A Roundup of Recent E-commerce IPOs

From Mogujie (NYSE: MOGU) to Ruhan (NASDAQ: RUHN) to Yunji (NASDAQ: YJ), a series of second-tier (in terms of size at least) Chinese e-commerce companies has filed with SEC and raised $66.5 million, $125 million, $121 million respectively (excluding any over-allotment option).

The interests were stirred by (at least) the capital market success of Pinduoduo.

In its IPO, Pinduoduo was valued at $23.8 billion including all outstanding share options, compared with a valuation of $15 billion following a funding round in April, 2018. (Reuters)

users comparison at PDD’s IPO vs. Taobao, JD | Source: Bloomberg, Jiguang

Following the IPO in July last year, Pinduoduo raised another $1,375 million in February at $25 per ADS (IPO priced at $19 for ~$1.6 billion).


However, it seems that only Pinduoduo could maintain a high valuation.

Partially due to a bad timing, Mogu, valued at $3 billion in 2016 and seeking a valuation of $4 billion in early 2018, reduced its target and was priced at the lower end for $1.3 billion. The previous valuation was derived from a merger tho.

Mogu Inc. ended its New York debut at the same price as its initial public offering $14, after dipping as much as 15% during the day. [Caixing]

As of May 17, 2019, Mogu closed at $5.4 per ADS, down more than 61% from the IPO price of $14.

Ruhan, or Ruhhn, slipped 37% below its IPO price on the first day of trading following a $125 million NASDAQ offering. [AVCJ]

As of May 17, 2019, it closed at $4.25 per ADS, down more than 66% from the IPO price of $12.5.

Yunji, debuted this month, has maintained $0.01 above its IPO price of $11 as of May 17, 2019. Yunji’s valuation is more supported by its revenue (EV/revenue multiple is close to 1).


And a roundup of multiples at IPO, using an exchange ratio of 6.8

EV/GMV EV/Revenue
PDD 0.28 10.19
MOGU 0.43 7.06
RUHN 2.34 5.72
YJ 0.56 0.98

 

Hong Kong Biotech IPOs – How Are They Doing

Filing Date Prospectus Date
HKG:1672 Ascletis Pharma Inc 歌礼制药 05/07/2018 7/20/2018
HKG:2552 Hua Medicine 華領醫藥 06/06/2018 8/31/2018
HKG:1801 Innovent Biologics Inc 信達生物 06/28/2018 10/18/2018
HKG:6185 Cansino Biologics Inc 康希諾生物 7/17/2018 3/18/2019
HKG:6160 Beigene Ltd 百濟神州 7/24/2018 7/30/2018
HKG:1877 Shanghai Junshi Biosciences Co Ltd 君實生物 08/06/2018 12/11/2018
HKG:2616 CStone Pharmaceuticals 基石藥業 11/11/2018 2/14/2019

Money Flows: Raise By Bonds And Invest In Growth

Corporate bonds are popular, especially those sold by companies that have strong cash flows like Tencent and Saudi Aramco.

For investors, investments in those bonds are not as volatile as equities.

For corporates, there is no dilution in earnings and they could benefit from growth investments with low cost of capital.


Two recent examples (this week): Tencent and Saudi Aramco.

Tencent has been a very active investor in Chinese and global markets. It is one of the two modern “empires” rooted in China (the other being Alibaba). Some of its global investment include:

Tencent just announced that it has raised $6 billion in a bond sale, including $2 billion in fixed and floating rate five-year notes, $500 million in seven-year notes, $3 billion in 10-year notes and $500 million in 30-year notes, carrying coupons of 3.280 percent, 3.575 percent, 3.975 percent and 4.525 percent on the fixed rate five-year notes, seven-year notes, 10-year notes and 30-year notes.

Tencent has now caught up with Alibaba, who sold $7 billion bond in November 2017. (2018 is a year of turmoil that no big bond sales are possible)

Saudi Aramco, the world’s biggest oil producer, was the world’s most profitable company in 2018 (almost three times as much as Apple).

And Aramco has planned bond sale would raise around $10+ billion and is meeting investors this week around the globe.

Aramco has a crucial role to play in Saudi Arabia’s diversification from oil production. And an important part of the strategy is to invest in technology and other high-growth sectors around the world through Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), a major backer ($45 billion over 5 years) of Softbank Vision Fund since 2016.


Essentially, Saudi (and PIF) and Tencent are getting low-cost capital from bond sales and invest in tech. And the risks for bond investors are low, given Aramco’s core assets/cash flows and Tencent’s ubiquitous presence in Chinese economy.

It’s gonna be a good time for startup companies that fit Tencent’s or Saudi’s appetite…

Middlemen’s Hard Time… PBMs

It has been more than a month since the 7 major drug manufacturers’ CEOs testified before the congress on February 26.

One of the “problems” that pharma CEOs complained about was pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) or the middleman problem.

In a healthcare system involving drugmakers, PBMs, pharmacies, insurers, patients, etc., one of the premises behind CVS’s $70 billion acquisition of Aetna and Cigna’s $54 billion acquisition of Express Scripts might actually make them vulnerable in front of regulators: their bargain power.

CVS Health, Cigna, McKesson, Rite Aid, Walgreens… companies with relatively large exposure between pharmaceutical companies and patients/payers are having a very hard time.

Source: Author, Yahoo Finance

What’s ahead – on March 13, the same committee (Senate Finance Committee) said it has called 5 major PBMs to testify on April 3 (tomorrow…)

    • Cigna
    • CVS
    • Humana
    • OptumRx
    • Prime Therapeutics

They must have been prepared.

Stay stunned.

