ASEAN Insight Provider, CrossASEAN Research

Angus Mackintosh

ASEAN Insight Provider

CrossASEAN Research

At CrossASEAN Research we strive to produce unbiased and differentiated on the ground insights on companies across South East Asia. Our Research is produced for the most part after face to face meetings and conversations with company management to dig deep into the long term vision and strategy of the companies we cover. We seek to deliver investable and actionable themes on sectors and markets across SE Asia, often in collaboration with other Insight Providers across the region, pooling the vast experience of the analysts within the Smartkarma Ecosystem. We also offer bespoke work and tailor made trips for our clients. 

Insights across South East Asia

Equity Bottom-Up

<a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/media-nusantara-citra-tbk-pt" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:6881:1" rel="noopener">Media Nusantara Citra (MNCN IJ)</a> has seen an aggressive sell-off in its share price, despite announcing a reasonable set of 2Q2020 results, with especially strong growth coming from its digital advertising through RCTI+ and its YouTube Multichannel Network (MCN), which now has a staggering 101m subscribers.  
2Q2020 saw some impact from COVID-19, with overall revenues falling by -18%, to a large extent due to the cancellation of a number of big promotional events, as well as sporting fixtures such as the European Cup soccer league. 
Overall ad-revenue fell by -20% in 2Q2020 but digital revenue grew by +27% YoY, with non-digital falling by -24%. This was better than the overall industry given its ability to continue to produce fresh content at its studios and more non-time-consuming (NTC) ads. 
<a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/media-nusantara-citra-tbk-pt" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:6881:1" rel="noopener">Media Nusantara Citra (MNCN IJ)</a> also saw rapid growth in its 3rd party content licensing business to PayTV and OTT players, which grew +54% in 1H2020 IDR113bn. 
The company has also teamed up with <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/facebook-inc-a" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:665:1" rel="noopener">Facebook Inc A (FB US)</a> to air its content and is in the process of signing an agreement with Tik Tok, which will also encompass talent management. 
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<a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/media-nusantara-citra-tbk-pt" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:6881:1" rel="noopener">Media Nusantara Citra (MNCN IJ)</a> will continue to benefit from a return to growth for its core free-to-air advertising business as the economy recovers but will also see increasing importance for its digital business, which does not look to be reflected in the share price. The company looks attractive from a valuation perspective, now trading on 4.4x FY21E PER versus its 3-year average of 8.4x forward PER, with the prospect of a +20% rebound in EPS in FY21E. It trades on 0.77x FY20E PBV yet generates an FY20E ROE of 15.5%
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Media Nusantara Citra (MNCN IJ) has seen an aggressive sell-off in its share price, despite announcing a reasonable set of 2Q2020 results, with especially strong growth coming from its digital advertising through RCTI+ and its YouTube Multichannel Network (MCN), which now has a staggering 101m subscribers.  
2Q2020 saw some impact from COVID-19, with overall revenues falling by -18%, to a large extent due to the cancellation of a number of big promotional events, as well as sporting fixtures such as the European Cup soccer league. 
Overall ad-revenue fell by -20% in 2Q2020 but digital revenue grew by +27% YoY, with non-digital falling by -24%. This was better than the overall industry given its ability to continue to produce fresh content at its studios and more non-time-consuming (NTC) ads. 
Media Nusantara Citra (MNCN IJ) also saw rapid growth in its 3rd party content licensing business to PayTV and OTT players, which grew +54% in 1H2020 IDR113bn. 
The company has also teamed up with Facebook Inc A (FB US) to air its content and is in the process of signing an agreement with Tik Tok, which will also encompass talent management. 

