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Shanghai Airport divides traders, analysts as stock slumps below price target by widest margin in 13 years

  • The difference between Shanghai Airport’s stock price and analysts’ price target is the widest since 2007
  • Fund managers and equity analysts are at odds on the valuation as pandemic slams global travels and stock prices

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Passengers wearing face masks, amid concerns of the Covid-19 coronavirus, queue at check-in counters at Shanghai Pudong International Airport in Shanghai on March 18. Photo: AFP
Zhang Shidong
The slump in the world’s biggest airport operator is dividing traders and analysts about the value of one of the market’s favourite picks, as the coronavirus pandemic causes unprecedented damage to travel and trade.

Shanghai International Airport, the operator of the Shanghai Pudong International Airport, has fallen 21 per cent on the local bourse this year to 62.54 yuan, while 14 analysts tracked by Bloomberg lowered its 12-month price target by only 6.5 per cent on average to 81.86 yuan.

The gap is the widest in 13 years. Such a discrepancy for Hong Kong-listed Beijing Capital International Airport was close to the biggest in more than a year.

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The divergence underscores the difficulty in evaluating the impact on the aviation industry, with estimates for losses among experts differing from US$88 billion to US$2 trillion as travel bans and border closures forced airlines to ground more than 90 per cent of flights. For Hengsheng Asset Management, the situation is beyond forecast.

“We are facing a question no one can answer: how long the epidemic will last exactly,” said Dai Ming, a fund manager at Hengsheng in Shanghai. “All the investment-bank research is now based on the assumption that the disease will be contained soon and economic activities will pick up subsequently. We do not know whether that will be true.”

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