Forget Alibaba & JD.com. Check Out These Chinese Small Tech [TFC 110]

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My name is Reggie, your host for today and today we’re going to spend some time to talk about three Chinese tech companies that I think are interesting and you should spend more time to learn more about. Whether you invest or not is another thing but if you want to be in the Chinese tech space or if you just want to invest in China in itself, these are some companies that you cannot not look at them.

As with any other investment and stock kind of content, I always like to give you the timestamp as to when we recorded this. We recorded this episode on the 16th of September. It should go out in a few weeks’ time. By then, some things may have changed but we are broadly accurate because I’m not someone that is very timely in my investment. I don’t try to time the market and timing the market is very iffy these days, like what is timing the market, right? If it hits your valuation, is it timing the market? If you’re dripping in, is it timing the market? 

Anyway, those things we can talk about another time. Not a discussion on semantics, but today we’re going to focus on Chinese companies. Today, we’re going to talk about small tech because I think the Chinese internet space is still being bombarded by a lot of legislations and what have you. Generally, all the prices are down. I’m sure if you invested in China stocks, you are in a little bit of pain and you are trying very hard to search on the internet to tell you “oh yeah, actually the company is fundamentally very good. You know the future, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…”

I don’t know which stage are you at? Are you already invested? Are you on the fence or are you trying to get people to affirm your thesis or you’re trying to find new things to buy and what have you. So I’m going to take these few companies to share with you my broad idea of China. What is the landscape that I’m painting going forward and also take some opportunities to share with you how I analyze some of these companies.

Of course they are not going to be deep dives. I’m not going to be spending three hours here today. I have about 20-30 minutes to talk to you about three different companies. So I’m just going to touch a little bit on their product, a little bit on their financials. I’m going to skip management. I’m going to skip valuations. I’m just going to share with you what is the broad idea behind some of these companies and why I am pretty excited about them in the future and the long term growth of China as a huge country with a lot of people and they’re going to spend and spend and spend and yeah, this is some of my educated views of things.

I’ve specifically picked companies that are below $20 billion market cap. By the time it goes out, whether or not it is still below $20 billion, I don’t know. But at the time of recording, it’s $20 billion. You can go and check back. The idea here is I definitely want to try my best to get multibaggers, especially in the tech space. I think in the tech space, most people when they invest, they want multibaggers.

Multibaggers are companies that will give you 2X, 3X, 5X, or 10X… different kind of multiplier. Essentially, you want to get your big buys so you don’t invest in these companies to get your 10%, 15% year on year kind of growth. You want them to run. You want them to fly. You want it to grow and you want the share prices to reflect the kind of growth in a few years’ time. 

I’m not saying that all your portfolio should be like that and I’m not even say that you have to invest like that. I’m just saying that if you are looking at some of these interesting big growth places, companies that are in a smaller cap space of course have more propensity to move towards that if they grow and they grow fast, right?

If you think about it, a company which is worth less than $20 billion, for them to become $100 billion, it’s quite okay. Quite a lot of companies out there today are worth $100 billion. It’s possible. For a company that’s already worth a trillion dollars, for it to flip to become $10 trillion is like wow. This is like five Apples. You know five Apple… not like apple downstairs. Five Apple, the company Apple. So how possible is it? 

(It) tend to be that if you want to find your multibaggers, you have to go in the mid cap, low cap kind of space and sub 20 is something that I think is fair. Easy to find 5X baggers if the companies are fundamentally strong. Easy… I mean relatively easier, not saying that definitely will get. So please make your own educated guess. I think what I’m trying to do here is to expose you to some of these other interesting things that people are not talking about. At least I don’t hear much in the broad content space, online or even with independent analysts. Not a lot of people are writing about it. 

These are the three companies I’m going to talk about. The first company today… oh yeah, before that, before that, sorry. Before that, this is not recommendation. This is not financial advice. Please seek professional advice. For entertainment and education purposes only, okay? Must cover backside. 

The very first company that I think is pretty interesting as a small tech in China is Trip.com. So what is Trip.com? You may not be as familiar with Trip.com. Maybe you have… you may have booked your air tickets, your hotels, your travel stuff on Trip.com.

