The most thrilling scene in today’s stock market is the plummeting share price of SenseTime Technology . The AI giant’s stock price plummeted 45% after the opening. The market value fell from 200 billion Hong Kong dollars to 100 billion Hong Kong dollars. The market value of hundreds of billions was instantly wiped out. Will SenseTime survive? What bad news did you encounter?
Judging from the trading volume, it is a huge drop. As of 2 p.m. on June 30, the trading volume reached 4.6 billion Hong Kong dollars, while the usual daily trading volume is only about 100 million Hong Kong dollars. This shows that there is a daily volume of selling. Yes, the closing price on the previous trading day was HK$588 million, and today’s stock price has almost halved. Such selling regardless of cost shows that the cost of holding shares is very low for sellers. Even if they sell at yesterday’s halved price, they can still benefit. Otherwise, this cannot be explained. kind of behavior.
Who can hold low-cost shares? SenseTime was listed on Hong Kong stock on December 30, 2021, with a valuation of nearly HK$130 billion. The listing price was HK$3.85, and the number of issuances was 1.5 billion shares. Later, it exercised its over-allotment option and issued an additional 225 million shares. The additional issuance price is also HK$3.85 per share. This shows that there are two types of shareholders who have low-cost advantages and quantitative advantages. The first is ’s cornerstone investor at the time of IPO. The number of shares held by these shareholders is enough to become HK$3.85. The second is holders For shareholders of original shares, the holding cost of these shareholders is lower, and the number of shares they hold is much larger.
This guess was quickly verified. In the morning, SenseTime issued an announcement. Xu Li, Wang Xiaogang, Xu Bing and other directors and other management announced that they would voluntarily extend the lock-up period to December 29 this year, which means that they will voluntarily extend the ban. The sales period has been extended by half a year.
This announcement also indirectly shows that the sharp drop in stock prices is related to the ban on sales. This is indeed the case. Today is the first day that the ban on Tianliang shares was lifted. The number of shares lifted was 23.4 billion shares, accounting for 30% of the company’s total share capital. 76%. Such a huge lifting of the ban will naturally have a huge impact on the stock price.
Investors in A-shares are not easy to understand this behavior because the regulations are different. The lock-up for A-shares on major shareholders after the IPO is 36 months, and other shareholders are generally 12 months, so A-shares have just been listed. New stocks often see skyrocketing prices, but Hong Kong stocks are different. The lock-up period for major shareholders is particularly short. If the stock price rises too much, it can easily be extinguished by the wave of lifting the ban.
For example, SenseTime originally issued a small number of shares this time. Only 1.725 billion shares were issued, accounting for 5.1% of the total share capital after the issuance. This market is very small, and A shares generally have to be issued at least 10% of the shares are usually 25%. Therefore, the stock prices of Hong Kong stocks before the lifting of the ban are fictitious, and the stock prices that have not experienced the lifting of the ban are unreal.
Some investors still have a question, that is, since the issued shares are only 5.1%, why are the unlocked shares not 94.9%? This is because SenseTime implements the AB share system. The voting rights of A shares are 10 times that of B shares. B shares are ordinary shares. SenseTime has 7.529 billion A shares, accounting for nearly 22.6% of the total share capital. These shares It is difficult to reduce the shareholding. If the shareholding is reduced, the voting rights will be lost, and the control of the company will be lost.
Shareholders before the IPO were so eager to reduce their holdings on a large scale on the first day of the lifting of the ban. In addition to taking advantage of the high price to cash out, there may be another underlying logic, that is, they may not be so looking forward to the future of SenseTime. Through its reports, we found that the revenue from 2018 to 2021 was 1.85 billion, 3.03 billion, 3.45 billion and 4.7 billion respectively. Although the revenue is growing steadily, it is indeed a bit undeserved compared to its super reputation.
At the same time, the company continues to lose money. From 2018 to 2021, it suffered losses of 3.43 billion, 4.96 billion, 12.16 billion, and 17.14 billion respectively, with a cumulative loss of 38.7 billion in four years. Even if non-operating losses are excluded, the performance dilemma is still difficult to conceal.
In addition, we can see that among the early investors of SenseTime are Taobao and SoftBank, the number of Class B shares held are 2.41 billion and 4.73 billion shares respectively, accounting for 7.24% and 14.21% of the total share capital.
SoftBank is currently stuck in a quagmire of huge losses. The SoftBank Vision Fund lost US$27.5 billion in 2021. The listed company SoftBank Group lost 2.1 trillion Japanese dollars in the first quarter of this year, which is about 100 billion yuan. The stock price has also fallen from last year's high point. Under the huge debt pressure, SoftBank has the incentive to sell and cash out to withdraw funds.
also believes that Ali also has motives for reducing its holdings, because Ali is also shrinking its front line and has withdrawn from many companies before, such as Mango Super Media , 6 Krypton and Caixin Media , but this motive is not very strong. Persuasion, these companies are media companies and cannot be held according to regulations and have to exit.
Although Alibaba’s net profit is declining, there is no shortage of money on the whole. The profits are still considerable, and the cash flow on the account is also very strong. Furthermore, if Alibaba wants to lead to the starry sea of technology, artificial intelligence must be obtained Otherwise, what would be the purpose of establishing Damo Academy and ? How could SenseTime, as the current leader of the four AI little dragons, withdraw?
These are all speculations now. Specific data will be announced in a while, and then we will know who is reducing their holdings of SenseTime shares. This matter can actually give A-share investors a clearer understanding of Hong Kong stocks and the system of Hong Kong stocks. There is a big difference between A-shares and A-shares. In terms of information disclosure, A-shares are more detailed and more friendly to retail investors.
