WSJ:Big IPOs Don't Mean Big Gains in China

       The Wall Street Journal reports "China's newly reopened initial public offering market shows that large deals don't necessarily lead to big gains for investors.

Although all 45 companies that have listed in China since its securities regulator ended a more than yearlong moratorium on IPOs in late December are trading above their listing prices, it is companies in the consumption and information-technology sectors championed by Beijing, or those that were priced cheaply, that are posting the sharpest gains".

China's biggest IPO so far this year, that of coal producer Shaanxi Coal Industry Co., which raised 4.0 billion yuan ($660 million), is the weakest gainer with a 17% increase. At the other end of the spectrum is Beijing UTour International Travel Service Co. , which raised a relatively modest 337 million yuan but is trading almost three times its IPO price.

"New listings soared mainly because of investors' pent-up demand for new stocks—many of them don't have a prosperous outlook," said Amy Lin, an analyst with Capital Securities. 

The China Securities Regulatory Commission stopped approving IPOs in October 2012, only allowing them to resume after overhauling rules in order to prevent offerings from being overpriced. Prior to the moratorium, new listings in the country usually soared on the first day of trading, but often fell, performing less well than the broader market.

The pricing issues, coupled with concerns about China's economy, weighed on the domestic stock market. The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index fell 35% between 2010 and 2013; it is up 0.9% so far this year.

Shaanxi Coal, which said in its listing prospectus it expects 2013 net profit to fall by between 42% and 45% from 6.42 billion yuan in 2012, managed to complete China's largest IPO so far this year in January. The stock's rise from its IPO price exceeds gains in the broader market over the same period, but the miner faces challenges.

More than 90% of the companies that have listed since the securities regulator resumed approving IPOs posted gains of at least 40% on the first day of trading, and nearly half have doubled from their IPO prices. Information-technology companies, commercial services firms and manufacturers in the clean energy and environmental sectors are among the strongest gainers.

"Those set to benefit from government support typically attract stronger interests than cyclical companies like Shaanxi Coal," Ms. Lin said, though she noted that hopes for an early pop, or surge in price immediately after a listing, underpin demand for most IPO stocks.

WSJ: China January Trade Data Accurate, Ministry Says

        The Wall Street Journal reports,"China's higher-than-expected January export data weren't inflated, the Ministry of Commerce said on Tuesday".

"Worries the monthly figures were distorted by arbitrage-driven false reporting are "speculation and groundless," ministry spokesman Shen Danyang said at a news briefing".

"Overall the trade figures are reasonable," Mr. Shen said.

"Exports of important products including cars and consumer goods made good gains in large markets, he said.

Exports unexpectedly jumped 10.6% on year in January—higher than 4.3% growth in December, official customs data show.

Growth was ahead of a median 0.1% rise forecast by economists polled by The Wall Street Journal. Strong exports in January last year would make this year's growth." 

L'important C'est d'aimer Rommy Schneider Les Images Part II

  

   

L'important C'est d'aimer Romy Schneider . Les Images I

  
  

Les Choses de la Vie l'accident de la voiture

Les Choses de la Vie

Les Choses de la Vie Claude Sautet

Woody in a rare interview about What's New Pussycat

What's new Pussycat Woody Allen

Il Sorpaso film

Il Sorpaso Dino Rissi

Il sorpasso

Il Sorpasso Trailer Vittorio Gasman and Jean Louis Trintignant

Trailer du L'importance c'est d'aimer avec Rommy Schneider . Adrzej Zulawsky Realisateur

                                           Le Zenith du Rommy Schneider

HOMMAGE A ROMMY SCHNEIDER NOUS SOMMES TANT AIMES

     
                                Une hommage au beauté et talent du Rommy Schneider

Francois Truffaut la femme d'a cote

Francois Truffaut the man that loved cinema

La Nuit Américaine(il film,la vita)

                   
                                                  Il film, la vita.