Lyft On Nasdaq

The first of a series of tech IPOs – Lyft debuted on Nasdaq today. With its stock priced at $72, Lyft is offering 32,500,000 shares of its Class A common stock, plus up to an additional 4,875,000 shares (raised $351 million in total).

The market cap excludes things like RSUs to be issued: 1) 77,390,807 shares of our Class A common stock reserved for future issuance under our equity compensation plans 2) 31,605,338 shares of our Class A common stock subject to RSUs outstanding, but for which the time-based vesting condition was not satisfied as of December 31, 2018 (including 15,065,349 shares of our Class A common stock subject to RSUs granted after December 31, 2018) 3) 7,037,379 shares of our Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of options to purchase shares of our Class A common stock outstanding as of December 31, 2018 (weighted average $4.74 exercise price)

MSCI China A Shares Inclusion (2): 253 Large-cap and 168 Mid-cap

Following up on the previous post of MSCI’s inclusion of 236 China A Shares last year, I created another list (in excel format) according to the recent update.

MSCI A-share List_2019Feb

MSCI will increase the weight of China A shares in the MSCI Indexes according to the following schedule:

  • Step 1: MSCI will increase the index inclusion factor of all China A Large Cap shares in the MSCI Indexes from 5% to 10% and add ChiNext Large Cap shares with a 10% inclusion factor coinciding with the May 2019 Semi Annual Index Review.
  • Step 2: MSCI will increase the inclusion factor of all China A Large Cap shares in the MSCI Indexes from 10% to 15% coinciding with the August 2019 Quarterly Index Review.
  • Step 3: MSCI will increase the inclusion factor of all China A Large Cap shares in the MSCI Indexes from 15% to 20% and add China A Mid Cap shares, including eligible ChiNext shares, with a 20% inclusion factor to the MSCI Indexes coinciding with the November 2019 Semi-Annual Index Review.

On completion of this three-step implementation, there will be 253 Large and 168 Mid Cap China A shares, including 27 ChiNext shares, on a pro forma basis in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, representing a weight of 3.3% in the pro forma index.

Again, there is no clear/editable list publicly available… Always a list in jpeg/png format.

Compared to the list of 236 large-cap stocks last year, there are 24 additions and 7 deletions, listed in separate sheets. (236+24-7=253)

 

MSCI China A Shares Inclusion (1): 234 -> 226 -> 236 Large-cap

One thing I found very odd when doing some research on the recent inclusion of China’s A-shares into MSCI’s indexes – there is even no easily-accessible and “readable” list…

“Lists” I saw are in the format of pictures.. not usable, considering the number of stocks are in hundreds.

(Really don’t understand why a simple list is protected… and available in uneditable form…)

And there is no consistent track of inclusion/exclusion of stocks publicly available.


Given that, I created excel lists [MSCI China A Shares List] of tickers proposed by MSCI with a history of different versions in 2018.

[For 2019 versions, please see the next post]

In this post, three versions are shared:

  1. 5/15/2018 version with 234 stocks ->
  2. 5/31/2018 version with 226 stocks (8 are removed due to reasons like suspension of trading, lack of buying opportunity, etc.) ->
  3. 8/31/2018 version with 236 stocks (10 are added)

From 1 to 2, the 8 deleted stocks are:

  • 002310 东方园林 (停牌原因)
  • 600170 上海建工 (调出沪股通标的)
  • 601390 中国中铁 (停牌原因)
  • 600369 西南证券 (调出沪股通标的)
  • 002450 ST康得新 (停牌原因)
  • 000825 太钢不锈 (停牌原因)
  • 601118 海南橡胶 (调出沪股通标的, 停牌原因)
  • 000063 中兴通讯 (停牌原因)

From 2 to 3, the 10 added stocks are:

  • 600760 中航沈飞
  • 601088 中国神华
  • 600050 中国联通
  • 600795 国电电力
  • 600346 恒力股份
  • 600406 国电南瑞
  • 000100 TCL 集团
  • 000063 中兴通讯
  • 600588 用友网络
  • 601966 玲珑轮胎

China’s New Nasdaq-style “Technology Innovation Board”

Although China’s economy and stock market size has been growing fast, the underlying capital market mechanisms are not as advanced.

China has made several efforts to modernize its stock market, but mostly remained in the previous framework or didn’t become a game-changer.

This time is different.

Regulatory approvals are replaced by general registration processes (guidance and regulations still there). Any company that fulfills certain requirements can go public.

Pre-profit companies can go public. Previously, the stock market was heavily leaning towards sectors with profits like banking.

Different share structures are allowed. Super voting power is allowed.

Lock-up period is higher than NASDAQ’s.

Attached is a presentation from a major investment bank in China.

20190302.pdf

Too Low The Value For Bristol Shareholders

The $74 billion merger between Bristol and Celgene was an uncertain one, opposed by Wellington (more than 8% of BMY) & Starboard (recently added position of less than 0.5% of BMY).

The merger in assets actually makes sense to me and should make sense to many investors. But the question of BMY-only shareholders, who don’t own much CELG stocks, is that the benefits are probably captured unevenly by Celgene.

Suppose the base case for Celgene stock price without acquisition is $75 and the merger price is $50 cash + 1 BMY share ($52 value) + $9 option ($3 value) -> $105 per share – when it was traded at $90/share, the market suggested a probability 50% of a successful merger. [75*(1-p) + 105*p = 90]

When CELG was traded at $84, the market suggested a success rate of 30%. [75*(1-p) + 105*p = 84]


(Yes, the market just take simple numbers… )

Wellington/Starboard might just want to add more negotiation power to get some other benefits (special board treatment e.g.) or to load up some CELG…

BMY alone probably won’t perform very well, they should understand that.