But there’s another company that you may be a little bit more familiar in Singapore. It’s called Skyscanner. They’re also under Trip.com. Trip.com has already acquired it a few years ago, but in China specifically, it is 携程, Ctrip and also 去哪儿. These two are their biggest tech play, their biggest travel platform play in China. As part of their extension abroad, they have invested and acquired Skyscanner and trip.com. Of course, there are many other small, little ventures, but these are some of the bigger platforms that they own. 

As a company they are essentially a travel platform company… travel aggregator. Whether your airlines, your hotels, your travel miscellaneous stuff, your transport and all the little bit of experiences out there, they have aggregated some of these things together and they are very, very big in China. I would say that when I was living in China, almost all my bookings are from these guys. The younger people will use 去哪儿 because 去哪儿 tend to be a bit cheaper and the promo tends to be more aggressive. 

If you can fly tomorrow or you can take a train tomorrow immediately, they tend to have fire sale for a lot of these things because you must understand that the supply in the travel space, if it’s unsold, it’s unsold. It will never come back. It’s not stored there ever. Today, if the hotel room has 10 extra rooms that’s unsold and it’s there, tomorrow these 10 extra rooms cannot be resold again. They tend to be very aggressive discount promos on 去哪儿 as a platform so it’s very popular amongst the younger folks in China. 

But for the more affluent, more executive level kind of folks, a lot of people will start using Ctrip, 携程. What you need to know is that essentially, they own some of the biggest travel portals. To put it very simple, they will use apps, they will use mobile first, whatever… either way, they are travel aggregators and they own some of the biggest ones in China and also in the region. 

Their market cap is at $10.7 billion. The cash and cash equivalent positions are at about $8.25 billion. Essentially, it means if they sell all the highly liquidable stuff, they can very readily get about $8-point-something billion. Their long-term debt situation is about $3.7 billion. Plus short term debt, it’s actually $9.7 billion. 

The sad part is they are in travel but they are not unique in travel in a sense that all the businesses in travel are getting affected, so they are not unique in this space. But they have held strong, I would say and China is going through a lot of transformation and relatively you are seeing numbers stabilize. There’s no increase in dip going forward. The recent quarter that comes up shows that the lowest times have kind of stabilized so far and we’re seeing a little bit of uptick in their financials. 

But what I think is interesting about the company is that China is spending a lot of money on infrastructure. They’re building a lot more railways. They’re building a lot more airports. They are fixing roads into the rural parts and all those development is trying to increase mobility of the people… are trying to allow a lot of the city folks to go in and go green and explore the inner parts of China and also allowing the people living in the inner parts of China to go to the big cities to work.

The base idea is to increase mobility. You don’t need to agree or disagree whether this is a good long-term infrastructure decision or is it a good strategy, but if you think about it, the US did this with the Amtrak in the 50s, 60s. China is just doing the same thing, trying to connect its very big land mass and a lot of population to allow them to move around.

When I look at this company, I’m like, yeah, it is riding on China’s planned growth because as China build more train tracks, they build more places for people to go to, people are going to start traveling more. People are going to go to all these different places and they need a platform to transact so all these small little little farm stays, mini hotels, small little experiences, they all need a place to go. These guys are the place to go and they have already worked with a lot of big airlines. They work with all the railway stations and they own a lot of the supply chain. 

In travel booking, there are a lot of cross selling, but there’s some people that own all the suppliers and these guys are the ones that own a lot of Chinese suppliers. In other words, they sign exclusive contract with certain hotels or airline or trains, certain destination to say “okay, we’ll represent you” and if let’s say someone else, third party like WeChat, they want to cross sell. WeChat also cross sell travel stuff, then WeChat will have to work with me, with 携程 directly instead of going straight to you as an independent hotel. This is how the back end of the system work. 

But it is interesting because going forward, you’re going to see more Chinese people travel. Whether is it within the country or out of the country, they all use 携程. They all use Ctrip or Trip.com and 去哪儿. So far, my experience with a lot of my Chinese friends is they all use these major platforms and it’s all under Trip.com. I’m amazed that people are not talking about it. 

