What will happen when US stock regulators check Chinese firms - Paul Gillis

Paul Gillis

US legislators might support a bill to force Chinese firms listed in the US to let the US stock regulators, The PCAOB, check their files. But those checks will not prevent frauds like those by Luckin as some US senators claim, warns audit expert Paul Gillis on his weblog Chinaaccountingblog. Some predictions on what will happen after the bill has been adopted.

Paul Gillis:

EY in China is not inspected by the PCAOB. Would a PCAOB inspection have stopped the Luckin fraud? No, PCAOB inspections are after the fact, and EY had already discovered the fraud. Additionally, the PCAOB is not going to inspect every audit, but rather a selection of them and there is no guarantee that Luckin would ever have been inspected. Would EY have audited Luckin differently had it been subject to PCOAB inspections? Possibly, but I think that is unlikely. The Big Four member firms in China are not subject to PCAOB inspections but are regularly subject to inspections by teams from their own networks. While self-inspection is never as effective as independent inspection, I believe that the auditing culture of these firms has been effectively implemented in China, and that inspections would provide for a marginal increase in quality but would be unlikely to prevent future fraud. I believe that PCAOB inspections are useful, but the threat of inspections and the existence of inspections elswhere in the world has already brought those audit  practices to China. The bigger problem for the firms is a shortage of experienced partners – who are sometimes called the no hair/gray hair partners. The firms have been recruiting and auditing in China since the early 1990s, but the firms only became large in the early 2000s. Given it takes 15-20 years for an accountant to make partner in these firms, and another five before they are ready to serve as engagement partner on public companies, the firms are seriously short of highly experienced partners. Partner/staff ratios are completely out of whack for the Big Four in China. For example, PwC reports 720 partners and 20,000 staff in its China firm (which includes HK, Taiwan and Singapore) for a partner/staff ratio of 27.8. The US firm of PwC has 3,249 partners and total staff of 30,000 for a partner/staff ratio of 9.2. While I would not argue more partners means higher audit quality, the difference between the two staffing models is too extreme. 

I believe that this legislation will pass but China will moot it by agreeing to some form of inspections. The sticking point is likely to be state secrets. China will want to vet the working papers to make certain no state secrets are inadvertently disclosed. China does not seem to have focused on the fact that many audit partners are foreigners and the internal inspection teams include foreigners who see these state secrets.  Auditors should cooperate with regulators to minimize the presence of state secrets in working papers. I call for joint training sessions between auditors and regulators to determine what must be in working papers and what should not be recorded. I expect that most of China’s concerns can be alleviated if unnecessary state secrets are omitted from working papers in the first place.

More at the Chinaaccountingblog.

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US stock markets and Chinese state firms do not match - Harry Broadman

Harry Broadman

Chinese listings at US stock markets got recently under fire. Former US assistant trade representative Harry Broadman looks with some amazement at this market at the International Finance Law Review (IFLR). "After decades of working in China intensively on financial accounting, there is not a single state-owned enterprise I've worked on that I can think of that abided by international accounting standards," Broadman says.

The IFLR:

The catalyst for the move is likely Luckin Coffee, the fast-growing Chinese coffee chain that created a network of fake employees and customers that enabled it to grossly fabricate its revenues. Only eight months after going public – on Nasdaq's exchange – the company's valuation had doubled to $12 billion. News of the doctored numbers caused stock to fall by as much as 75% overnight. " 

After decades of working in China intensively on financial accounting, there is not a single state-owned enterprise I've worked on that I can think of that abided by international accounting standards," said Harry Broadman, partner and managing director of the emerging markets practice at Berkeley Research Group. "Some of these firms are now listed on the US markets. I've not examined those firms' recent financial accounts, but even if we were given their upstream numbers, the source and integrity of those numbers has always been, in my mind, very dubious." 