Cinema Rules Francois Truffaut

                                         
                                         Cinema Rules Francois Truffaut La nuit Americaine

Europe equity Indexes Brief

Country: Index	Last	Change	% Chg
Europe Dow	2066.81	9.98	0.49
Stoxx Europe 50	2942.84	13.72	0.47
Stoxx Europe 600	334.83	1.51	0.45
Euro Stoxx 50	3122.53	3.47	0.11
Euro Stoxx	320.07	0.71	0.22
Austria: ATX Index	2649.93	9.48	0.36
Belgium: Bel-20	2988.46	11.38	0.38
Denmark: OMX Copenhagen 20	687.30	3.40	0.50
Estonia: OMX Tallinn*	823.22	-3.04	-0.37
Finland: OMX Helsinki	7452.45	27.82	0.37
France: CAC 40	4337.76	-2.38	-0.05
Germany: DAX	9670.25	7.85	0.08
Greece: Athex Composite Share Price	1278.96	-1.50	-0.12
Greece: DJ Greece TSM	968.71	-5.02	-0.52
Greece: FTSE/ATHEX 20	416.99	0.12	0.03
Iceland: OMX Iceland All-Share	869.43	-2.65	-0.30
Ireland: ISEQ Overall	4971.62	41.74	0.85
Italy: FTSE MIB	20497.96	61.49	0.30
Latvia: OMX Riga*	477.71	1.39	0.29
Lithuania: OMX Vilnius*	456.16	0.23	0.05
Netherlands: AEX	401.71	2.76	0.69
Norway: OSE All-Share	606.82	1.83	0.30
Portugal: PSI 20	7251.19	118.68	1.66
Spain: IBEX 35	10133.50	0.70	0.01
Sweden: OMX Stockholm	431.17	2.55	0.59
Switzerland: Swiss Market	8414.70	-2.88	-0.03
UK: FTSE 100	6743.07	79.45	1.19
UK: FTSE 250	16223.30	112.68	0.70
UK: FTSE AIM All-Share	878.41	2.95	0.34

Source: WSJ

LME DATA BRIEF

Source:  BBC

Xiaomi Sets Singapore Launch Date As It Prepares For Global Expansion

Xiaomi just announced that it will launch in Singapore on Feb. 21. This is a significant move because it marks the company’s first expansion beyond China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan six months after naming Google’s former Android vice president Hugo Barra as the head of Xiaomi Global in a surprise announcement.

The company unveiled its Singapore site earlier this week. The only product currently featured is the Redmi, Xiaomi’s cheapest Android phone, which will cost just S$169 (or about $133 USD).

Despite its very low price, the Redmi still has some impressive features, like a quad-core processor, a 4.2-inch HD screen, and 8MP camera, that may help it standout from competitors. Xiaomi’s other handsets have also earned kudos for strong specs, attractive design, and Xiaomi’s Android skin, which it customizes by crowdsourcing user feedback.

Singapore makes sense as Xiaomi’s first stop in its international expansion because the country has one of the highest mobile penetration rates in the world. According to Nielsen, 87% of people in Singapore have a smartphone, the same number as in Hong Kong. To put that figure into context, it beats the 71% mobile penetration rate in China, 72% in the UK, and 60% in the U.S.

Xiaomi has grown extremely quickly since launching just three years ago. In 2013, for example, it more than doubled its sales to 18.7 million phones.

Though Xiaomi continues to face strong competition from domestic Android handset makers like Lenovo, ZTE, and Huawei, it has held its own thanks to the high profile of its founder,Chinese tech pioneer Lei Jun, as well as unique marketing strategies, like selling phones directly from Sina Weibo, China’s top microblogging platform.

Xiaomi’s growth plan has worked very well so far: in August 2013, Xiaomi’s market share in China surpassed the iPhone by a small margin, according to Canalys.