If you think about it, Singapore just launched the Thomson-East Coast Line. It’s a stupid MRT line that links you to Springleaf prata and Upper Thomson and my god, I see people just like going there and I see more activity in the area now just because they build the MRT line. So same idea but on a much bigger scale, people are going to travel. People are going to move around as ease of travel, as ease of movement becomes a better situation. Internally, more and more Chinese will travel within the country and also a lot of Chinese will start to travel out of the country as they get more and more affluent. 

I think this platform has a lot of strength going forward. Whether or not other newer platforms like Airbnb or some of the more social platforms that are coming up, whether can they cordon off a certain part of the market or whether can they rival some of these big boys, I don’t think it’s impossible so as an investor, you must be aware to see if the numbers are sticky. Are suppliers dropping off? Are we seeing increase in revenue and increase in gross merchant value? That means are people buying more? What is the situation on these platforms? 

It’s not an end all be all. This is not a deep dive but it’s an introduction to this company that I think has some serious potential as China continues to grow and build up its travel infrastructure. Actually, they didn’t build for travel only. They build for movement, but because can move, right? So people not just move for work, people also move for travel. 

Now that movement becomes easier, instead of maybe going home once a year to meet their family, which is what the Chinese people do. 春节回乡, that means they go back to the hometown during CNY (Chinese New Year). If you are at a train station at China during CNY, the month before CNY, you will freak out. You cannot get any single tickets. I’d rather you drive and the highways will all be jammed. This is lived experience while I was there. 

Now, with the better infrastructure, easier travel, faster trains, people becoming more affluent, maybe instead of going home once, they can go home twice, thrice, 5 times a year and they can go to all these other smaller places. With the infrastructure development of China being more and more serious, this company is going to ride that wave. They don’t need to spend money to build the railway, build the airport, but because more people are moving, they’re going to be experiencing that boom, at least in my view. 

So yes, definitely a company that I’m looking out for and if you want us to do deep dives about this company or any other company we’re going to talk about today, come to our Telegram group, let me know. “Hey, you know, this company, I want to learn a little bit more”, or any questions specifically, let us know. Come to our Telegram group and I will find someone to talk about it.

Next company that I think it’s very interesting… the second company for today is Weibo. Weibo is not a young company, but it’s still relatively small by market cap and we’ll talk a little bit more about this after a word from our sponsor. 

We are back and we’re going to talk about this other company called Weibo. The market cap today is at $11.5 billion. So what is Weibo? Weibo is essentially Chinese Twitter. Just to put it very, very simply, it is Chinese Twitter plus Blogspot plus social media kind of thing. It’s a microblogging site. That’s what they call it. It’s definitely not like a 270 syllable kind of thing that you can send a tweet storm to talk a lot, a lot, a lot… but the idea is it is a place for influencers and celebrities and people who have opinions to go on and talk, or even the day-to-day people just want to share their life and all that, they do go out and do some of these things. 

Why do I think it’s a very interesting platform that people are not appreciating it enough? If you watch enough Chinese media content, whether is it the recent 脱口秀大会 (which is a stand-up comedy talk show) or whether is it some of the singing competition or whether is it some of the dating competition, dating shows… dating also become competition. Okay, whatever. 

If you watch enough Chinese entertainment and not the drama drama, you will see almost everybody when they’re being introduced, they will drop their Weibo next to the celebrity. The celebrity’s face down there, they walk in, they shake their hand. On the side, they will do post production and add the name and below the name will be the Weibo address. Imagine every single celebrity in Singapore, when they come onto the television, they drop their Instagram account. Something like that. 

I think it’s happening in the influencer space here. But yes, in China, even the big media are doing that. They’re all dropping Weibo. In other words, almost every one of the celebrity have a Weibo account. They cannot run away from it. Everybody has it. They have official accounts and Weibo teaches them how to better manufacture content to meet the Weibo audience and all that jazz. They have the whole suite of supporting celebrities, supporting opinion leaders to write more and create more content within their ecosystem. 

