Bottom line: Tencent and Alibaba stocks have become overvalued at current levels compared with global peers, and are due for a pullback of up to 30 percent in 2018.
Much ado is being made about the meteoric rise in value for Tencent (HKEx: 700), the Chinese social media giant that is now neck-and-neck with global heavyweight Facebook (Nasdaq: FB). Specifically, the pair now boast nearly identical market values in the $520-$530 billi...
Bottom line: Alibaba's new investment in grocery operator Sun Art looks like a shrewd move into an area where logical synergies between online and offline shopping can be achieved.
After a period of relative quiet, e-commerce giant Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) is splashing back into the major M&A headlines with its purchase of a major stake in grocery retailer Sun Art (HK: 6808) for HK$22.4 billion ($2.9 billion). This particular deal looks strikingly s...
Bottom line: China Reading's IPO should be well received when it launches its road show as soon next week, and the shares should price and debut strongly on its good profit margins and growth prospects.
Another hot IPO with ties to one of China's leading Internet firms is nearing the starting line, with word that the highly anticipated listing for Tencent's (HKEx: 700) online literature unit is finally going to kick off shortly. ...
Bottom line: Huawei could overtake Apple as the world's second largest smartphone seller in the next 1-2 years, while it could also pose a challenge in global cloud services over the next 5 years.
We'll begin the new week with a couple of items from Huawei that show how the company that began as a telecoms network builder looks set to unseat fading PC giant Lenovo (HKEx: 992) as China's global leader in consumer tech. The first of those h...
Bottom line: JD.com's Thai joint venture looks like a smart move into Southeast Asia, though it shouldn't move too aggressively abroad and instead focus on becoming profitable.
China's big Internet companies have a pretty varied record for expanding abroad. At one extreme there's Alibaba (NYSE: BABA), which is using its big cash pot to buy a wide range of assets concentrated mostly in East and South Asia. Tencent (HKEx: 700) is in the middle, m...
Bottom line: Unicom's choice of 14 partners for a mixed-ownership reform plan involving its Shanghai-listed unit is far too many, and is ultimately likely to fail when those partners become frustrated and sell their shares.
What I feared might happen has come to pass in a mixed-ownership reform plan being crafted by China Unicom (HKEx: 762; NYSE: CHU), one of the nation's three telcos that is experimenting with selling some of its...
Bottom line: Alibaba's move into unmanned coffee shops could stand a strong chance of success due to its relative simplicity, while WeChat's move into Hong Kong convenience stores should also be relatively well received.
Convenience stores are shaping up as the next battlefield in the wars for supremacy between Internet titans Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) and Tencent (HKEx: 700), at least based on the latest headlines. One of those has Alibaba prepar...
Bottom line: Yu'ebao's further lowering of investment limits shows the Ant Financial-owned fund is growing too unwieldy, and the company would be better advised to diversify its wealth management product portfolio.
Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) founder Jack Ma is quickly discovering that his super-aggressive promotional ways can sometimes yield too much success. That's my quick assessment of the bottom line from reports that Yu'ebao, the phenomenally ...
Bottom line: Unicom's mixed-ownership reform plan could prove a dud if it chooses too many partners, which looks likely based on the latest reports.
I haven't written for a while about a highly anticipated plan to inject some new life into perennial laggard telco China Unicom (HKEx: 762; NYSE; CHU) through a Beijing-led pilot program, even as reports build that an announcement of the mixed-ownership plan are imminent. Those repor...