Source: TechCrunch

Siemens Launches $100M Fund To Back Startups Aiming To Disrupt Manufacturing

Siemens Venture Capital, the corporate financing arm of Europe’s biggest engineering company, is launching a new, $100 million fund to back early-stage startups working in the areas of industrial automation and other digital technologies that can transform manufacturing. This comes after Siemens made two notable startup investments over past few months — in 3D visualization startup Lagoa, and CounterTack, the developer of next generation cyber security software.

Corporate venture capital has traditionally been considered “dumb money”, but as this TechCrunch post noted in November last year, some of them are increasingly looking more like traditional VCs. Indeed, in October 2013, 48 venture funding rounds valued at over $719M included CVC investor participation. This represented a 14% participation rate, the highest month in the CrunchBase dataset.

Engineering and manufacturing conglomerates such as Siemens and GE are increasingly looking at newer ways to leverage data and insights captured by their devices and machines. Combined with Internet and other digital technologies, this becomes what GE and several others describe as “the Industrial Internet.” As this NY Times story noted way back in November 2012, the lines dividing old-world engineering and new age software solutions are blurring. This shift is underscored by the rise of “Internet of Things”, where Google is beginning to look like General Electric, at least on the software side.

“As digitization and software are becoming increasingly important for manufacturers to compete in the global marketplace, the Industry of the Future Fund will support Siemens’ “Industrie 4.0” strategy by providing capital to those companies whose innovative technologies and vision have the potential to change the landscape of manufacturing and industrial automation,” said Siegfried Russwurm, CEO of the Siemens Industry Sector.

According to the company statement, this new fund will back start-up companies early in their lifecycle and aims to foster partnerships with companies, which will transform industrial markets or even create completely new ones through pioneering technologies .

Source: TechCrunch

A First Look At Echobox, An Analytics Tool For News Sites That Actually Helps Drive Traffic

“It’s baffling to me why existing analytics tools are so backward,” says Antoine Amann, founder and CEO of Echobox. “They are mainly descriptive, typically showing you tons of fancy graphs and charts, but they don’t actually analyse the data for you.”

His startup, an analytics tool for news publishers, turns this approach on its head. Instead of simply displaying an abundance of analytics, Echobox looks at a site’s visitor data and, using its own algorithms and machine learning, actually recommends actions to take, including editorial, to drive additional traffic. Crucially, those recommendations are written in plain English.

Although Echobox is already being used by a major new publisher, it’s managed to remain in stealth mode until now and is currently running in private beta. However, TechCrunch has been given an exclusive demo of an early version of the product — a demo that, as somebody who writes the news, left me a little overawed.

The first thing you’ll notice about Echobox is the lack of complex charts or rows of data. Instead, publishers are presented with a list of actionable recommendations and insights, generated in real-time, based on their site’s visitor data. For example, it might recommend that a specific article be shortened in length.

Shorten the length of “Illuminators” to 220 words. 75% of your readers left your blog whilst reading “Illuminators”. Usually, merely 62% leave when reading a post. Shorten the length of Illuminators from 355 words to 220 words, which is the length of your most successful posts. Potentially, split “Illuminators’ into two separate posts.

Or Echobox might let you know that a particular article is proving popular amongst American visitors.

On average, individual posts attract around 291 visitors from the United States. But “Acne Studios In Downtown LA” had 781 American visitors, which is 168% higher than normal.

Or than an image included in an article is being shared more than usual on Pinterest.

This image from “Avedon Women” was pinned significantly on Pinterest. Your average image from your blog might be pinned 1-2 times, but this image from “Avedon Women” was pinned 32 times. This is 1,500% more than usual.

Or how to improve Facebook engagement.

“The Holiday Issue” only received 420 visitors from Facebook, whereas your average post gets around 729 Facebook visitors. Most of your Facebook visitors access your blog on Thursdays around 1.30pm. Share “The Holiday Issue” around that time on Facebook to acquire new Facebook visitors.

