In a summer of cool consumer spending, Chinese toy company Pop Mart alerted investors to double-digit growth in the first half of the year: it now expects revenue to rise by at least 55% and profits to grow 90% or more. Morgan Stanley and other investment firms raised their price targets on the Hong Kong-traded stock after Pop Mart gave a profit alert on July 18. Shares initially surged, but have since wavered amid a broad decline in Asian stocks. “We think Pop Mart’s expansion is still in early innings, with Rmb7bn ($970 million) sales from China and Rmb3bn from overseas market,” Morgan Stanley analysts said last month, noting “the runway is long” since Lego’s annual global sales are 70 billion yuan. Beijing-based Pop Mart sells collectible figurines based largely on its own intellectual property (IP), along with sets featuring the Minions, Avengers or Disney characters. Each toy costs about $10, sold in a “blind” box so customers won’t don’t know which character they’ve bought. ‘Underlying demand’ “We believe the emotional value with low price sensitivity offered by Pop Mart IP products provide strong support on underlying demand in the China market,” CLSA analysts wrote in a note last month, rating Pop Mart outperform. “We expect 30 retail store openings this year in China and China market sales to grow 21% YoY in 2024.” The CLSA analysts raised their price target to 45 Hong Kong dollars ($5.76), up from 37 previously. They expect high-single-digit growth in Pop Mart’s mainland China same-store sales this year. China’s retail sales grew by 2% in June from a year ago, and major Western brands such as Apple and Starbucks reported lower second-quarter sales in China. When Pop Mart listed in Hong Kong in December 2020, shares immediately doubled in price and went on to hit an all-time high of HK$105.21 in February 2021. The stock then plunged with the Hong Kong market, before a recovery starting this year. Despite the latest pullback, Pop Mart shares have held gains of more than 90% for the year so far — temporarily crossing the 100% mark with a high of HK$41.75 on Wednesday. But even that remained several Hong Kong dollars below analysts’ newest price targets. Raised target Morgan Stanley raised its price target to HK$52, up from HK$45 previously, after Pop Mart’s profit alert. The Wall Street investment bank has an “overweight” rating on the stock. “By market, we estimate China growth accelerated from 20% in 1Q to 40% in 2Q,” Morgan Stanley said. “Strong pickup in online channels and Pop Land were the key drivers, while offline sales growth also accelerated (driven by teens% [same-store sales growth]).” Pop Land is a theme park that Pop Mart opened near a major city park in Beijing in September 2023. The company, which considers intellectual property its core asset, said in its annual report in April it has also opened an art gallery, with plans for gaming and animation products. “Pop Land being part of the earnings beat is encouraging — another example showing the value of management’s determination in doing new projects when they are considered ‘far-fetched,'” the Morgan Stanley analysts said. “Also, bad weather and consumption slowdown in China didn’t deter Pop Mart’s momentum, an evidence of its market share gain in the rising IP product segment.” Pop Mart has yet to announce when it will release full results for the first-half of the year. In 2023 the company published its interim report in late August. Other investment firms are more cautious on Pop Mart shares. China Renaissance rates the stock a “hold,” with a far lower price target of HK$27.39. “Pop Mart’s June 2024 online sales fell 6% YoY possibly because Pop Mart did not provide many discounts during the 618-shopping festival, in our view,” the China Renaissance analysts said in a report last month, referring to a mid-June promotion. Also in mid-July, Nomura analysts upgraded their view on Pop Mart, but only to “neutral” from “reduce,” albeit with an increased price target to HK$41. “The company is well-prepared to sustain its high sales growth momentum into 2H24F, in our view (we estimate 2H24F total sales growth of 39% y-y),” the Nomura analysts said. Growing international business While most of Pop Mart’s stores are in mainland China, the company has a growing international business with stores in countries ranging from Thailand to the U.S. One day after the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics, Pop Mart opened a store in the Louvre . “It is very difficult to forecast Pop Mart’s sales momentum from 2025 onward, as its growth driver is not store opening but the pace of IP product launches,” Jefferies analysts said. They rate the stock a buy, with a price target of HK$47.40. “We like management’s strategy of focusing on its core IPs and investing in these IPs through various media,” a Jefferies report said. “Pop Mart’s IPs could be in the form of not just blind boxes but also games, movies and other product categories. It is also looking to expand its retail format using the theme park as the incubator. This could lengthen an IP’s cycle should it be successful.” — CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed to this report. Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. CNBC parent NBCUniversal owns NBC Sports and NBC Olympics. NBC Olympics is the U.S. broadcast rights holder to all Summer and Winter Games through 2032.
