Following a Webb-site complaint to regulators, CAID has revealed 3 holdings, including umbrella maker China Jicheng (1027), still trading at over 70x NAV. CAID expects the investments to contribute a positive return in the near future, but doesn't say why. Meanwhile Lerado (1225) hasn't said how it made similar gains. Is it also in the umbrella bubble?

CAID (0048) gains from umbrella bubble
10 October 2015

(update 27-Oct-2015)

In our article Bubbles and Troubles in Hong Kong (24-Sep-2015) we noted that there were huge unrealised investment gains in the interim results of China Automotive Interior Decoration Holdings Ltd (CAID, 0048) for the 6 months to 30-Jun-2015 and that it had failed to disclose what these investments were, claiming:

 "At 30 June 2015, there was no significant investment held by the Group"

Webb-site filed complaints with SEHK (under the Listing Rules) and the SFC (under the Securities and Futures Ordinance, that this was a false and misleading statement). Last night, CAID made an announcement, noting that "errors have been found" in this binary statement. So it was false. CAID now discloses 3 investments. The largest by far is about 227.3m shares (1.52%) of umbrella-maker China Jicheng Holdings Ltd (CJ, 1027). As we noted in the article, this stock is in a huge bubble. CAID says these shares were purchased for about RMB 7.9m (HK$9.9m) which implies that they were allocated in the IPO at HK$0.044 (split-adjusted).

At 30-Jun-2015, CAID's shares in CJ were valued at RMB 371.2m, or 48.7% of CAID's net tangible assets of RMB 761.9m. The other 2 holdings disclosed yesterday were 0.7% of Suncorp Technologies Ltd (Suncorp, 1063, also mentioned in our article) and 0.8% of China Properties Investment Holdings Ltd (CPI, 0736). CPI was also in a bubble and has dropped 89.5% from $2.37 to $0.25 since 30-Jun-2015. Suncorp was a bubble but peaked at $1.51 on 5-May-2015, and was already down to $0.52 by 30-Jun. It closed on Friday at $0.222, down 57.3% since the end of June. Meanwhile the umbrella bubble is staying up. By last night, CJ had only fallen 9.6% since 30-Jun-2015 and had a market value of HK$28.2bn, or 70.6x its net tangible assets of $399.6m.

In Chinglish, the CAID announcement says:

"Although the recent weakness in the stock market, the Board expects the performance of Significant Investments will still contribute positive return to the Group in the near future"

The Board does not give any reasons for that expectation. In our view, nobody could reasonably expect a bubble to grow larger or even to stay inflated, assuming that person did not know of any plan to make that happen. CJ accounted for 65.8% of the held-for-trading investments at 30-Jun-2015, and the other two holdings are down sharply, so it is hard to see how the overall portfolio returns "in the near future" could be expected to be positive. The Stock Exchange should require CAID to either justify that statement or withdraw it.

As readers will recall, CAID also holds 75m shares (7.82%) of Lerado Group (Holding) Co Ltd (Lerado, 1225) received at $0.60 each in exchange for a business sale. At the 30-Jun-2015 closing bid price of $0.59, these were worth HK$44.25m, or RMB 35.4m. So the 4 investments together amounted to RMB 514.6m, or 91.2% of CAID's investments. Lerado closed on Friday at $0.27, down 54.2% since the end of June.

Lerado next?

So now we have identified 2 shareholders of the umbrella bubble, namely CAID with 1.52% and China Environmental Energy Investment Ltd (CEEI, 0986) with 2.11%, out of the 25% float. As we noted in the article, CEEI also bought into the Suncorp bubble. Given the other identified connection between CAID and Lerado Group (Holding) Co Ltd (1225), we suspect that Lerado's massive market gains for the first half of 2015 also involve a shareholding in CJ, but so far, they're not saying. The SFC probably knows who held the stock at 27-Apr-2015, because it announced that 16 shareholders then held 96.1% of the float.

Update, 27-Oct-2015

Following our complaint about the statement above, CAID announced on 23-Oct-2015 that its Board "would like to replace" that sentence.

© Webb-site.com, 2015


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