You are seeing some success in the stickiness of the users and the growth of their users. Their monthly active users (MAU) last year to this year, they acquire extra 43 million users on Weibo. Total monthly active users are about 566 million so there’s more than half a billion monthly active users. Monthly active user means these users tune in at least once a month. Daily active users (DAU)… total about 246 million users. These guys, they tune in every day.

MAU and DAU in short form, they are all very important metrics when trying to measure a social media company or social media platform, especially those that use ads and use interactive tools to monetize like Facebook, Twitter, Tik Tok, Instagram which is part of Facebook, Snapchat, they all talk about MAU and DAU. So if you have some sort of idea of investing in social media companies or these kind of content platforms, you shouldn’t be too unfamiliar with it. Essentially, where more people are around, more interaction, more stickiness, more ad dollars will come in because people want to advertise to this bunch of people.

Weibo is not unique in this space. They also use an advertising model. Their current cash and cash position is about $2.9 billion. They have about $2.9 billion in cash. Their long-term debt is at $2.4 billion. They do not have any short-term debt. In other words, they have no risk of bankruptcy. They can immediately pay away and they can continue to grow and all that so that’s pretty good. Revenue had a little bit of a small dip in 2020. It’s not unique to them also because broadly speaking, a lot of advertisers are cutting money. They’re removing cash during times of pandemic because nobody’s really spending and all that. 

But Weibo has since taken a shift in the overall advertiser composite. In the past, a lot of the advertisers will advertise physical stuff like travel… some bigger assets, consumer related kind of things. But these days, they have a lot more digital kind of things like games… I think for a short period of time online tutoring, which is being attacked. But you see the composition shift and you see them doubling down on these guys to kind of woo a whole new bunch of advertisers, and recent quarter, you see a 46% increase in top line revenue year on year. For the quarter, I think it’s a good sign. It’s a good sign that some of the management efforts are paying off and we’ll see if they can continue to double down.

The problem with Weibo so far is same problem with Twitter but I think a little bit better because at least they are cashflow positive. Their free cash flow about $700 over million for the past few years already. But the same problem with Weibo is the same problem as Twitter. It’s that monetization is a problem. They are not yet optimized sufficiently to be the best platform to advertise like Google, like Facebook and they have all these other new platforms coming up like Tik Tok that is grabbing all the attention or WeChat is owning all the attention in the chat space, so they have struggled to get the kind of explosive growth over time.

Maybe with this new pivot of a new bunch of advertisers that have a different kind of product repertoire, it is easier to convert. It’s much easier to convert people to download a game on social media rather than getting people to buy a house or something, right? Maybe with this new repertoire of advertisers, they can show some sort of advantage in their acquisition process and more advertisers will pump more money. 

Also, with more nurturing or more content in the space, maybe they can get more daily users, monthly active users and create a stickier platform. So I do think they are underappreciated. People don’t seem to really talk about them. They don’t really see this as a platform anymore. It’s like… this is like a platform of the past. 

But in my view, if every single celebrity and every single political commentator, when they go on mainstream media, they drop their Weibo. Dude, that is like… come on, man. It’s like everyone is doing that so how can you not look at this platform as a platform where people want to follow fans or want to follow opinions. They go there, right? The kind of content interaction is very different from Tik Tok and Douyin. While a lot of people are saying Douyin is going to take a lot of attention or some of the biggest streaming players are going to take over all the attention, I think Weibo sits in a very different situation, much like how Pinterest is sitting in the Western social media landscape. 

So take a look at Weibo as a company and you never know, you can make some interesting information, interesting decision to see if it’s something that you want to explore. I definitely think it is underappreciated and let’s see if they can continue to grow and double, triple, quadruple. Be the multibagger.

Last company… I know, I did say I try not to go for the big guys and I don’t want to, but I had no choice, but to name drop the tech company is Tencent Entertainment, Tencent Music Entertainment. TME is the ticker, market cap of $13.9 billion. So what is TME? I’m sure you guys know Tencent. They own almost every part of the entertainment space in China. Whether is it chat, whether is it games, whether is it music, streaming and all that jazz. 

