Chinese Competitor to Starbucks Runs Into Muddy Waters
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China's
Luckin Coffee, which went public last year in New York, saw its share price slide after it was uncovered that $310 million in sales were fabricated.
Muddy Waters first raised the alarm signal, noting in a tweet
"MW is short $LK. We received unattributed
89-page report
alleging $LK is a fraud: "number of items per store per day was inflated by at least 69% in 2019 3Q and 88% in 2019 4Q, supported by 11,260 hours of store traffic video." We view the work as credible."
The startup was backed by
Joy Capital, Singapore's
GIC sovereign wealth fund, and investment banking firm
China International Capital Corp.
Skeptics have wondered how a coffee takeaway business could be worth so much.
This financial fraud uncovering must be good news for
Starbucks in China, which has been fending off
Luckin Coffee by aligning with
Alibaba's delivery service -- which I wrote about in my book,
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Tencent and
Hillhouse Capital led a $1 billion round in Chinese online education startup
Yuanfudao at a $7.8 billion valuation. Edtech is at the forefront of investor interest given the move to virtual classrooms.
China biopharma companies have raised $721 million in new deals in signs of life after the coronavirus. Here's some highlights.
Abbisko raised $70 million in funding led by Temasek and joined by existing investors
Qiming Venture Partners,
Lilly Asia Ventures and others.
In Shanghai,
Genechem raised $56 million in Series C financing while
ZhenGe Biotech lured in $51 million in initial funding.
Guangzhou Targene closed a $14 million, series A round led by the venture arm of
Shenzhen's BGI, a Chinese genome sequencing company.
Chinese insurance company
Ping An signed a $311 million agreement with Japan's Shionoqi to develop new drugs for infectious diseases.
Nanjing Legend Biotech
,
a subsidiary of
GenScript
, r
aised $150 million as Legend prepares for a US IPO.
Softbank pulls the plug on
WeWork bailout, giving founder
Adam Neumann another black eye as co-working spaces are losing their appeal.
Yahoo Finance.
CDH Investment led a $190 million series A investment in Chinese electric vehicle charging operator
Telaidian, as China moves to EVs faster than the U.S.
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Venture Funds
General Catalyst
has raised a
total of $2.3 billion in these trying times. The money is split three ways: a
$600 million
early-stage fund, a $1 billion growth fund for companies with $10 million-plus in annual revenue, and $700 million to back larger companies with more than $100 million in sales. The San Francisco firm has had some big wins such as AirBNB. Now could be a very good time to invest, at least if you're on the venture side but perhaps not for capital-starved startups.
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Global corporate VC-backed funding declined 13% to $34 billion in the first quarter of 2020, versus Q4 2019. The number of corporate VC-invested deals during the first quarter declined 19% to 1,337 from the previous quarter, according to
CBI Insights
.
Dealmaking in China hasn't halted, as
Pitchbook
notes that 66 VC deals for the week ending March 28, the most of any week in 2020, and just below figures from the same time last year.
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A financial virus can be every bit as toxic as a biological one. The coronavirus has lit the fuse on a time bomb in China's economy.
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College student makes masks for the deaf and hard of hearing.
Lex18News
China's film and TV production makes partial restart after coronavirus hiatus.
Variety
New York State Gov.
Andrew Cuomo
acknowledged the donation of 1,000 ventilators from the
Jack Ma
Foundation,
Joe
and
Clara Tsai
Foundation, and
Alibaba
Foundation.
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Zoom CEO
Eric Yuan addresses "zoombombing," when hackers and trolls gain access to a meeting.
"We had some missteps," he acknowledged.
The Zoom team is working 'round' the clock to fix the security issues.
With Silicon Dragon's series on Zoom, we require registration and a password to access the webinar. That works!
Will Zoom still be able to surpass its revenue estimates by $160 million? NYC schools just banned Zoom for online classes.
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Hikers pack Yellow Mountain in eastern China as quarantine lifted in most parts of the country. Retailers are luring them to stores with free vouchers but nature seems to win!
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