Auto Output in China Up 49%; Stocks Rise

Chandrasekhar Atreya
24 Aug, 2010
New York City

Stocks in China rallied for the first time in three days while in Hong Kong fell. Shipbuilding orders soar in China while sales of new homes in Shanghai drops in the first seven months. China Construction Bank first half net soared 27%.

[R]5:00 PM Hong Kong, China – Stocks in China rallied for the first time in three days while in Hong Kong fell. Shipbuilding orders soar in China while sales of new homes in Shanghai drops in the first seven months. China Construction Bank first half net soared 27%.[/R]

China stocks rallied and gained for the first time in three days led by developers and steelmakers. However stocks in Hong Kong fell after a decline in Wall Street stoked concerns ahead of the U.S. GDP data.

The CSI 300 Index in China gained 0.54% or 15.64 to close at 2,911.83. The Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong declined 0.95% or 198.25 to close at 20,690.76.

The total volume of new orders for China’s shipbuilding enterprises rose 420% to 33.3 million deadweight tons in the first seven months of this year compared to the previous year.

Blackstone, the U.S. private equity group made its first significant investment in the booming Chinese housing market after agreeing to a deal with one of Hong Kong’s largest property developers to build luxury apartments in the country.

Blackstone agreed to back the development by Great Eagle of more than 1,000 new homes Dalian nicknamed the Hong Kong of northern China, a coastal city and port in Liaoning, northern China. The scheme that includes more than 400 hotel rooms and is expected to be built in several stages.

JBCC Holdings Inc, which develops computer systems and provides maintenance services, aims to boost its annual sales in China to 10 billion yen by fiscal 2014 by expanding its presence in the country.

JBCC recently formed an operational tie-up with a local IT company that caters to Japanese businesses. The Shanghai unit expects to open a branch in Guangzhou by the end of this month, giving JBCC a presence in three Chinese cities.

China Construction Bank said its net profit rose 27% in the first half of this year on higher interest income. The bank, partly owned by Bank of America, said its first half net increased to 71 billion yuan, according to its regulatory filing with Shanghai Stock Exchange today.

The bank’s net interest income increased 15% to 117.8 billion yuan in this period.

Sales on new homes in Shanghai in the first seven months this year were 48% lower than the corresponding period of last year after government efforts to curb property bubbles took effect.

Sales by the end of July 2010, stood at 9.11 million square meters, the Shanghai Statistics Bureau said.

China’s Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Company Ltd, one of the country’s biggest locomotive makers, said it secured over $700 million orders from contracts with India, Malaysia, Singapore and Saudi Arabia. In June this year, it signed a contract to supply subway trains to India.

China’s second-largest telecom equipment supplier, sealed a deal to build a mobile network for Norway’s Telenor, a newspaper report said Sunday. Under a 200 million euro announced Monday, ZTE will build a mobile network for 4.5 million users for Telenor in Hungary, the Financial Times said on its Web site.

China, Japan and South Korea planned promotions to help raise the number of visitors among the three nations to about 26 million by 2015 from the projected 17 million this year.

United States private investment group TPG Capital Inc plans to raise 5 billion yuan for its first yuan-dominated private equity fund with Shanghai Pudong New Area government that will be used to invest in medium and large firms in the world’s second-biggest economy.

The fund named TPG China Partners will invest in China’s medium and large companies that are engaged in consumer, retail, finance and healthcare as well as other modern service industries, the company announced yesterday in Shanghai.

The fund said today it also will set up another $5 billion yuan fund with Chongqing to invest in invest in private companies as the nations boosts development of inland provinces.

China National Petroleum Corp, the largest oil producer in Asia, and Royal Dutch Shell completed a joint takeover of Australian coal seam developer Arrow Energy, CNPC announced Monday.

The value of gross output of China’s auto industry surged 49% on an annual basis in the first half of the year to 2.09 trillion yuan, according to data available at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Monday.

The total value of exports and imports jumped an annual 84% to $50.66 billion for the same period, according to details posted on the ministry’s Web site.

Sales generated by logistics enterprises in Shanghai Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone surged 36.4% in the first half of this year to 137.5 billion yuan as compared with the prior year.

Japan’s Panasonic Corp will expand the capacity of its plasma display panel plant in Shanghai by nearly five times by the fiscal year to March 2013, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported today.

Panasonic will achieve a 42-inch panel production capacity of more than 120,000 units a month, up from 25,000 now, the newspaper said.

China’s top battery and electric car producer BYD Co Ltd said Monday its net profit in the first half of this year more than doubled from a year earlier, despite a cooling auto market which damped its second quarter figures.

BYD reported its net income totaled 2.4 billion yuan during the first of ended June 30 and its turnover also rose 50% to 24 billion yuan from a year earlier, according its filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Central Huijin Investment Co, the state-owned company that controls banks in China, sold 40 billion yuan of bonds in an effort to increase its investments in the lenders.