Tencent Entertainment, Tencent Music Entertainment is essentially the spun out of Tencent where they focus on a lot of the music content, so karaoke, live stream, music consumption like Spotify and all that jazz. If you go and look at the suite of apps under TME, it’s not small. 酷狗音乐, QQ音乐, 酷我音乐, whatever… all the cool something and the QQ something. All the major music apps are under TME and also even Lanren Changting… some of the newer apps that are getting traction and focus on long form audio content which is not all music. They are also under TME. 

TME owns essentially the whole distribution of the music landscape, which is why the Chinese government really want to corner and attack them to say now “you cannot just exclusively sell JJ Lin. You cannot exclusively sell Jay Chou” and those are the exclusive media licenses that China is really robbing them away from. 

What does it mean? It means that now, not only they can stream JJ Lin, Jay Chou and all these guys from the big media labels, their competitors like NetEase can also stream these guys. It does not mean that they can no longer stream them. It means that other people can also stream them. It is not exclusive to Tencent Music Entertainment any more. 

But you can ask yourself if Spotify and YouTube Music and Apple Music, they all can play the same thing, does it mean that you’re immediately going to shift to Spotify? No. Does it mean you are going to immediately shift to YouTube? Maybe not. 

The overall consumer experience is important. How the algorithm pushes you… the music that is relevant to you is important. All the additional experiences are important. The price is important. So it’s not as easy as “oh you know these guys lose exclusive music license then everybody is going to shift out of TME ecosystem”, like all the consumers are going to go somewhere else because somebody else can do better. 

If you think about it, even if somewhere else, like NetEase or what other competitors they have, reduces their price and try to acquire more customer, it is not that linear and can they compete with TME over time? I mean, which is why Shopee and Garena, Sea Limited want to raise more money, right? They want to compete, get a bigger war chest, compete with their competitor. 

TME is backed by Tencent. Tencent has all the money in China and yeah, you get the idea. They are not an easy guy to attack, but it does not mean that this risk is not possible. It has basis. Consumers do move around, especially if you no longer have all the content that they want. 

But as with any other big streaming platforms, Spotify, Apple Music, they all recognize this big problem that they face with these kinds of music giant companies. Warner Music and Universal Music, they own almost a whole part of the music cycle and the music entertainment space. All your celebrities, they produce the songs… they produce, they invest, they distribute. 

Everything is theirs so it’s very hard to negotiate with these guys which is why they… usually, a lot of these streaming players, they pay a lot of licensing for all these big guys and then they undercut the smaller creatives to make up for the difference in costs of running the product. 

As we have Spotify, as we have Apple Podcast, they are also into podcasts now. They have created long form audio entertainment. They create comedy entertainment. They create audio dramas. They fund to produce. Internally, TME is producing a lot of content and now it’s theirs. It’s not exclusive licensing rights anymore. It’s… I produce one. This is my content. 

If they can run faster as compared to their competitors, then hey, you never know. Can they continue to dominate the space? Maybe they can, right? While people are still fighting for all these licensing rights, they already move forward and build their own originals. I think this is something that you cannot under-appreciate. 

Overall, they have about 66.2 million online playing users. Paid membership paid subscription is an increase of 40% since last year. It’s pretty wild. Of course, we are seeing the overall MAU, monthly active user in the free segment is dipping. You cannot discount the power of Tik Tok, and Douyin growing. All these will change. All these will affect… 

By the core, the business is strong. Cash situation is $ 3.47 billion in cash. Long-term debt is $831 million. They go no short term debt. Essentially, when you buy this company, every dollar that goes in, you get more cash than debt. So you’re actually buying cash also. It is not something that you should discount because a lot of companies are very debt laden especially in the tech space. I would argue whether you can put TME as a tech player. Of course, these days, everything is tech enabled, but yeah. Think about some of these companies. 

I think overall, they all have interesting positions in where they are. I try very hard to look for the best in class and I think they are the best in class if you ask me. They’re the best in class companies. They’re under appreciated. There’s no other competitor for Weibo. There’s no other competitor for Trip.com. There’s no other real competitor for TME… there is a smaller competitor. NetEase is a relatively big competitor for TME compared to the other two companies. They don’t have serious competitors. 

