Siwei Zhong

Xinhua Finance Media Debut Drop and the Current IPO Climate

this is from the XFML F-1 document:
'..cable and satellite television broadcasting on Inner Mongolia Satellite Television, to an estimated audience of 210 million potential television viewers in key Chinese urban areas including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.."

so its TV viewership is those of "Inner Mongolia Satellite Television".

Anyone wishes to bet on XFML shall first understand where Inner Mongolia is located in China !

I just want to point out some facts:
1) I wonder how many people in the 3 cities (Beijing Shanghai Guangzhou) are viewers of "Inner Mongolia Satellite Television", when there are so many popular local channels available.

2) I've been doing business travel to all those cities for countless time, I am not even aware of such channel available in any business hotels I have stayed.

I have no doubt of Ms. Bush's PR capability, but running a successful business in China requires much more than PR.

about "most respected financial print products in China" , I think those from XFML are far from that class by any measurement at the current moment.

Ask any fund manager in HK or Shanghai which are the most popular finance magazines. I can tell you it's Caijing. Caijing, though a PRC publication, is widely circulated in HK among those fund managers who have a need to know most updated PRC events.

This requires no argument, go to Central in Hong Kong (the areas the HK Stock Exchange and the HK Monetary Authority are located) and check out the newstand what Chinese finance magazines are on display, as simple as that. I drop by those newstand everyday. I live in HK, I have too many fund manager friends who told me this message. I don't need further proof.

Xinhua Finance Media's Less Than Impressive IPO

"Xinhua" is a very appealing brand, more specifically people are leveraging the Xinhua News Agency, the PRC government owned official news agency by getting the Agency (in most, if not all cases, a very remote affliated companies of the Agency instead of the Agency itself) as a shareholder, and then they can tell the rosy story saying they have Chinese governemnt support so on and so forth... How true is the Agency "supporting" those companies and in what sense? and how does that help the company in its daily business? I have reservation.

for those who followed US listed Chinese stock long enough, you will know China.com (CHINA) , now renamed as CDC Corp. was also selling a story that they have Xinhua News Agency affliated subsidiary (quite remote indeed, that subsid was a company formed in Hong Kong, but I doubt whether the Agency itself even knew there was such an associated outfit in Hong Kong at all) as its shareholder, turned out CHINA was a very successful listing in NASDAQ during the dotcom era. But how does the stock perform now?

Sorry, this sort of 'brand borrowing' story doesn't appeal to me when there are so many better PRC stocks to choose from, those companies have better fundamentals without the need to brand-borrow elsewhere.

But I do pay very high respect to those underwriters and company founders who can create and arrange those beautiful stories.