"I am surprised that it has taken this long, just in terms of the sheer due diligence and regulatory integrity check. I wasn't aware of exactly how many of those Chinese firms were listed on US markets, but I'm actually quite shocked there were that many," he added, "That's not a comment about the Chinese, but about US regulators." 

"Anybody who understands how state owned Chinese firms keep accounts, even some of the more privately oriented of them, knows they are just not completely grounded in international accounting standards, like a US firm or a British firm," he said. "Anyone who thinks that is quite myopic."

More at the IFLR.

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China's consumers hate to go for a premium product - Ben Cavender

Ben Cavender

Competition between Starbucks and Luckin has been heating up, and Luckin seems to focus on a higher segment of the market. But business analyst Ben Cavender warns the company might fall into a sword it helped to create itself, he tells to Reuters.

Reuters:

Luckin CEO Qian Zhiya said the company was on track to break even at a store level at every store during the third quarter because rising scale would it give it more bargaining power to lower input costs. Store level costs exclude marketing expenses. 

Ben Cavender, Shanghai-based principal at China Market Research Group, cautioned that might prove to be a tall order. 

"It's difficult because they have trained consumers to only want to go to the stores when there are big discounts," he said, adding that each store does not attract enough customers to cover cost of operations. 

"Eventually they will probably have to cut non-performing stores and find a way to convince people that they have improved coffee quality along with slightly higher prices."

More in Reuters.

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Starbucks competitor Luckin struggles to hold on - Ben Cavender

Ben Cavender

The first quarter of China's coffee maker Luckin after it's US IPO earlier this year proved to be a rough one, as shares dropped. Luckin has a of work to do to catch up with competitor Starbucks, says retail analyst Ben Cavender to Reuters.

Reuters:

Luckin has gone toe-to-toe with Starbucks in China since it opened its doors early last year and the results highlight the Chinese company’s high cash-burn rate as it offers cut-price alternatives. 

Luckin’s operating expenses surged more than three times in the June quarter, as it opened 593 new stores taking its total to 2,963, about 1,000 fewer than Starbucks. 

On an adjusted basis, Luckin lost 48 cents per share. Analysts expected a loss of 43 cents, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. 

“(While) Luckin probably has done slightly better in the most recent quarter in terms of acquiring and keeping customers, the company is still having to work on aggressive recruiting of customers, which hurts the bottom line,” Ben Cavender, Shanghai-based principal at China Market Research Group, said before the results were released. 

Luckin has also expanded beyond coffee, allowing customers to buy food and other beverages via its app.... 

Analysts reckon both coffee companies will soon see more competition from smaller rivals. 

“At home Luckin is facing increasing competition both from quick service restaurant brands like KFC that are placing greater emphasis on coffee, as well as smaller chains like Manner Coffee that are using somewhat similar business models to interact with the consumer,” said Cavender. 

Luckin’s total net revenue surged more than seven-fold to 909.1 million yuan in the June quarter.

More in Reuters.

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Can Luckin beat Starbucks? - Ben Cavender

Ben Cavender

Competition is a key feature in China's industries, but coffee retailer Starbucks never faced those challenges. Now Luckin emerges, and Starbucks has no longer a free ride, tells business analyst Ben Cavender to the New York Times.

The New York Times:

In May, Luckin sued Starbucks, arguing that the U.S. chain had signed exclusive contracts with commercial property owners that barred other coffee shops from entering the space if a Starbucks was already there. 

It’s not going to be easy to oust Starbucks, which has 3,400 stores in more than 140 cities in China and plans to nearly double that by 2022. 

Ben Cavender, senior analyst of China Market Research, a consultancy based in Shanghai, estimates that it has a 70 per cent share of the market, blazing past other coffee chains like McDonald’s McCafé and Costa Coffee. But the company must prove it can stay on the cutting edge. 

“The challenge is that consumers are much pickier about the experience they get now; they have other good options that have standardized quality and potentially a more interesting environment,” Cavender said. “So Starbucks has to do a better job. It’s not a clear win anymore.”

More at the New York Times.

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