IPO in the United States with a cap on the issue price.
According to Atour’s updated prospectus, they plan to issue about 4.75 million ADSs in the United States, priced at $11 to $13 per share. By the end of the third quarter, Atour had operated 880 hotels and achieved a net profit of 111 million yuan. The occupancy rate for the quarter recovered to 89% of the same period in 2019. Atour’s listing process has been twists and turns. After failing to sprint A shares twice in 2019 and 2020, it moved to the US stock market in June of the following year, and voluntarily cancelled the subscription before listing. They filed their prospectus again in September this year.
Puma’s current CEO will take charge of Adidas next year.
On November 8, Adidas announced that Bjørn Gulden, the current CEO of Puma, will serve as the CEO of Adidas from January 1 next year. The current CEO Kasper Rorsted, who has admitted to making mistakes in the Chinese market, will resign early on November 11 this year, and Adidas CFO Harm Ohlmeyer will temporarily lead the rest of the time.
The IMF says global inflation is nearing a peak.
International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Kristalina Georgieva said at the COP27 climate conference that global inflation may be close to the highs of this cycle. However, she also reminded that under the influence of fragmented supply chains, it is difficult to reduce the inflation rate to the ideal level of about 2% before the epidemic. The IMF said in its annual report last month that it expects global inflation to peak at 9.5 percent in the third quarter of this year, before falling back to around 4.1 percent in 2024.
Game agency rights such as NetEase’s Hearthstone are in danger.
On November 8, Activision Blizzard mentioned that the agreement with NetEase will expire in January next year when it announced its third-quarter results. Blizzard said it was discussing the renewal, but in the end it may not be able to reach an agreement that satisfies both parties. The agreement includes games such as World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Hearthstone, and Overwatch. In the third quarter, Activision Blizzard’s revenue and net profit both declined year-on-year, and monthly active users decreased by 5.6% year-on-year to 368 million.
Gap sold its Greater China business to an e-commerce agency.
Baozun E-commerce announced today the acquisition of Gap’s Greater China business for a consideration of US$40 million. Due to its poor performance in the Chinese market, as early as last year, it was reported that Gap was considering selling its business in China. Since the beginning of this year, Gap has closed its stores in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other cities on a large scale. Baozun has provided e-commerce operation services for Gap since December 2018. This acquisition may accelerate the migration of Gap’s sales channels to online.
Nvidia provides Chinese customers with replacement chips that comply with U.S. export controls.
According to media reports, Nvidia has begun to provide Chinese customers with a GPU (graphics processing chip) called the A800 to replace the A100, which was previously restricted from export by the U.S. government. The chip has the same computing performance as the A100, but with a third slower data transfer speed, which has a greater impact on the supercomputer’s performance. Nvidia has said export restrictions on the A100 will cost it $400 million, and the company expects the replacement A800 to be in high demand.
Musk took over Twitter for a week, and 15 million more people “watched the show.”
A week since Musk officially took over Twitter, although advertisers have pulled out, users have increased. According to media reports, the number of Twitter users has increased by 15 million, the daily active users who can complete the conversion of profits have grown by more than 20%, and the daily user growth has reached a record high.
Geely and Renault will jointly produce gasoline-powered vehicles.
Geely Automobile, which cooperates with other brands in philatelic cooperation, has found a new partner, Renault of France. It is reported that the two companies will form a new company to produce fuel vehicles. The two companies each hold 50% of the new company, and the final cooperation agreement is expected to be finalized next year, during which new investors may join. Renault was the ninth-largest automaker in the world by production last year.
Private equity giant Carlyle’s financing is not smooth, blame the market is not good.
Carlyle received $6 billion in investment commitments from investors in the third quarter of this year, down from $10 billion in the second quarter. The management of Carlyle Group said at the earnings conference that the stock market has been volatile this year, causing investors to be cautious. But Carlyle’s peers defied market turmoil to scoop up huge sums of money in the third quarter. Examples include Blackstone’s $45 billion, Apollo Global Management’s $34 billion, and KKR’s $13 billion.
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