A handful of big-name Chinese stocks are starting to emerge from a downbeat few quarters, making it a good time to buy ahead of next year, JPMorgan analysts said. China’s lackluster economic recovery this year disappointed many who had expected a far more robust rebound and government support. It’s unclear how much that will change next year. But businesses are starting to find a path forward. Third-quarter results for media and entertainment companies showed leading sector names have bolstered margins while cutting costs, JPM’s equity macro research team led by Wendy Liu said in a late November note. Just a year ago, revenue and market capitalization for the stocks were at record lows, the analysts said. Their overweight picks are Tencent, NetEase and Kuaishou. Those are all part of a selection of stocks that JPMorgan called “timely buys,” names for which “fundamentals and market capitalization [are] emerging from troughs.” No Alibaba Missing from the list is Alibaba. The investment firm still prints a price target of $125 for a hefty upside of more than 70% from Wednesday’s levels. But that’s after shares plunged in the last few weeks following news the company is scrapping plans for a highly anticipated cloud business IPO. And it’s increasingly apparent that Alibaba faces growing competition in China’s e-commerce market — seller of bargain-priced goods PDD is catching up in market capitalization. JPMorgan analysts still included Alibaba in its stock basket plays for themes such as artificial intelligence. When it comes to other “timely buys,” JPMorgan analysts like consumer electronics stocks Lenovo and Xiaomi. The consumer electronic sector’s cyclical downturn lasted for a longer-than-expected five straight quarters, the report said. Now revenue is starting to bottom out while market capitalization is starting to turn higher, the JPM analysis showed. Counterpoint Research also found that global smartphone sales in October broke a two-year decline ,…
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