The result is similar to having your own in-house data-scientist, providing insights from a huge pool of data that can otherwise be like “looking for a needle in a haystack”.

“Interpreting data correctly is very hard,” says Amann, who has a background in quantitative research and statistics, and has interned at the Financial Times. “It requires time and professional statistical expertise.” However, data scientists tend to think in very technical terms and often have difficulty explaining their findings to non-technical people.

Source: TechCrunch

SoftBank: For Exposure To Alibaba, Look To Tokyo, Not Sunnyvale

Although SoftBank owns stakes in a variety of companies, the bulk of the value of its equity portfolio is held in the following: Sprint, Yahoo Japan, Renren, and Alibaba. We break down the value of these stakes in the table below. We note that for Alibaba, we model a valuation of $153 billion, based on a consensus estimate compiled by Bloomberg of analysts covering the company (as of February 5, 2014), and that an IPO of Alibaba may lead to significant changes in the company's valuation, depending on market conditions, quarterly results, and other factors. While a fully accurate valuation of Alibaba will not be available until the company completes its IPO, the figure we have used is derived from a Bloomberg consensus of all the analysts covering Alibaba, and in our view, represents the market's current belief in the company's overall equity value. Naturally, different valuations will yield different estimates for Alibaba's value to SoftBank. However, we do note that Amazon (AMZN) holds a market capitalization of over $162 billion, and Alibaba's net income is exponentially higher than that of Amazon.

SoftBank's three core publicly traded stakes are worth ¥3,551.64 per share, representing over 47% of the company's current market capitalization (based on a February 13 share price of ¥7,506). However, that does not take into account the company's stake in Alibaba. Based on a valuation of $153 billion, and SoftBank's 37% stake, the company's Alibaba investment is worth ¥5,769,181,710,000 or ¥4,854.46 per SoftBank share. Together, SoftBank's four equity investments are worth ¥8,406.10, well above its current share price. But, as we mentioned above, this does not take into account the value of SoftBank's underlying operations or assets. Conservatively, we will base our valuation of SoftBank's underlying operations on its equity attributable to owners of the parent, less the company's equity method investments, in order to avoid double-counting its equity stakes. This methodology yields a figure of ¥1,407.71 for SoftBank's core operations, and a total aggregate value of ¥9,813.81, or more than 30% above SoftBank's February 13 closing price of ¥7,506.

While such upside is notable, we believe it to be conservative. A price target of ¥9,690.86 gives credit only for the value of the investments that it has already made, and the present value of its core Japanese operations, and fails to ascribe any value to the company's future growth potential, either in Japan or the United States. And as we will show below, the latest quarterly results at both Sprint and SoftBank show solid progress at both companies.

Source: Seeking Alpha

Sarah Brightman - Time To Say Goodbye (Con Te Partiro) (duet with..)

Gold Fields Management Discusses Q4 2013 Results - Earnings Call Transcript(Highlights)

Source: Seeking Alpha

"So looking at the quarter, we've achieved 598,000 ounces of goldequivalent for the quarter, that's up 21% against the previous quarter, principally because of the Yilgarn South acquisition, and I'll show you some details of that in a moment. That's the main reason for the increase. If you strip that out, we're pretty flat really across that [ph], but it was a good performance from those operations in the last quarter, we believe".

"There's a lot of confusion in people's minds about all-in costs and all-in sustaining costs. But this is the new metric that we will be reporting going into quarter 1. And the good news maybe for some, and maybe it's bad news for others, these are the only metrics that we are only going to report in 2014. Because it really gives a true reflection of what it costs to produce an ounce in the business. So all-in costs, we've come down to $1,095, and all-in sustainable, if you strip out what we classify as growth capital, and that's really up to South Deep, that's come down to $1,054".