Media Nusantara Citra (MNCN IJ) will continue to benefit from a return to growth for its core free-to-air advertising business as the economy recovers but will also see increasing importance for its digital business, which does not look to be reflected in the share price. The company looks attractive from a valuation perspective, now trading on 4.4x FY21E PER versus its 3-year average of 8.4x forward PER, with the prospect of a +20% rebound in EPS in FY21E. It trades on 0.77x FY20E PBV yet generates an FY20E ROE of 15.5%


Media Nusantara Citra (MNCN IJ) - No Credit Given for Metamorphosis

Head of Research, IPOs & Placements, Aequitas Research

Sumeet Singh

Head of Research, IPOs & Placements

IPOs and Placements coverage across Asia Pacific

Aequitas Research

We cover all listing across the Asia Pacific along with follow-up placements. As of Dec 2020, our team had covered 539 IPOs with a hit rate of 73.5% and 685 placements with a hit rate of 66.8%.

We combine fundamental bottom-up views with our proprietary quantitative framework to provide a holistic coverage across new listings and placements. Our coverage includes pre-IPO notes before the deal is launched, follow-up analysis once the deal is live and post-listing trading analysis as well.

Equity Capital Markets

<div><a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/chindata-group-holdings-adr" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:29274:1" rel="noopener">Chindata (CD US)</a> raised around US$540m in its US listing. Chindata is a data centre solution provider in Asia-Pacific with a focus on China. It currently operates six data centers in China and one in Malaysia and has numerous more data centers under construction. The company is backed by Bain Capital.</div><div>
I've covered the various aspects of the deal in my earlier notes, <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/insights/chindata-group-holdings-pre-ipo-patchy-data-but-is-growing-fast-in-a-hot-sector" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chindata Group Holdings Pre-IPO - Patchy data but is growing fast in a hot sector</a> and <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/insights/chindata-group-ipo-riding-high-on-sector-momentum" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chindata Group IPO - Riding High on Sector Momentum.</a>
In this note, I'll talk about the deal dynamics and provide a table with implied valuation at different ADR levels. 
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Chindata (CD US) raised around US$540m in its US listing. Chindata is a data centre solution provider in Asia-Pacific with a focus on China. It currently operates six data centers in China and one in Malaysia and has numerous more data centers under construction. The company is backed by Bain Capital.
I've covered the various aspects of the deal in my earlier notes, Chindata Group Holdings Pre-IPO - Patchy data but is growing fast in a hot sector and Chindata Group IPO - Riding High on Sector Momentum.
In this note, I'll talk about the deal dynamics and provide a table with implied valuation at different ADR levels. 


Chindata Group IPO Trading - Would Book Profits if It Trades at a Premium

Korea/Asia, Events, IPOs, Douglas Research Advisory

Douglas Kim

Korea/Asia, Events, IPOs

Private Capital Markets

In this insight, we provide the top 100 unicorns in Asia (including summaries), broken down by the major countries in Asia. China, India, and Korea lead the Asian countries in having the most number of Asian unicorns. We used the standard definition of a unicorn which refers to a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion.
Clearly, one of the key differences in the global markets now as compared to a decade or two decades ago is the fact that the world's biggest venture capital and private equity firms are willing to invest a greater amount of capital in attractive Unicorns and "Pre-Unicorns" which has resulted in many of these private companies delaying their potential exit to IPO at later stages of their businesses. 
There has been so much money made from the first generation tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Alibaba, and Tencent. Many of these companies were not profitable in their early stages of growth but later gained tremendous economies of scale. Therefore, many investors in the Asian unicorns that have seen the progress of the first-generation tech giants are willing to invest in promising, young companies without profitability now to see their business development take place which could potentially reward them with outstanding returns later on.

In this insight, we provide the top 100 unicorns in Asia (including summaries), broken down by the major countries in Asia. China, India, and Korea lead the Asian countries in having the most number of Asian unicorns. We used the standard definition of a unicorn which refers to a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion.
Clearly, one of the key differences in the global markets now as compared to a decade or two decades ago is the fact that the world's biggest venture capital and private equity firms are willing to invest a greater amount of capital in attractive Unicorns and "Pre-Unicorns" which has resulted in many of these private companies delaying their potential exit to IPO at later stages of their businesses. 
There has been so much money made from the first generation tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Alibaba, and Tencent. Many of these companies were not profitable in their early stages of growth but later gained tremendous economies of scale. Therefore, many investors in the Asian unicorns that have seen the progress of the first-generation tech giants are willing to invest in promising, young companies without profitability now to see their business development take place which could potentially reward them with outstanding returns later on. 

