It was a tradition for Vanke to disclose its official monthly sales report, which includes information such as sqm (pre) sold, $ amount (pre) sold, and new projects added.
Here is the last one for Dec 2024 monthly report from Vanke; haven’t found 2025 monthly reports for Jan, Feb and Mar 2025.
Here is a monthly chart for monthly contracted sales in rmb 100mn, from Jul 2022 to Dec 2024.
Hermes!
A) The ultra rich people continue to spend (although slower), despite the slowdown among LVMH customers.
B) Strength in price (increases) push people to buy as usual.
Btw, Hermes will pass all tariff costs to consumers. Maybe shall see some pushback from US consumers (a bit more uncertainty).
Source: Hermes 1Q2025
Source: Hermes 2024 annual
Clearly not LVMH.
The core fashion and leather goods has not been growing much since 2024.
Back in 2018, LVMH still grew 10% yoy.
Back in 2008, LVMH still grew 4.3% yoy.
In 2009, LVMH revenue decline by 1% yoy. However, the fashion and leather goods segment still grew ~5% in 2009.
Ubisoft created a new entity and put valuable assets into it.
Tencent put money into this new entity and got 25% ownership.
While Ubisoft’s shareholder got nothing, Tencent can do more with the important IPs like Assassin Creed.
Maybe there is a limit on how much Tencent can buy into Ubisoft. Maybe the possibility of Ubisoft being acquired is low due to France regulation, not due to Tencent’s previous investments.
Probably it’s the complications and regulations around the world are making those deal structure necessary. Capital is not allowed to buy anything it interested in.
So.. on the positive side, will this model serve as a template for TikTok US?
ByteDance inject some assets (TikTok US) into a new entity, and new investors inject money or assets into the new entity, so that the new ownership structure can satisfy both US and China’s demands?
Approximately 40% of our products were manufactured in Vietnam, 17% in Cambodia, 11% in Sri Lanka, 11% in Indonesia, and 7% in Bangladesh,
and the remainder in other regions.
Approximately 35% of the fabric used in our products originated from Taiwan, 28% from China Mainland, 11% from South Korea, and the remainder
from other regions
Nvidia GPUs can be used as collateral to borrow. Financial Times reported that $11 billion of loan was created for these chips.
That’s something too creative for me.
I think it’s generally safe to borrow against assets with a growing value.
Chips, however, are like cars to me, depreciating… with new versions better than the previous one.
Well, it seems you can borrow against your car, but that’s still based on your ability to pay back the loan.
So how does it work?
Maybe it’s actually a loan borrowed against the “service contract” or rental agreement carried by the chips, which makes it more like an asset with “yield”.
But still, this market sounds a bit too arbitrary…
Hard to imagine that the rental income will be stable or rising, as Nvidia chips supply is up to Nvidia and TSMC. That capacity can increase over time.
Assuming buybacks & dividends are “required”, the unallocated cash flows are matching the capex figure already.
This means additional room to add capex is limited.
Put it in another way, free cash flows after shareholder returns are near 0.
For example, Alphabet got $125bn op. cash flow in 2024, paid $53bn in capex, $62bn in buyback and $7bn in dividend. FCF after shareholder returns is only $3bn, or 2.5% of its operating cash flow.
Meta, with 10% unallocated operating cash flow in 2024, will increase its capex by 50% in 2025. If Meta’s op. cash flow grows 10% in 2025, then FCF after shareholder returns in 2025 is only $3bn, or 3% of its operating cash flow.
Microsoft in calendar year 2024, has $10 billion of unallocated free cash flow. But that should be smaller if looking at its fiscal year 2024.
Mar 3 – both Nvidia and Broadcom shall use Intel as a foundry to produce chips.
This should add additional pressure to gross profit margin to both companies.
Feb 25 – Apple shall invest $500bn in the US in the next 4 years, including a new advanced manufacturing facility in Houston to produce servers for Apple Intelligence and Private Cloud Compute.
Apple also supported billions of $$ for TSMC’s Fab 21 facility in Arizona.
Not to mention the rollback of those DEI policies across companies, e.g.
For the past 8 quarters (2023 & 2024), incremental gross profit margin is well above 80%, more like 90%.
This is easy to understand, e.g. one more successful ads sale (click etc.) on Instagram won’t cost Meta more.
What’s even more amazing is the incremental operating profit conversion, which on average is like 100% for the past 6 quarters!
What does 100% mean? It means one dollar of additional gross profit earned by Meta was converted into one dollar of operating profit – how amazing is that!
The operating profit margin increased from 20% in 2022 Q4 to 48% in 2024 Q4, growing at 91% CAGR.
Although there were some one-off opex optimization efforts, thus incremental operating margin should definitely fall, it’s still a very very powerful business franchise, demonstrated by this amazing incremental earnings power.
Eli Lilly:
$41bn LTM global revenue
China MRQ rev = 4% of total revenue
Starbucks:
$36bn LTM global revenue
China MRQ rev = 9% of total revenue
Nike:
$47bn LTM global revenue (Nike brand)
China MRQ rev = 14% of total revenue
Lululemon:
$10bn LTM global revenue
China MRQ rev = 15% of total revenue