Check out the companies making headlines before the bell. Warner Bros. Discovery – Shares jumped nearly 9% after Warner said it will split into two publicly traded companies by next year. One company will host WBD’s streaming services and movie properties, while the other will include its cable networks such as CNN and TNT Sports. Tesla – Shares of the electric vehicle maker dropped about 2% after Baird downgraded the stock to neutral from buy. The firm said that CEO Elon Musk’s comments on robotaxi plans are “a bit too optimistic” and that Musk’s relationship to President Donald Trump adds “considerable uncertainty.” EchoStar – Shares tumbled 11% after the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar, said the telecommunications company is considering filing for bankruptcy under chapter 11 . The company is trying to protect its wireless spectrum licenses that are under review by the Federal Communications Commission, the report said. Robinhood , Applovin – Shares of Robinhood and Applovin each fell about 4% after neither name was added to the S & P 500 on Friday, as both names were considered possible candidates for inclusion in the index . Robinhood soared more than 13% last week leading up to the rebalance announcement, while Applovin advanced more than 6%. IonQ – The quantum computing stock gained more than 7% after the company announced that it’s agreed to acquire Oxford Ionics in a deal valued at $1.075 billion in cash and stock. The deal is expected to close in 2025. McDonald’s – The fast-food chain’s stock slipped nearly 1% on the heels of a Morgan Stanley downgrade to equal weight from overweight. Morgan Stanley said the company hasn’t been insulated from pressures on the fast food sector. Moelis & Co. – Shares were marginally lower. On Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported that CEO Ken Moelis is planning to step down from the role at the investment bank. He said in an interview that he’s expected to become executive chairman, effective Oct. 1. Co-president Navid Mahmoodzadegan is slated to become CEO, the report said. — CNBC’s Alex Harring, Fred Imbert and Sarah Min contributed reporting.
People wait in line for T-shirts at a pop-up kiosk for the online brokerage Robinhood along Wall Street after the company went public with an initial public offering earlier in the day on July 29, 2021 in New York City.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
Robinhood shares sold off on Monday as the online brokerage was snubbed in the latest quarterly rebalance of the S&P 500 Index after months of speculation that it could earn a coveted spot in the benchmark.
Shares of Robinhood dropped nearly 5% in premarket trading. The stock has rallied 3.3% Friday to bring last week’s gain to over 13% before the S&P Dow Jones Indices said after the bell that the S&P 500 would remain unchanged.
Just last week, Bank of America called Robinhood a top candidate to join the S&P 500 during the big reshuffling in June. The S&P 500 rebalance, which typically comes on the third Friday of the last month in a quarter, is usually an impactful event as it can spark billions of dollars of trading and spur passive funds to snap up its shares. Companies being added to the index can generally expect funds like that to buy huge amounts of their shares in the coming weeks.
Crypto exchange Coinbase was the latest beneficiary of such an inclusion. The stock skyrocketed 24% in the next trading session following the announcement last month.
Still, Robinhood has had a major comeback this year so far with shares doubling in price. The online brokerage’s shares hit a fresh record high last week amid a rebound in both stocks and crypto. The company had fallen out of favor after the GameStop trading mania of 2021 fizzled and the collapse of FTX triggered a sell-off in digital assets.
LONDON — Britain’s financial services watchdog on Monday announced a new tie-up with U.S. chipmaker Nvidia to let banks safely experiment with artificial intelligence.
The Financial Conduct Authority said it will launch a so-called Supercharged Sandbox that will “give firms access to better data, technical expertise and regulatory support to speed up innovation.”
Starting from October, financial services institutions in the U.K. will be allowed to experiment with AI using Nvidia’s accelerated computing and AI Enterprise Software products, the watchdog said in a press release.
The initiative is designed for firms in the “discovery and experiment phase” with AI, the FCA noted, adding that a separate live testing service exists for firms further along in AI development.
“This collaboration will help those that want to test AI ideas but who lack the capabilities to do so,” Jessica Rusu, the FCA’s chief data, intelligence and information officer, said in a statement. “We’ll help firms harness AI to benefit our markets and consumers, while supporting economic growth.”
The FCA’s new sandbox addresses a key issue for banks, which have faced challenges shipping advanced new AI tools to their customers amid concerns over risks around privacy and fraud.
Large language models from the likes of OpenAI and Google send data back to overseas facilities — and privacy regulators have raised the alarm over how this information is stored and processed. There have meanwhile been several instances of malicious actors using generative AI to scam people.
Nvidia is behind the graphics processing units, or GPUs, used to train and run powerful AI models. The company’s CEO, Jensen Huang, is expected to give a keynote talk at a tech conference in London on Monday morning.
Last year, HSBC’s generative AI lead, Edward Achtner, told a London tech conference he sees “a lot of success theater” in finance when it comes to artificial intelligence — hinting that some financial services firms are touting advances in AI without tangible product innovations to show for it.
He added that, while banks like HSBC have used AI for many years, new generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT come with their own unique compliance risks.