香港股市牛虻韋伯的投資經
【英文原文】
David Webb's Private Side: Value Investor
David Webb, a Hong Kong corporate-governance advocate, has earned his gadfly reputation attacking the back-room dealings of the territory's clubby tycoons. Less is known about his other passion: value investing.
Once an independent director on the Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing Ltd., the operator of the city's stock exchange, Mr. Webb splits his time between picking stocks to buy with his own money and his public-service activities.
Last year, Mr. Webb drew public attention to irregularities in the shareholder vote for a US$2.1 billion buyout of Hong Kong telecom operator PCCW Ltd. led by tycoon Richard Li. That prompted an investigation by Hong Kong regulators. An appeals court, siding with the securities regulator over Mr. Li, scotched the takeover.
Mr. Webb has also pushed (so far unsuccessfully) to force Hong Kong-listed companies to report financial results quarterly, rather than twice a year.
As an investor, Mr. Webb, 44, focuses pretty much exclusively on Hong Kong small-cap stocks. His approach can be described, he said in an interview, as 'value with a governance overlay.'
That means meticulously combing through stock-exchange filings to evaluate a company's business and cash flow, but also examining the political connections of its directors and shareholders. He carefully tracks the details they disclose, and those they don't.
He says there is a lot of overlap between investing and his advocacy work: the good stocks he keeps for himself and the bad ones he flags for the public and regulators on his website, .
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The site is filled with unflattering bits of information and analysis about Hong Kong-listed companies. A recent post lambastes mobile-phone company SIM Technology Group Ltd. for buying real estate in northeastern China's Shenyang city not related to its core business and only telling shareholders four months after the deal was done. The company responded that it knows Shenyang well from having operations there and the noncore investment is a good way to deploy surplus cash, given low interest rates.
Another post points out that Yang Wenjun, chief executive of China Mengniu Dairy Co., lists a masters of business administration from a discredited mail-order diploma school. Tracking fake degrees is a favorite tool of Mr. Webb, who studied at Oxford University, to highlight misleading disclosures and intellectual insecurities. Mengniu declined to comment.
He doesn't invest in fixed-income products and rarely buys shares overseas because he believes global markets are highly correlated. 'I find enough to chew on in Hong Kong,' he says. Mr. Webb holds about 30 names in his portfolio at any time and sticks to smaller stocks that aren't tracked by researchers at the major investment banks.
Asked about his take on the market today, Mr. Webb says he believes the Hang Seng Index will end the year 'significantly lower' as interest rates rise, China's property bubble deflates, and banks' balance sheets see more bad loans. He says the three largest Chinese state banks, which make up 38.6% of the Hang Seng Index's weighting, will face huge loan losses over the next three years because of the lending splurge during the financial crisis.
As part of Beijing's banking reforms ahead of listings, the government 'cleared out the bad loans, but not the bad lenders,' Mr. Webb says.
Another stock he is down on is Internet company Tencent Holdings Ltd., which he calls the most overvalued stock in the Hang Seng Index excluding the Chinese banks, with a price-to-book ratio over 21, a trailing price-to-earnings ratio around 50 times, and a dividend yield of just 0.24%.
'I don't think their business model is as sustainable as the market seems to think,' says Mr. Webb, who previously worked as an investment banker. 'Perhaps that's why they are hoarding cash.'
So far, Mr. Webb says he has no plans to manage other people's money. 'I enjoy my life as it is, with the freedom to spend as much time as I want on pro bono activities and family,' Mr. Webb says. 'A fiduciary duty to shareholders would change that.'
【中文譯文】
由於經常批評富豪圈內的暗箱交易，香港公司治理倡導者大衛•韋伯(David Webb)成了廣爲人知的股市牛虻。但他對另一件事的熱情卻沒有多少人瞭解：價值投資。
韋伯曾擔任香港交易所(Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing Ltd.)的獨立董事，他現在一邊用自己的錢購買自己精選的股票，一邊從事公共服務活動。
去年，由香港大亨李澤楷領導的香港電信運營商──電訊盈科有限公司(PCCW Ltd.)的股東投票贊成以21億美元出售這家公司。韋伯將其中的違規行爲公諸於衆，導致香港監管者對此事進行調查。上訴法院支持了證券監管者的上訴，終止了電訊盈科的私有化計劃。
韋伯一直在推動要求香港上市公司必須每季度彙報一次財務狀況，而不是每半年上報一次。但至今尚未成功。
作爲一名投資者，今年44歲的韋伯十分專注於香港的小盤股公司。他在接受採訪時說，可把他的投資方向形容成“價值加治理”。
具體地說，就是一絲不苟地梳理公司上報給證交所的文件，對這家公司的業務和現金流進行評估，同時調查公司董事和股東的政治人脈。他認真地追蹤這些公司已披露及未披露的細節。
韋伯說，他的投資和倡導活動之間有許多交集之處：好的股票都留給自己投資，而有問題的公司，他會在自己的網站上向公衆和監管者指出來。
網站上滿是有關香港上市公司的負面信息和分析。近期的一篇文章譴責手機公司晨訊科技集團從事與核心業務無關的活動──在中國東北的瀋陽市購買房地產，並且在交易完成後四個月才向股東披露此事。公司迴應稱曾在瀋陽做過業務，對這座城市很瞭解，並且鑑於利率較低，進行與核心業務無關的投資是配置剩餘現金的好辦法。
另一篇文章指出，中國蒙牛乳業公司首席執行長楊文俊列出的工商管理碩士學歷來自一所信譽不佳的函授學校。在牛津大學(Oxford University)學習過的韋伯喜歡通過追蹤假學歷，把誤導性的信息披露和一些人的心虛都晾曬於光天化日之下。蒙牛方面對此拒絕置評。
韋伯不投資固定收益產品，也很少買海外股票，因爲他相信，全球各個市場都是高度相關的。他說，香港的就夠我慢慢研究了。韋伯一直是持有大約30只股票，並專注於那些沒有被大投行研究人員跟蹤、市值更小的股票。
在被問到如何看待今天的市場時，韋伯說，他相信，隨着利率擡升、內地樓市泡沫破滅、銀行壞賬增加，到今年結束時香港恆生指數(Hang Seng Index)將大幅走低。他說，在恆生指數中權重達38.6%的中國三大國有銀行，將在未來三年因金融危機期間放出的天量貸款而蒙受鉅額貸款損失。
韋伯說，銀行上市前，北京方面在對它們進行改革時清理了不良貸款，“但沒有清理不良銀行”。
另一隻不被韋伯看好的股票是騰訊控股有限公司(Tencent Holdings Ltd.)。他說，騰訊是除了內地銀行以外被高估得最嚴重的恆生指數成份股，市淨率超過了21倍，以過去一年的收益率來計算，市盈率約爲50倍，而股息收益率僅爲0.24%。
曾做過投行的韋伯說，我認爲他們的商業模式並不像市場認爲的那樣可持續，這或許是他們正在囤積現金的原因。
韋伯說，目前他還沒有替別人管理財富的打算。韋伯說，我喜歡我現在的生活，在公益活動方面和家人身上想花多少時間就花多少時間，而如果對股東承擔起信託責任，這一切都會發生改變。