Their financial situations seem good. Long-term seems good. Definitely, companies to look out for if you’re not as interested to just look at JD.com, Meituan, Alibaba. Everybody’s talking about those guys.

Take some time to look at them and I do own a few of them for clarification. I own Trip.com and Weibo and I am looking at acquiring TME. That is clarification for you. I am going to sum up this three companies that you should look out for if I have not summed up enough. 

Number one is Trip.com. They are a travel aggregator platform. They own Skyscanner, own Trip.com, Ctrip, 携程 and 去哪儿. All the major travel websites in China are owned by them. Definitely a company to look out for, especially as China continues to build its infrastructure for the ease of movement of individuals. 

Next company, number two is Weibo. Weibo is a microblogging site. Essentially, it’s Twitter plus Blogspot. You can write more than 270 characters. All the celebrities have Weibo accounts. All the political pundits have a Weibo account. All your influential people, they all have Weibo accounts. Weibo spends a lot of time grooming these people to teach them how to write content and build their ecosystem. 

They’ve taken a pivot in their advertiser mix. You’re seeing that kind of growth, 48% top line revenue growth for a company that is so matured and so old already, and it’s only $11.5 billion market cap. Net debt is zero. They have more cash than debt. Interesting, take a look. 

Third company is TME: Tencent Music Entertainment. I mean, we’ve talked about this a lot of times that essentially Spotify plus Apple Podcast, everything in China. All the music streaming guys, they are all in China, they’re all owned by TME group. Of course, they have lost the exclusive market licensing for a lot of these big kind of music streaming labels, but they are also struggling with the whole costs of these kinds of big music licenses.

Now, they’ve also pivoted to build a lot of their own content and they’re going to continue to double down on customer engagement, customer experience. We shall see if customers will stay sticky with these companies. 

So, yes. Check them out. Let me know what you think. If there are any particular company you want us to talk more about in deep dives, drop us a message on our Telegram group. And we can arrange to do a deep dive of some of these companies. So yes, with that, I hope you have a great day and you leart something useful today. See ya!

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Okay… so, yes. I’m not the biggest fan of giving stock tips and all that so I try very hard to give you a little bit more depth as to why I look at the company. What’s the long term factors that are in this company and you have to make your own decision. You have to make your own educated guess. You got to study the management, study their policy, study their strategy in deeper fashion. Look at their moats, look at their competitors. Look at the sector. Ultimately, you make your decision. 

These are some companies that I either own or I’m looking to own. It’s very popular content format. So if you… let me know if it’s something that you guys love, then down the road periodically, I can do some interesting things that I see. Whether is it ETFs or what have you… to give you guys some thoughts into some of the latest interesting products and what have you, all that jazz. 

Good stuff. Thanks for loving us. Thanks for supporting us. This is for today’s content. Next week. I think… I know previously I said we’re going to do a little bit of IPO stuff. I am trying to do a little bit of IPO study to kind of pick what is interesting. I have a few in my… but I only have two so far.

Give me a little bit more time to find a third interesting IPO that recently IPO. Personally, I don’t buy IPOs. I just want to give you an idea. I don’t buy IPOs because I’m not sure if the management can handle as a listed company and I’m not sure what’s the internal liquidation process going to be like. 

Because a lot of these companies, they are being funded by all these different venture capital, they are being funded by the banks and once they get listed, all these what we call institutional money or “smart money”, they want to leave. They want to sell down so that they can take the cash and then go through the same cycle with startups and grow ups and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah… all the way to listing.

I don’t like when I’m stuck in such a situation where investors are changing a lot of hands and we have not kind of found a stable core investors that will hold these companies for the longer term. So generally within the first year of IPO, I do not buy it, also something I learnt from my senpai.

That is that, but you know, although I don’t buy it the first year, I still need to study them and learn what’s interesting and what’s out there to know that oh yeah, maybe down the road, I can own them. So that’s that. 

If you have any interesting IPOs that you want us to talk about, also come and talk to us on our Telegram group. We can expand on that. Bear with me, give me a little bit more time. I will find the third IPO that happened in 2020 that I think is interesting and you can explore, okay? So take care, see ya!