HKI

McDonald's' New Burger Is Another Reason to Love It

I don't get the logic here. Even assuming the Angus burger tastes good, how does it then follow that MCD is a good buy?

MCD has introduced premium burgers before and they flopped. Think McDLT and ArcheDeluxe. While new burger product introduction is not a frequent event, history will show that the track record is not good especially on a premium beef burger.

You also seem to suggest that the best tasting burger wins which doesn't appear to be the case. When did MCD ever offer the best tasting burger relative to Burger King and Big Boy in the early days or In-N-Out nowadays? If offering the better burger wins, it would be Burger King dominating the QSR industry today.

Starbucks vs. McDonald's: Filtering Through the Coffee Wars

I don't get the point of this article. There are hardly any facts or analysis in here. Most are conjectures on the part of the author. For example, MCD and SBUX have become stronger competitors of each other and the smaller independents have fallen by the wayside. How did you arrive at this conclusion? Did a coffee shop in your town closed down? Or did the share of revenue of SBUX and MCD in a specific market actually went up based on a study?

Another example: "Starbucks was not only eating into their [MCD's] coffee revenue but breakfast sales". Where is the proof for this unsubstantiated statement? Maybe some type of customer profile or survey? Or is this just your conjecture that now that SBUX offers breakfast, MCD must be losing customers?

The Good News About Retail

Nice attempt to balance the negativity but your arguments don't make sense. People saving in times of crisis has similar effects as deleveraging and is a drag on the economy. Look it up. It is called the paradox of savings.

Why Don't Private Equity Investors Hedge Against Bear Markets?

Guess you have not been or doesn't know much about the PE business. LPs do not expect PE firms to hedge since it is a long-only product. Some fund documents do not allow for that.

Please Close the Markets

What kind of stupid idea is this? Close the markets?

Here is a suggestion. Stop looking at the stock prices and close the market for "YOURSELF". The market price is there for people to buy and sell. And if you don't intend to do either and doesn't have the psychological make-up to follow its ups and downs, stop looking at it. Go do something useful like writing a thoughtful article on seekingalpha. But this article certainly isn't one of them.

Emerging Markets Currencies - The Next Crisis

LOL, not sure how good the King Report is but getting simple fact straight will be a good start. Japanese year-end is in March, not Dec.

South Korea May Be Affecting China

I don't quite follow your argument. The rapid deterioration of some emerging market currencies are focused particularly on the ones with a current account deficit or with large borrowings in US$. China is in the reverse situation. So how would China suffer similarly?

The Death of Stocks

Always amazed at what people would say based on the last 3 months. Death of stock? Pick up a history book please. Over the last 200 years, stock is the best performing asset class globally generating the best real returns. Don't take my words for it. Look up some academic research.

And thank you for this headline. This does make me feel we are getting close to the bottom. Just a couple more like this and it is time for the value guys to buy.

Chinese Government Gives China Mobile Revenues to China Telecom

i don't get it. so how are you harmed indirectly?

The Pitfall of Thematic Investing

themes worked. what if you bought energies instead of all the garbage you mentioned? what you are talking about is not really themes but rather investing in the hot sector of the moment

Merrill Lynch’s Taiwanese Laundry

What's your point? That Singapore is corrupt as well? Night and day differences there. Don't see what the connection is between Singapore and Taiwan. And Singapore would be one of the least corrupt.

China: Real Estate Loan Growth May Be Slowing

The Real Estate sector has certainly been hurting and prices have declined sharply especially in cities like SZ. But despite this, I am not sure if the banks are going to have large credit problems. Let's not forget, while growth is slowing down, growth continues to be strong both in terms of GDP and consumer demand. Banks today are all making 3%+ in net interest margin and that will pay for a lot of loan losses even if this becomes true. I would not under-estimate the capacity of banks to absorb credit losses given the interest rate regulations.

BTW, most chinese bank loans are 1 year (except for project finance type loans) and they are simply rolled over every year. So a duration analysis on loans probably won't be very helpful in China.

Are there any particular B shares that you like?

Focus Media: May Be Growing Fast But What About The Cash?

Rosezee, I did the same analysis you did but got different numbers. The DSO excluding CGEN is 127 days which is similar. But I have 111 days for Q4 07, 102 days for Q3 07 and it does look to be up. The one thing missing in this analysis is seasonality as Q1 DSO has always been highest as you have the weakest quarter in revenue.

To adjust for this, I looked at DSO based on revenue in last 2 quarters and last 4 quarters. Here are the results for the last 5 quarters:

DSO based on current Q: 149, 96, 102, 111, 127
DSO based on 2Q: 145, 145, 159, 153, 132
DSO based on 4Q: 136, 127, 117, 118, 121

After adjusting for seasonality, the DSO looks to be flat or down. And Wu actually said on the call that Q1 is a seasonally weak quarter so he was spot on. This also refutes George's original comment that DSO is trending up. I do agree with the criticism that the absolute level of DSO is high though.

On the subject of AR, the other topic worth pointing out is that the US$40 mil of receivables for CGEN seems extremely high. A revenue in Q1 of US$10 mil but US$40 mil in AR? No collections for a year?

I am long FMCN