Short-selling agencies are active again, just now, cold guns are aimed at Tesla PetroChina

The source | anti-short research center is synthesized from Phoenix News, Financial News Agency, and Hot Search Express

The first week of 2022 has not yet passed, when news came that short-selling agencies were eager to move, and Tesla and PetroChina were targeted by short-sellers from the United States. However, the short report against Tesla has not yet been released, and the report on air oil is published by Citibank, a well-known US financial institution.

Since the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, short-selling institutions have frequently moved in the market, and many companies have been deeply affected. However, compared with professional institutions such as Citibank, the level of many short-selling institutions is a bit worrying, almost in the form of touching porcelain to achieve their short-selling operations, making their performance miserable.

Musk is one of the business operators who strongly oppose short-selling agencies, and as early as early 2021, he posted on social media that short-selling is a scam.

Well-known short investor: Tesla is overvalued 10 times

Beijing time on January 6 news, well-known short investor, Viceroy Research founder Fraser Perring believes that Tesla's stock price is overvalued by 10 times. He tweeted Wednesday that there is a "value misalignment" in the market value of Tesla, Toyota and Volkswagen, which sold about 10 times that of Tesla last year, but Tesla's market value was as high as about $1.15 trillion, more than twice that of Toyota and Volkswagen combined.

Palin said in a telephone interview, "I don't short a company just because the valuation is too high, I only short a 'junk' company with an outrageous valuation." Conservatively, Tesla is also overvalued, and I think it's overvalued 10 times. ”

Viceroy Research usually publishes exhaustive reports when shorting a company, laying out the company's management mistakes, and Tesla may not be its next target. Palin said, "Tesla is not our next target, its operating conditions are healthy." ”

As early as the morning of January 29, 2021 Beijing time, Tesla CEO Elon Musk published an article on the social networking site Twitter pointing out that "short selling is a scam".

Musk tweeted, "You can't sell a house that doesn't belong to you, you can't sell a car that doesn't belong to you, but you can 'can' sell stock that doesn't belong to you!?" It's outrageous – short selling is a hoax. ”

As early as 2018, Musk sent a box full of shorts to the famous hedge fund manager David Einhorn, after David Einhorn had been heavily shorting Tesla stock, according to overseas news site Electroreck.

On July 5, 2020, Musk tweeted that limited edition short shorts have been launched in Tesla stores for $69.420 each.

PetroChina was shorted by Citi, saying imports of natural gas had led to a deterioration in earnings

On January 4, Citi released a research report that the rating of PetroChina (00857) was downgraded from neutral to sell, and the profitability situation in 2022 was expected to deteriorate due to the surge in losses of imported natural gas, based on the long-term price of cloth oil forecast of $55 per barrel and a weighted average cost of capital of about 8%, and the target price was reduced by 27% from HK$3.7 to HK$2.7 accordingly.

PetroChina is one of the three major oil central enterprises in China, and its scale is obvious to all in the world. There have been few short reports before, because the scale is too large for a particularly powerful institution to play.

Citibank's report mentioned that according to the bank's sensitivity analysis, Brent crude oil prices will average $78 per barrel before PetroChina can avoid a reversal of core profits this year Citi estimates that PetroChina's imported natural gas losses will increase from about 11 billion yuan in 2021 to a record 46 billion yuan this year.

In addition, PetroChina's stock price has risen by more than 60% in 2021, and as oil prices may have peaked in the fourth quarter of last year, coupled with the expected increase in losses on imported natural gas in 2022, the company's earnings will be significantly weaker, and the forecast for 2021 will remain basically unchanged, but the 2022-23 profit forecast will be lowered by 3% to 7%.

CITIC shorted Yongan Futures, giving a 41% downward revision of the "sell" target price

On January 3, CITIC Securities released a research report pointing out that Yongan Futures is the third futures company listed on the A-share main board, and the net profit and net assets are the first in the industry; from the perspective of more than one year of time, the business model and valuation may be consistent with the securities company, and the company is given an additional 50% valuation premium at present, and it is expected that the reasonable valuation range in the next year will be 22.5-32 billion yuan.

CITIC believes that the futures industry market space is vast, and the soft underbelly is on the supply side. The opportunity is reflected in the fact that China's futures varieties are mainly concentrated in commodities, and there are fewer financial products. The challenge is that the concentration of futures brokerage business is still low, and profitability is under pressure under homogeneous competition. The overall capacity barrier of futures companies is not high, the transformation effect is limited, and the overall ROE of the industry is only 6.4%.

Specific to Yongan Futures, CITIC pointed out that since 2018, the market share of Yongan Futures' brokerage business has generally been in a downward trend. Among them, the market share of the firm in the previous period fell from 2.3% in 2018 to 1.4% in the first half of 2021; the market share in Zhengshang dropped from 2.4% in 2018 to 1.7% in the first half of 2021; the market share in Dashang dropped from 3.0% in 2018 to 1.8% in the first half of 2021; and the market share in CICC fell from 2.2% in 2018 to 1.85% in the first half of 2021. At the same time, the overall level of the company's commission rate is also facing greater pressure, and the downward trend is consistent with the industry, but the absolute level is significantly lower than that of the same industry.

In terms of valuation, CITIC analysis shows that the company's current market value is 54.6 billion yuan, corresponding to 4.4 PB and 35 PE in 2022, and the valuation is not cheap. The company's outstanding shares are 145 million shares, the circulation plate is relatively small, the characteristics of the new shares in the short term are obvious, December 23, 2022 is 530 million shares in circulation, the circulation plate will be greatly expanded, it is expected that the company's valuation will become rational in the next year, the company's stock price will fall more than 10% relative to the market Risk, in line with the "sell" rating standard, the first coverage gives the "sell" rating, take the valuation of the online corresponding to the target price per share of 22 yuan.

Yongan Futures was founded in 1992, and the actual controller is the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Finance. As the third listed futures company in A shares, the company's net profit and net assets ranked first in the industry, the net profit in 2019 and 2020 exceeded 1 billion yuan, far exceeding the second and third places in the industry, the ROE level is also industry-leading, is a well-deserved futures brother, in the first three quarters of this year, the company's net profit was 871 million, an increase of 14.22% year-on-year. In fact, CITIC is not all "short" in the report, believing that Yongan Futures profitability and capital are expected to continue to maintain a leading position, coupled with the company's active promotion of business transformation, so it gave a 50% premium.