I decided to buy some China Mobile shares, after did some reading in the weekend. Today’s news is China Mobile walked away from Apple regarding iPhone, cool. Since I placed a limited order ($85.25) last night, I got it at $84.22 shortly after it started trading.
Two things: China Mobile (NYSE:CHL; HK:0941) is not cheap, at PE 33 and a market cap of about $340 b (Yahoo and Google Finance), it is the biggest mobile operator in the world. It has around 362 m subscribers (end of Nov 2007, according to its web site). Note the stock price has gone up 100% in 2007, and about 80% in 2006.
On the other hand, China Mobile is growing at around 20% top and bottom line. For a company of that size, it’s not easy. And one nice thing about it, it does not carry as much risk as other Chinese ADRs (say LFC, or PTR). This is important in current uncertain economy and market environment; and relevant for me after I suffered the paper loss from CROX and LFT. I believe people (especially young people) in China will use their mobile phone talk to their friends, text messaging, get to Internet…even if Chinese economy slows down after Olympics, as many people expected (which I don’t agree).
A thousand words 