Chinese Equities to Bounce Further in the Year of the Rabbit?

The rally still has legs. Why?

After such a strong run, it is reasonable to see a consolidation recently. The next question is “Do we think there is still room for more upside?”

We believe Chinese equities, both on-shore A-shares and offshore Chinese equities (H-shares, ADRs), could bounce further in the Year of the Rabbit due to the following reasons:-

(1)A consumption-led economic recovery

Massive excess savings (estimate to be around 10% of GDP) during the pandemic will unleash pent-up demand, coupled with an improvement in the labour market, should see a strong turnaround in private consumption this year.

With Covid infections already peaked (which suppressed sentiment previously), we expect to see a V-shaped recovery in consumer and real economy data in coming months.

We have just started to see evidence from the high frequency mobility data, such as domestic tourism, hotel revenues and theater box office numbers, moving back to 80-90% of the 2019 levels during the Chinese new year holidays.

(2) China is still in easing mode

Beijing vowed to prioritise economic growth this year with plans on more tax/fee cuts and financing support to relieve pressure on stressed SMEs. State Council and provincial level meetings were held in major economic hubs, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong, with signals to boost confidence of private companies. We recently revised up our 2023 China GDP growth forecast from 4.5% to 5.1%. This is in contrast to the tightening mode and recession risks for other major economies. 

(3) Corporate earnings estimates are set to revise upwards

After the re-rating (valuation recovery) in Chinese equities over the past three months, the next phase of the rally will likely be driven by earnings.

Earnings estimates have just started to bottom out for the CSI 300 (onshore) and begun to stabilise for the MSCI China (offshore). Continued upward revisions in earnings estimates usually bode well for equity markets.

(4) Pre-position before onshore investors are back

The onshore A-share market is generally a domestic retail-driven market as they usually dominate over 60% of fund flows. Turnover in A-shares markets remained subdued in January 2023, implying a lack of participation by domestic retail investors. There is also no sign of pick up in retail investor account opening yet, while margin financing balance has just rebounded from multi-year lows in recent days.

Furthermore, there are rumours that onshore institutional investors have largely missed the rally in the past three months. The onshore mutual funds’ cash holdings were at a 3-year high of 12% in 4Q 2022.

Read Investment Navigator January 2023: 2023 Outlook & Themes: From Bitter to Sweet

(5) Foreign investors have just returned very recently

We believe we are still early in the cycle as net buying from foreign investors in Hong Kong-listed Chinese equities has just returned in recent weeks after six months of continued weekly net outflows in 2H 2022.

On positioning, long-only global funds are nearly universally underweight China (reduced their underweight recently but still underweight). On average, Asian and Global Emerging Markets (GEM) funds are modestly engaged in recent months, while global funds stayed relatively cautious. Given the current low exposure, there are plenty of room for foreign investors to increase weighting in China in their global portfolios especially after they had missed the initial sharp rally and have to chase back performance.

(6) Valuations remain attractive

Despite the sharp rebound, the MSCI China and CSI 300 are trading at 11.2x and 12.4x forward PE respectively, still lower than their respective historical 5-year average of 12.3x and 13.4x.

Both onshore and offshore China markets are also trading at a discount to MSCI Asia ex-Japan’s 13.2x and MSCI EM’s 12.4x, as well as a huge discount to S&P 500’s 18.4x forward PE.

Moreover, we are overweight Emerging Markets (EM) as a whole, thanks to the peaked dollar and peaking monetary tightening cycle in most of the major EM countries.

Key risks

Geopolitical tensions would be a key factor to watch. One of the key risks is a potential US broad ban on investment in China's technology-related sectors. There were signs of stabilisation in the bilateral US-China relationship early this year with Vice Premier Liu He’s meeting with US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen at Davos in mid-January. However, US Secretary Blinken postponed his visit to Beijing in early February due to the suspected "spy" balloon fuels tensions again.

Premature tightening soon after the rebound in economic activity, continued weaknesses in the property markets and a deeper-than-expected recession in the US are other key risks to our bullish view on China equities. 

Conclusion

The Fed’s peak hawkishness is already behind us, which is also an indication that the dollar has peaked. A medium-term declining trend in the greenback (expect to see some consolidation in near term after consecutive few months of weaknesses) is a tailwind for EM and Asia assets, including China.

We continue to stay positive on Chinese equities, both onshore and offshore, and expect the performance decoupling between China and US equities to continue. Therefore, any corrections are buying opportunities. 

CIO Asset Allocation for February 2023