Ying Li's share price still languishing well below its YTD high. DBS Vickers have gone totally quiet on the stock after what must have been the worst Broker Trading Call of 2012 so far, i.e. their overt buy call in the run-up to Ying Li's FY 2011 Results announcement.
On 26th March Ying Li made some encouraging noises regarding sales of their Ying Li International Plaza development:
http://www.yingligj.com/misc/2012Announc..._Plaza.pdf
........... but Mr. Market did not reward or acknowledge this with even the slightest positive move in the share price.
Recent political developments, i.e. vis-a-vis the Chongqing Mayor and Police Chief, obviously don't help and I was very interested to read Touzi's November 2011 posting on the VB BreadTalk thread, which I was scanning this morning - some interesting observations regarding Chongqing - I repeat it below. Thanks for this Touzi.
QUOTE
There are so many new sky scrapers, both finished and under construction, in the city that it is mind boggling. The densely packed buildings remind one of HK. I was impressed and yet at the same time the thought of overbuilding came to mind. Perhaps one of the reasons is that the city is extremely hilly and so whatever land they can build on, they will go as high as possible. There is some form of construction going on practically everywhere I went. I did not see IFC. I googled and found that it is in Jiangbei district. I spent most of my time in Yuzhong district. (Yuzhong and Jiangbei again remind me of HK Island and New Territory). I know a lot of major property developers are eyeing this city, including City Development. By the way, the metro stations have english announcement.
Watson and Carrefor appeared to be doing well. Many of the apparel shops you find in Singapore are there as well, but there aren't many shoppers. Once in a while, you see a hot babe walked in ( I did not check out the prices as I was too busy admiring the babe ).
I suspect the Sichuanese still has a parochial palate. While foreign restaurants like Japanese and Korean are crowded, I did see many non-sichuan chinese restaurant there, one exception is the famous Beijing Peking duck branch. The foreign restaurant probably has a novelty factor. By the way, Sichuan food is widely recognized as one of the four great Chinese cuisine.
The Breadtalk shop I saw was at a very prominent corner in prime shopping district. The crowd at Watson,Carrefor and foreign restaurants indicates that there is some spending power. I tend to think that the less than ideal crowd at Breadtalk is due to taste. If that is true, I am sure George Quek, being the shrewd businessman he is, will correct it.
All in all, Chongqing is a city in a hurry to catch up with the rest of other successful chinese cities like Shanghai ( which in my opinion has already caught up with Singapore ). Bo Xilai, the Party Secretary there is no ordinary man. I don't think there is ever a Chinese city that cracked down on vices as hard as he did. At the same time he is trying to reconnect the city to the rest of the world. A follower of the Deng Xiaoping one hand hard - one hand soft governing style.
UNQUOTE
Vested - I think this is one for the longer term.