<a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/chindata-group-holdings-adr" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:29274:1" rel="noopener">Chindata (CD US)</a> aims to raise around US$540m in its US listing. Chindata is a data centre solution provider in Asia-Pacific with a focus on China. It currently operates six data centers in China and one in Malaysia and has numerous more data centers under construction.The company is backed by Bain Capital and is almost like a startup, in the sense that it was recently formed via the merger of a China and Asia-Pac entity. Given the relative freshness of the firm, the company has taken the liberty of providing financials just for the past 18 months, which of course show rapid growth. Also, it doesn’t provide a whole lot of details about its individual assets. Furthermore, its two large clients account for a huge chunk of its revenue, one of which is <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/bytedance-technology" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:27936:1" rel="noopener">ByteDance (1460967D CH)</a>, the other being <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/shanghai-wangsu-science-technology-co" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:9722:1" rel="noopener">Shanghai Wangsu Science &amp; Technology Co (300017 CH)</a>.On the positive side, Chindata has plans to more than double its capacity by the end of 2021, which will ensure that growth remains strong. Moreover, its Chairman and founder appear to have ample experience in the sector. I spoke about the above points and more in my earlier note. In this note, I’ll talk about deal dynamics and valuations.Our previous coverage of the IPO:<ul><li dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/insights/chindata-group-holdings-pre-ipo-patchy-data-but-is-growing-fast-in-a-hot-sector" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chindata Group Holdings Pre-IPO - Patchy data but is growing fast in a hot sector</a></li></ul>

Chindata (CD US) aims to raise around US$540m in its US listing. Chindata is a data centre solution provider in Asia-Pacific with a focus on China. It currently operates six data centers in China and one in Malaysia and has numerous more data centers under construction.The company is backed by Bain Capital and is almost like a startup, in the sense that it was recently formed via the merger of a China and Asia-Pac entity. Given the relative freshness of the firm, the company has taken the liberty of providing financials just for the past 18 months, which of course show rapid growth. Also, it doesn’t provide a whole lot of details about its individual assets. Furthermore, its two large clients account for a huge chunk of its revenue, one of which is ByteDance (1460967D CH), the other being Shanghai Wangsu Science &amp; Technology Co (300017 CH).On the positive side, Chindata has plans to more than double its capacity by the end of 2021, which will ensure that growth remains strong. Moreover, its Chairman and founder appear to have ample experience in the sector. I spoke about the above points and more in my earlier note. In this note, I’ll talk about deal dynamics and valuations.Our previous coverage of the IPO:Chindata Group Holdings Pre-IPO - Patchy data but is growing fast in a hot sector

