Stocks News
- B shares surge on market merger talk
Date: 15-Feb-2007 Sources: (Shenzhen Daily)
CHINA'S foreign-currency shares, the last bargain in a country where lawmakers are concerned that stocks are overheating, are becoming more expensive as investors bet they will be merged with the rest of the market.
Shanghai's index of so-called B shares has risen 37 percent in 2007, while the market's composite index, mainly A shares in yuan, has gained 4.9 percent. Equities denominated in U.S. and Hong Kong dollars are a quarter cheaper than local-currency stocks, according to Haitong Securities.
'B shares will jump if the merger is announced,'said Liu Yang, who manages the US$414 million Atlantis China Fund at Atlantis Investment Management (H.K.) in Hong Kong. Liu is adding to her holdings of B stocks with an eye to making them about 10 percent of her portfolio. 'There are good individual stocks on the B-share market that are cheaper than A shares.'
The B-share market was set up in 1992 to give local companies a way to raise funds from foreign investors, who were banned from buying securities denominated in yuan. The government's 2003 decision to ease the ban starved the B-share market, which has not had an initial stock sale in three years and is worth only about 2 percent of China's total market capitalization.
Foreign-currency stocks on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges trade at an average 27 times this year's estimated earnings. A shares trade at an average 36 times, said Haitong's Shanghai-based analyst Zhang Qi.
B shares of Shanghai Zhenhua Port Machinery, the world's biggest maker of container cranes, trade at 33 times earnings, compared with 38 times on the A market. For Huaxin Cement, the Chinese affiliate of Holcim, the world's second-biggest cement maker, B shares trade at 39 times earnings, versus 48 times for their A shares.
'B shares are one of the few remaining opportunities for investors to make a buck from China's structural reform of its capital market,'Haitong's Zhang said. 'B shares will definitely gain if a merger takes place.'
The Shanghai Stock Exchange intends to start trials for converting B shares into yuan stock, Zhou Qinye, the bourse's executive vice president, said in January 2006. No announcements have since been made on the subject. Liu Fuhua, a press official at the China Securities Regulatory Commission, declined to comment on merger prospects Feb. 7.
A move by regulators to merge the two markets has been one of the longest-running bets in the Chinese equity markets, stretching back to the 1990s. Speculation that they will combine into a single local-currency market has picked up steam again this year.
The securities regulator may either directly convert B shares into the yuan stock or allow companies to buy back B shares by using proceeds from selling new yuan stocks, wrote UBS analyst Edmond Huang in a Jan. 24 note to clients.
Yuan-denominated shares constitute about 98 percent of the Chinese markets' US$1.1-trillion capitalization. The value of A shares traded daily in Shanghai averaged US$10.1 billion this year, compared with US$114.8 million for the city's B shares.
After five consecutive years of underperforming A shares, B shares escaped a slump in local-currency stocks in the past two weeks after Cheng Siwei, vice chairman of the National People's Congress, warned of a 'bubble?in the local stock market.
The Shanghai Composite Index of A and B shares has tumbled 4.2 percent since Jan. 30, when Cheng expressed concern that stocks had risen too high. It had more than doubled in the previous 12 months. The B share index has added 5.1 percent in the same period.
'The discount of B shares is very attractive,'said Ke Shifeng, who helps manage US$2.3 billion of Greater China assets at the Scotland-based Martin Currie Investment Management in Shanghai. There are also some 'very decent companies that have strong branding and good quality on the B-share market,'he said.
Ke said he holds B shares of Yantai Changyu Pioneer Wine, the listed unit of the country's biggest vintner, China International Marine Container, the world's largest maker of freight containers, and Shanghai Lujiazui Finance & Trade Zone Development, a developer in Shanghai's financial district.
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