Property plays in focus as housing market booms despite cooling steps, resumption of domestic IPOs
As expected, this instalment of the SCMP/StarMine Analyst Awards confirmed the long-held view that 2005 was the year of China and real estate, with more mainland-linked firms delivering surprisingly strong results that mostly matched the expectations of the award-winning analysts.
And based on interviews with the analysts who made the best stock picks and the most accurate earnings estimates, this year is shaping up to be another China and property story, albeit with some potentially strong showings from Hong Kong-based developers, especially those with projects on the mainland.
Although this latest batch of awards uses data from 2005, the information has been winnowed to focus on companies based in Hong Kong or China only.
Hence, even among brokers, there is a special focus on China - as in the case of BOCI Research, which a mainland connection helped win 10 awards, ahead of local broking teams from global giants such as BNP Paribas, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank Securities. And though it was tops last year in the regional brokers awards outside of Japan, UBS came out only seventh in this China and Hong Kong-focused ranking.
The top stock picker, Peter Bai, who covers real estate for China International Capital Corp, (CICC), outperformed his benchmark by 52.6 per cent.
StarMine said his best call was a full-year 'accumulate' on China Resources Land, which subsequently gained 150 per cent. Another good call was his insistence to maintain a 'buy' on China Overseas Land and Investment for the final five months of 2005, rewarding him with an 87 per cent return. Property developer China Vanke, another 'buy' stock for Mr Bai, returned 73 per cent for the year.