Chindata Group IPO - Riding High on Sector Momentum

Global Emerging Market Equities, Propitious Research

Wium Malan, CFA

Global Emerging Market Equities

<a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/baidu-inc" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:179:1" rel="noopener">Baidu (BIDU US)</a>, and the rest of the Chinese Online Search industry, has consistently been losing market share to the likes of <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/alibaba-group" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:28434:1" rel="noopener">Alibaba Group (9988 HK)</a>, <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/bytedance-technology" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:27936:1" rel="noopener">ByteDance (1460967D CH)</a>, <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/tencent-holdings-ltd" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:26:1" rel="noopener">Tencent Holdings (700 HK)</a>, <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/pinduoduo-inc" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:27250:1" rel="noopener">Pinduoduo (PDD US)</a> and <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/meituan-dianping" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:26970:1" rel="noopener">Meituan Dianping (3690 HK)</a> over the past two years. Although I still believe there is significant long term growth left for the Chinese digital advertising market, it can easily be argued that this growth will be heavily skewed and that the “pure” Search market is in effect an “industry in decline”. 
In his book “Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analysing Industries and Competitors”, Michael Porter expands on four key strategies which firms could successfully follow when they find themselves in a declining industry. In this insight, I analyse Baidu’s current strategy against these offered strategies to assess if there is indeed value left in the company (or at least the core search business). 
Baidu should be able to continue to produce significant cash flow from its core search business as long as it sticks to the “leadership” strategy – given their dominant share of search queries, the low penetration they have in the SME market, the suitability to Search advertising for certain industry verticals and their superior profitability. I estimate Baidu’s fair value at US$168/ADS based on a SOTP valuation. The values used in my SOTP for <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/iqiyi-inc" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:26755:1" rel="noopener">iQIYI Inc (IQ US)</a>, <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/trip-com-group-ltd" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:180:1" rel="noopener">Trip.com (TCOM US)</a> (market value), Net Cash and Other investments (book value) would imply that Baidu’s core operations are currently valued at only $10.4bn ex-cash, which equates to only 9.1x 2021F PE (only 3.9x PE ex-cash).

Baidu (BIDU US), and the rest of the Chinese Online Search industry, has consistently been losing market share to the likes of Alibaba Group (9988 HK), ByteDance (1460967D CH), Tencent Holdings (700 HK), Pinduoduo (PDD US) and Meituan Dianping (3690 HK) over the past two years. Although I still believe there is significant long term growth left for the Chinese digital advertising market, it can easily be argued that this growth will be heavily skewed and that the “pure” Search market is in effect an “industry in decline”. 
In his book “Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analysing Industries and Competitors”, Michael Porter expands on four key strategies which firms could successfully follow when they find themselves in a declining industry. In this insight, I analyse Baidu’s current strategy against these offered strategies to assess if there is indeed value left in the company (or at least the core search business). 
Baidu should be able to continue to produce significant cash flow from its core search business as long as it sticks to the “leadership” strategy – given their dominant share of search queries, the low penetration they have in the SME market, the suitability to Search advertising for certain industry verticals and their superior profitability. I estimate Baidu’s fair value at US$168/ADS based on a SOTP valuation. The values used in my SOTP for iQIYI Inc (IQ US), Trip.com (TCOM US) (market value), Net Cash and Other investments (book value) would imply that Baidu’s core operations are currently valued at only $10.4bn ex-cash, which equates to only 9.1x 2021F PE (only 3.9x PE ex-cash).

Baidu: Strategies for Operating in an Industry in Decline

China

Beijing Douyin Information Service Co. Ltd. provides online information and contents. The Company develops and operates short video platform, original short video community, news platform, and other related products. Beijing Douyin Information Service offers services worldwide.

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ByteDance (1439927D CH)

Media Nusantara Citra (MNCN IJ) - No Credit Given for Metamorphosis

Media Nusantara Citra (MNCN IJ) has seen an aggressive sell-off

Angus Mackintosh

Chindata Group IPO Trading - Would Book Profits if It Trades at a Premium

Chindata (CD US) aims to raise around US$540m in its US listing. Chindata is a data centre solution provider in Asia-Pacific with a focus on...

Sumeet Singh

Top 100 Asian Unicorns

A unicorn is a term in business world to indicate a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion.

Douglas Kim

Chindata Group IPO - Riding High on Sector Momentum

Chindata Group Holdings aims to raise around US$540m in its US listing. Chindata is a data centre solution provider in Asia-Pacific with a focus on...

Sumeet Singh

Baidu: Strategies for Operating in an Industry in Decline

Baidu, and the rest of the Chinese Online Search industry, has consistently been losing market share to the likes of Alibaba, ByteDance, Tencent,...

Wium Malan, CFA

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