Shares in Chinese Companies May Not Gain on Global Push
Oil field in Indonesia, television makers in Thailand, blast furnaces in Brazil -- Chinese companies are investing in them all, and the shopping spree will only get bigger.
But is China's push to invest overseas a harbinger of higher share prices for those companies that are leading the charge? Not necessarily, say money managers. In fact, investments overseas frequently presage a drop in share price, as fledgling China-based multinationals find that doing business abroad may be even harder than at home.
"Generally, overseas expansion hasn't been a good thing for investors anywhere," says Ian Beattie of New Star Asset Management in London, which manages more than $500 million in investments in Asia, outside Japan. "It's normally a worrying sign: your company goes abroad because its return on capital is falling at home. But what competitive advantage do you have going overseas?"
Mr. Beattie hastens to add that there are loads of exceptions to the rule. But caution is called for when investing in companies starting to go global, he says.
Announcements of overseas acquisitions by Chinese companies have gathered pace in the past couple of years, feeding expectations that the country's corporations are at the beginning of a long trend. A recent example is an investment by four Chinese steelmakers -- Wuhan Iron & Steel, Maanshan Iron & Steel, Jiangsu Shagang Group and Tangshan Iron & Steel -- in an iron-mining operation in Western Australia, a deal that will guarantee them shipments from BHP Billiton of about $9 billion worth of iron ore.
In February, China's biggest steelmaker, Shanghai Baosteel Group, agreed to set up a mill to make steel slabs with Brazil's top iron ore exporter, Companhia Vale do Rio Doce. Chinese electronic-goods maker TCL International Holdings formed a joint venture last year giving it control of the television and DVD operations of France's Thomson, and followed up that deal by taking over the mobile-phone manufacturing operations of France's Alcatel. And China's offshore oil operator CNOOC, which earlier invested in Indonesia, last year bought a 12.5% stake last year in Australia's Gorgon gas field.
Anticipation of Chinese investment has risen so high that a just-published survey of investment-promotion agencies in 158 countries ranked China ahead of Japan as the fifth-largest expected source of foreign investment in the next few years.
The promotion agencies are clearly getting ahead of themselves. China's outward investments in 2002 were about $2.5 billion while Japan's were a whopping $32 billion, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, which conducted the survey. China's cumulative investments abroad during the past two decades are about $35 billion, which is on a par with those by Ireland or Portugal -- two countries whose combined population is less than that of Shanghai.
Still, the broader point about the growing importance of Chinese investments abroad makes sense. "Chinese enterprises are at the threshold of becoming major foreign direct investors in Asia and beyond," writes Karl Sauvant, the director of UNCTAD's investment division in Geneva.
But a glance at the forces driving Chinese companies abroad reveals why it isn't safe to assume such investments will translate into stock-market gains.
For starters, investing abroad is now state policy. China's government has been implementing a rash of incentives to get local companies to put money to work overseas as a way of balancing the huge inflows of capital that are exerting pressure on the Chinese yuan's peg to the U.S. dollar. The policy of "zou chu qu," or "venture out," is a good one from a macroeconomic standpoint but hardly guarantees that companies with little experience abroad will make good decisions about where to put their money.
"China has a lot of money burning a hole in its pocket," says Peter Morgan, chief Japan economist at HSBC Securities in Tokyo. But it's when companies are flush with cash that they often make their most fateful miscalculations. Witness the wave of Japanese acquisitions of U.S. office buildings, golf courses and movie studios in the 1980s, which largely ended in tears for Japan's conglomerates.
"The track record for Chinese corporates overseas is too short," says Kenneth Luh, a money manager in Hong Kong. "Even if they're doing the right thing in theory by going abroad, implementation risk is high. You have to look closely at them on a case-by-case basis."
Another factor behind China's outward flow of investment is that it is becoming starved for raw materials and other commodities to feed its expanding manufacturing sector. That has helped push up world commodity prices in the past year and increased Beijing's interest in securing supplies of raw materials. But it underscores the move abroad as often one of necessity, meaning companies may not have the luxury of being able to cherry pick deals.
"It doesn't mean they shouldn't be going abroad, but it usually means that returns on capital at home are deteriorating and that they're trying to find a way out of that," says Mr. Beattie, the London fund manager. He says he has small positions in two Chinese oil companies actively seeking to expand overseas, Sinopec and CNOOC, but admits the rationale for buying them wasn't exceptionally strong.
Mr. Beattie sees some upside in their share prices and agrees with their strategy to look for new sources of gas and oil. But he notes that they are being thrown into competition with experienced oil majors, which could mean lower returns than what they're used to at home.
