By
Rick Aristotle Munarriz
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More Articles
February 20, 2008
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Earnings season may be cooling off domestically, but the next few days will be awfully hectic if you're watching the Chinese dot-com bellwethers. SINA (Nasdaq: SINA ) , Giant Interactive (NYSE: GA ) , and NetEase.com (Nasdaq: NTES ) report tonight.
Shanda Interactive (Nasdaq: SNDA ) , eLong (Nasdaq: LONG ) , and Ctrip.com (Nasdaq: CTRP ) are all set to report early next week.
This will give us all a much clearer picture of China's Web leaders by this time next week. Giant, NetEase, and Shanda will color in the youth-friendly boom of Internet-delivered multiplayer fantasy games in China. Ctrip and eLong will give investors a glimpse into the online travel space, a sector that is bound to become even more newsworthy when the Olympics roll into Beijing this summer. SINA will provide a great glimpse into the Web as a whole, given the online media company's gamut of properties.
I'll be digging into all the reports, although I am particularly drawn to what NetEase and Shanda are up to these days. It's been three years since both stocks were singled out to Rule Breakers subscribers. Shanda was initially the top dog. Then it languished while NetEase ruled the roost. Now it's becoming a bit of a free-for-all.
NetEase has been stagnant -- and analysts expect earnings to clock in flat with the $0.30 a share it earned a year earlier in tonight's report -- while Shanda has regained its growth streak and the fast-growing Giant Interactive makes its presence known.
However, the reason I'm really drawn to this niche is that the key players happen to be trading at dirt-cheap earnings multiples:
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2/19
Price
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2008 EPS
Estimates
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Forward
P/E
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Giant Interactive
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$11.32
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$0.71
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15.9
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Shanda
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$28.52
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$1.88
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15.2
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NetEase.com
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$18.68
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$1.24
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15.1
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It's eerie how they are all fetching a little better than 15 times this year's projected profitability. Beyond the coincidence, isn't that an attractive earnings multiple for companies in a Chinese economy that is growing several times faster than our own?
The next few days of earnings reports will either justify the valuations or force investors to rethink what these high-margin companies are truly worth. It's an exciting time to watch the parade as the highly anticipated floats come by.
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