China market, Ningbo Younger, Olympics

The China doemestic stock market resumed trading after a week of recess (for the Lunar New Year). To the surprise of most people and an old Chinese saying “Kai Meng Hong”, the market opened down instead of up. It appears people are still nervous about the US economy and its fallout effect to China economy.

Some Chinese stocks look cheap

(Jan 31) Read this piece from Shui Pi, a reknown Chinese stock columnist. Quote a paragraph here:
统计表明，2007年中国资本市场融资再融资的规模近8000亿，而印花税为2005亿，两者相加近10000亿，相当于流动市值的十分之一。这笔钱是从市场中拿走的，基本上不可再生。如果2008年的主板融资规模维持不变，那么再加预期中的创业板的融资规模和大非解禁的资金数量，增量资金的需求量就是一个天文数字。2008年的股市有那么乐观吗？He is saying, the transaction cost plus the new IPO last year totaled RMB 1 trillion, which is about 10% of the total market float.

(Original) After recent brutal selling of Chinese domestic market, it appears some “blue chip” stocks are fairly cheap. For instance, 600030, Citic Securities (CS), the No.1 broker (and No. 2 investment banker) in China, traded at around CNY 67.00, considering its 2007 earning of CNY 4.00 (up 400% from last year CNY 0.80), the PE ratio is about 17, not that far compared to Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), which has a PE about 10.

Why the stock is so cheap now, I mean compared to high flying couple months ago (last Oct.)?

Citic Securities tied up with Bear Stern

Yesterday (Monday Oct 22 Beijing time) I was wondering why the Citic Securities 600030 stock did not trade in Shanghai: the official reason is CS expected to announce some news. I thought about the Bear Stern (NYSE: BSC) thing, and my guess was right. Here is the news this morning (Oct 23), in Chinese and in English (Bloomberg).

Shanghai Composites and second offerings

The Shanghai Composites Index closed above 5000 the first time on August 23, Thursday. The interesting thing is, this time Chinese goverment is not as nervous as last time around (May 30), because this run up is largely drived by so-called blue chips: especially large banks where the goverment is the majority owner (ICBC, BOC,…).

For smaller investor like us, I think we should look beyond the market, and look at individual companies. By incident (what an incident), two large blue chip companies, Vanke (000002), and Citic Securities (600030). Here is the bloomberg news for Citic Securities secondary.

The Beijing-based company will offer as many as 350 million new shares at 74.91 yuan on Aug. 27, it said in a statement today. It would be China’s third-biggest stock sale this year. The shares jumped 5.9 percent to a record 94.95 yuan in Shanghai.

Citic Securities, after passing Japan’s Nomura Holdings Inc. in market value this week, is seizing on investor enthusiasm for stocks that made China the world’s best-performing market this year. Chairman Wang Dongming, who boosted first-half profit more than fivefold, plans to triple capital at the futures unit to extend his lead over local rivals…

Valuation Premium

Today’s share price gain values Citic Securities at $37 billion, higher than Nomura’s $35 billion. The stock has more than tripled this year. The firm trails only Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch & Co. in market value.

Investors pay a premium for Citic. The stock trades at about 35.8 times estimated full-year profit, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Goldman, the world’s most profitable securities firm, has a price-earnings multiple of 8.1.

Citic Securities 600030

I felt this baby (600030.SS) was being thrown out of bath tub when the Shanghai Composite Index dropped from 4300 to 3600, amid the raise of stamp tax. Logic here was the raise of stamp tax will reduce stock trading, which will reduce Citic’s business from trading side.