海外投资未必能提振股价
印尼的油井、泰国的电视机生产商、巴西的鼓风炉……到处都有中国公司的身影，而且这股投资狂潮只会愈演愈烈。
但中国赴海外投资的热情是否预示著这些先行者的股票会因此上扬呢？一些基金经理说，未必。事实上，海外投资经常会造成股票下跌，因为这些初出茅庐的中国公司感觉到，在海外开展业务可能比在国内更为艰难。
New Star Asset Management驻伦敦的伊恩?贝蒂(Ian Beattie)说："一般来说，海外扩张对任何地方的投资者而言都不是件好事。这通常是个令人担忧的迹象：你的公司走出国门是因为在国内的资本回报率正在下降。但是你走出去又有什么竞争优势呢？"
他随即又补充说，例外的情况也很多。不过他提醒人们在投资那些涉足海外的公司时，还是要小心谨慎。New Star Asset Management所管理的资产在日本以外亚洲的投资超过5亿美元。
近几年中国公司加快了海外并购的脚步，令很多人预计一种长期趋势将由此展开。
近期最惹眼的一个例子是，4家中国钢铁制造商与澳大利亚BHP Billiton (BHP)在澳大利亚西部合资成立采矿企业，以此确保它们能从BHP Billiton获得价值9亿美元的铁矿。这4家公司是武汉钢铁集团公司(Wuhan Iron & Steel )、马鞍山钢铁股份有限公司(Maanshan Iron & Steel)、江苏沙钢集团(Jiangsu Shagang Group)和唐山钢铁股份有限公司(Tangshan Iron & Steel)。
2月份，中国最大的钢铁制造商上海宝钢集团公司(Shanghai Baosteel Group)与巴西头号铁矿石出口商Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (RIO)签署协议，在巴西建设一个生产钢板的大型钢铁企业。
去年，中国的电子产品制造商TCL国际控股有限公司(TCL International Holdings)与法国Thomson S.A. (TMS)组建合资公司，合资后，TCL基本上控制了后者的电视和DVD业务。今年TCL国际再接再励，又接管了法国阿尔卡特(Alcatel S.A., ALA)的手机制造业务。
此外，中国海洋石油（中国）有限公司(CNOOC Ltd., CEO, 简称：中海石油)于去年收购了澳大利亚Gorgon天然气井12.5%的股份。该公司此前在印尼已有投资。
随著人们对中国投资的预期日益高涨，联合国贸易与发展委员会(United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 简称Unctad)基于对158个国家投资促进机构的调查，将中国列为未来几年中第五大重要海外直接投资来源国，排在日本前面。
这些投资促进机构显然正在努力超越自我。根据Unctad的调查，中国2002年对外投资额约为25亿美元，而日本的投资额高达320亿美元。过去20年，中国的累计海外投资为350亿美元左右，与爱尔兰或葡萄牙的水平相当，而后两个国家的人口总数还不及上海市人口数量。
当然，从大的角度看，中国的海外投资的确起著越来越重要的作用。Unctad驻日内瓦的投资部门负责人卡尔?萨万特(Karl Sauvant)在报告中称，中国企业已然成为亚洲及亚洲以外的重要外商直接投资者。
但是看看中国公司赴海外投资的驱动力就不难发现，将这些投资与股市的上涨挂钩显然并不把握。
首先，投资海外已经成为一种国策。中国政府一直在采取刺激措施，鼓励本国公司将资金投向海外，以此平衡巨大的资本流入。流入中国的资本已经对人民币与美元的钉住汇率制构成了巨大压力。从宏观经济角度来看，"走出去"政策是一个很好的政策，但它却难以保证那些在海外毫无经验的公司能够准确把握投资去向。
汇丰证券(HSBC Securities)驻东京的首席日本经济学家彼得?摩根(Peter Morgan)说："中国有很多钱，装钱的口袋都要被烧出洞来了。"但是公司资金充裕时往往会犯下致命的错误，这一点从八十年代日本对美国写字楼、高尔夫球场和电影工作室的疯狂并购中可见一斑，很多日本大型企业集团最终是含泪而归。
驻香港的基金经理Kenneth Luh说，中国公司在海外的投资历史很短，即便在理论上他们的投资选择是正确的，然而操作风险仍然很高。你必须对他们逐一予以密切关注。 驱使中国大力投资海外的另一个因素是，随著制造业的迅猛发展，中国对原材料和其他商品的需求已经如饥似渴。来自中国的旺盛需求是过去一年中推动世界商品价格上扬的一个重要原因，同时也使中国政府越发想要确保来自海外的原材料供应。但这更是表明，走出国门是为了满足某种需求，这些公司在投资项目的选择上并不具备取精去粗的能力。
伦敦基金经理贝蒂说："并不是说他们不应该走向海外，但这通常意味著他们在国内的投资回报正在恶化，他们正在试图寻找一种方式来摆脱这种处境。"贝蒂说，他持有中国石化(Sinopec)和中海石油的少量股票，但表示购买这些股票的愿望并不是非常强烈。
贝蒂预计这两家公司的股票会有一定上涨空间，也赞同他们寻找新的油气资源的战略。但他指出，他们将面临来自经验丰富的大型石油运营商的残酷竞争，这可能意味著他们的回报率将比在国内时更低。
