Stretching back to the 1950s, China has benefited from prolific natural resource deposits. Their ample oil reserves survived multiple administrations and governance systems to eventually land in PetroChina, China's largest domestic producer of crude oil and natural gas . Blessed by nature with easy to extract hydrocarbons, their lifting costs are around just ~$12 per …
Meituan Deep Dive
In the early days of the Internet, when there was a flurry of successful U.S. tech firms absent from China, would you have been above being the one to bring them there? Wang Xing wasn’t – creating businesses “inspired” by not just Friendster, but Groupon, Facebook and Twitter too, coming to epitomize the term "Chinese …
Fast Retailing (UNIQLO) Deep Dive
Japan's two richest people epitomize the two paths to ultra wealth: Take big, bold risks in new industries (disruption) Work dutifully day-in and day-out to innovate and outwork competitors in existing businesses (process innovation) The first of which is best represented by Softbank's Masayoshi Son. The second is best encapsulated by Fast Retailing's Tadashi Yanai, …
Alibaba 3Q21 Earnings Breakdown
Hi everyone, this post is a breakdown of Alibaba’s 3Q21 results. It was originally shared on Twitter here. For convenience sake, we will be sharing the tweetstorm as a single article for easier reading. If you enjoyed this recap and would like to have access to all of our research, models, and supplementary material, subscribe …
JD Deep Dive
What could you do with 4 square meters of retail space? Try creating over $100 billion dollars of market value with one of the world's largest retailers. The path would not be easy though, and would require risking it all - multiple times. With just a 4sqm stall in an offbeat Chinese market, after 5 …
Tencent Deep Dive
A tech conglomerate with a leading industry position in no fewer than 8 industries with revenues growing ~20% and trading at 24x earnings excl. investments, Tencent is the company you would have tried to create if you had a crystal ball in China in 1998. But Tencent didn’t need a crystal ball because they had …
Grab Deep Dive
Society benefits the most when entrepreneurs focus on solving problems before monetizing the solution. But solving a problem doesn’t equate to creating a great business. GRAB has unlocked tremendous consumer value in ride-hail, but their decade-long slog in the most difficult sector in consumer interment has them squeezing out just 6 dimes of revenue out of …
Sea Limited Update
*Note that we refer to some of our other pieces that are behind the Members paywall throughout the piece. We do this for two reasons 1) brevity, 2) but also because we use our free pieces as an acquisition tool to convince readers to sign up for our $29 subscription (sneaky, right?) which entitles you …
Coupang Deep Dive
Some say you can pay any price for a great company, but was Coupang at $100bn too high? Well, one things for certain: You wouldn't have paid that for what it started out as. It started out as a money losing Groupon clone that stemmed losses by pivoting to an eBay model, but failed to …
Nintendo Deep Dive
Nintendo, a multi- generational icon, with 26 of the top 50 best selling titles, an IP portfolio 2nd to only Disney, trades at just 12x 2021 ex-cash earnings. Margins have only been improving because of the shift to digital, and they have over 30mn paying online subscribers--their first recurring revenue ever. Not to mention, their …