Net cash generated from the core business before financing and any acquisitions, $38 million. That has been a key consideration for us, is to turn this business back to cash positive in the face of an unprecedented decline in the gold price during the course of 2013. And it's a start to where we want to get to, but importantly, it's a big turnaround from where we've come from. Normalized earnings of $14 million. We've paid a dividend in line with our policy, and let me just confirm again our policy has not changed. Our policy is still 25% to 35% of earnings that we'll use as a basis for dividend payout.

Gold Reserves.

We have to run all of our economic models at $1,300 per ounce to do that. That took us a number of months because we had to rerun our reserves. And so that means that we're impairing around about $672 million at year end, and that's principally in Ghana at Damang; $173 million of that is at Damang given the drop in thegold price, in particular, and also in St. Ives in Australia. Those are the 2 big ticket items that we've got. So it's really Ghana and Australia. And these impairments are really on the back of the lower gold price. Given that we were using $1,500 an ounce in the previous year, we're now using $1,300. So it's really gold price related. It doesn't have any bearing on the technical nature of the ore bodies. There hasn't been any material modeling changes in the ore bodies as such, and also we've used higher discount rates and that's a function of a change in the risk-free rates across the world, the risk premiums we apply and also the beater [ph] that applies to the gold industry, so we put those through

We dropped from $1,537 all-in costs in 2012 to $1,312 in 2013. But more importantly, as I said, at the end of quarter 4 2013, we were down to $1,095. And it shows you the scale of change from where we were in 2012 to the quarter 4 of 2013. And I've talked about the dividend.

This really demonstrates what we've achieved in the cost base. We've given you the last 8 quarters here. We've shown you the gold production in the bars, and then we're showing you the all-in costs in the red, the goldprice in the blue. And what you're seeing, really, over the last 2 quarters, in particular, is we've managed to increase the production base with the Yilgarn South acquisition. But at the same time, we've dropped the cost base, the all-in costs in red. We've dropped that down very significantly over the same period. And I think that sets Gold Fields up to be much more sustainable at the current price levels. And we're not restructuring this business hoping that the gold price is going to recover. We're restructuring the business, expecting that $1,300 is what we have to work with for the foreseeable future. In the longer term, I think it will improve. But we have to accept that over the next year or so, this may be as good as it gets.

We've also trimmed our corporate and regional cost structures. We've had a 10% reduction in headcount over that period, which, including contractors, translates to around about 1,700 or 1,800 people. We've rationalized our capital. In 2012, we spent $1.2 billion. This year -- this last year past, 2013, we spent $739 million, and that figure will be lower again in 2014. You might say, "Well, what are we giving away in terms of the future?" And the one thing we haven't stopped is development and stripping outputs to make sure that the future plans of the company are not compromised. I lived through $250 gold in 1999, and I saw what we and what the industry did. We pulled back our development significantly, and we never really got it back. We said that we did, but we actually never got it back, and we paid the price. So the important thing is, let's make sure that we retain the structural integrity of our operation. So that's the expenditure or what I call the good cost that we're going to continue spending".

Progress is slow at Barrick Gold, but at least it's progress

Source: Seeking Alpha

• The progress at Barrick Gold (ABX +1.6%) is akin to “turning the battleship on a measured pace," Sterne Agee analysts say, but at least it's progress, and shares have added nearly 8% since reporting Q4 results that missed on earnings but beat on revenue.
• Sterne Agee likes ABX's free cash flow position after the miner's series of transactions in 2013 to improve its balance sheet extended debt maturities, improved financial flexibility; as a result, net debt dropped by nearly 20%, and ABX now has only $300M of debt repayments due in next two years.
• The firm now expects ABX to be almost free cash neutral in 2014 with potential for almost $1B in free cash generation in 2015.
• Some analysts see the beginnings of a turnaround: ABX's problems discussed yesterday were well telegraphed, gold production remains solid in many mines and the cut in the reserve price to $1,100/oz. from $1,500/oz. was conservative and so likely to see upside.