The following press releases and news reports about China companies were carried on September 27. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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Bottom line: Alibaba is the biggest beneficiary of business lost by Baidu after a scandal earlier this year, with search rivals Qihoo and Sogou also likely to pick up new business.
Baidu loses digital ad crown to Alibaba
A couple of news items are showing how Baidu’s (Nasdaq: BIDU) core search business is coming under assault from several directions, in an ominous sign for the company’s main revenue source. The first item shows that Baidu has officially lost its crown as China’s top digital adverting platform to e-commerce titan Alibaba (NYSE: BABA), following a scandal earlier this year that wiped out up to a fifth of its revenue. In the other item, reports are saying that China’s other Internet titan Tencent (HKEx: 700) has boosted its stake in Sogou, one of Baidu’s main search rivals, to 45 percent. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: NetEase’s move into cloud computing and closure of its forum service are part of an overhaul positioning it for future growth, and could propel it into China’s top 3 Internet companies in the next 5 years.
NetEase launches cloud service
China’s lowest-key Internet giant NetEase is making some more new adjustments, extending reports last week that it was planning to spin off or sell its old but stagnating web portal business. One of the new moves includes word that the company has shuttered its equally slow-growth web forum business. The other has the company launching a new cloud service, with plans to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into the business over the next few years. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Pokemon Go could launch in China as soon as the end of this year, but is likely to get a tepid reception due to its late arrival and fading buzz in other countries.
After months of silence in the world’s largest mobile market, Pokemon Go, the wildly popular mobile game that debuted this summer in most of the world, may be finally coming to China soon. That’s the word coming from new media reports, which are citing the CEO of Niantic, the San Francisco-based developer of the popular title that takes mobile gaming to a new level by adding global positioning (GPS) technology. But the bigger question is whether Pokemon Go will get much attention from Chinese gamers, since it seems to be well past its prime after making global headlines over the summer. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and news reports about China companies were carried on September 21. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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Postal Savings Bank of China Set to Price Hong Kong IPO Near Low End (English article)
New Disclosure Shows Tencent (HKEx: 700) Owns 45 Pct of Search Engine Sogou (Chinese article)
Bottom line: Wanda will look for new Hollywood assets after being rejected in the bidding for a stake of Paramount, while the departure of a member of the group buying Baidu Video is a minor setback and a new investor will be easily found.
Paramount abandons stake sale plan
A couple of headlines are showing that China’s love affair with the film and video industries isn’t always so smooth, with the collapse of 2 major deals involving cinema giant Wanda and online search leader Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU). The far larger of the 2 developments has seen leading Hollywood studio Paramount scrap plans to sell a strategic stake in itself, ending a deal that reportedly had seen Wanda emerge as one of the most likely buyers. The Baidu deal is quite a bit smaller, and has seen one of the buyout partners withdraw in a plan to spin off its relatively minor Baidu Video business. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: A new global tie-up between UnionPay and PayPal could auger another alliance by the end of the year that would allow the US company to launch a domestic electronic payments service in China by the end of this year.
PayPal in tie-up with UnionPay
In what must certainly be one of the slowest marches to China of all time, US electronic payments giant PayPal (Nasdaq: PYPL) has just formed a tie-up with UnionPay, operator of China’s largest electronic transactions settlement network. On reading the headline I thought that PayPal had finally cracked the market for domestic transactions in China, following more than a decade of trying to enter the lucrative business. But it turns out the new tie-up only covers cross-border transactions and is mostly for UnionPay’s benefit, meaning PayPal is still being locked out of the domestic China market. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Tencent’s new crown as Asia’s most valuable company reflects the rapid growth of China’s private sector in the last decade, and could auger an eventual challenge to global social networking leader Facebook.
Tencent takes crown for most valuable Chinese company
Media are fawning on Chinese Internet sensation Tencent (HKEx: 700), which has just edged past telecoms giant China Mobile (HKEx: 941; NYSE: CHL) to become the nation’s most valuable publicly traded company. Such a feat would have been unthinkable a decade ago, when the nation’s private sector was still in its infancy and state-run monoliths like China Mobile still dominated China’s corporate landscape. But much has changed over the last 10 years, and Tencent in many ways reflects the huge potential that investors see in a Chinese private sector that has come to dominate many emerging industries like Internet-based products and services. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: China Mobile and its peers could take a big hit to their voice call revenues as they roll-out anti-fraud systems to counter negative publicity, while Alibaba could suffer similar but smaller impact to its pre-paid phone card business.
China Mobile cracks down on phone conmen
The same week it officially lost its crown as China’s most valuable listed company, China Mobile (HKEx: 941; NYSE: CHL) is back in the headlines with more bad news related to a swell of publicity involving the nation’s rampant phone fraud. Normally I might dismiss this story, since phone fraud has been common in China for years and is really nothing new. But another similar case this year ended up becoming a huge headache Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU), and cost the online search giant huge sums in both market value and lost revenue. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and news reports about China companies were carried on September 6. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) Starts Selling Down Meituan-Dianping Stake (Chinese article)
Tencent (HKEx: 700) Passes China Mobile to Become Asia’s Most Valuable Firm (Chinese article)
LeEco (Shenzhen: 300104) Says Car Unit to Reach Volume Production in 3 Years (Chinese article)
O2O Grocery Platform Huimin Secures 1.3 Bln Yuan Series B Funding (English article)
Phoenix Satellite TV (HKEx: 2008) Reports Interim Results (HKEx announcement)
The following press releases and news reports about China companies were carried on September 1. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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