NOT ONLY DOES Hi Sun Tech (China) Ltd (00818) hold a third of the PRC's top Electronic Funds Transfer Point-of-Sale (EFT-POS) terminal play, but it is also increasingly involved in offering technical consulting services to a range of industries, thus putting the Hong Kong listco in position to cash in on the cashless craze, a company official told Asia Fund Space in an interview.
Hi Sun Tech provides offline bankcard acquiring services to small-to-mid-sized merchants, and business & technology consulting services and solutions including a range of specialized services and solutions to banks, financial firms and telecom operator clients while also offering consulting and IT outsourcing services and payment solutions.
The Hong Kong listco has much to smile about of late after its January-June bottom line swung to a net profit of 29.76 million hkd against a net loss of 78.51 million a year prior.
It also boosted its banking bragging rights this summer after its subsidiary won the bid for the modernization projects for the core banking systems of Dahsing Banking (HK: 2356).
Asia Fund Space: Hong Kong shares of PAX Global (00327) currently have a one-year return of around 16% and a year-to-date (YTD) return of 26%.
Although no one can accurately predict the future, are there any regrets at Hi Sun about your decision in September 2014 to divest of 80 million PAX shares for 7.5 hkd per share (representing a discount of 9.8% against the last closing price), thus cutting your stake in PAX at the time to 33.1% from 40.4%?
Hi Sun Official: Different times call for different objectives.
We looked at global demand at the time and benefitted from the enhanced cashflow resulting from our partial divestment.
We will use this cash inflow to our ultimate advantage and don't judge such decisions solely on share price trends pre- or post-deal.
Asia Fund Space: Hi Sun provides a wide range of consulting services and products, through its subsidiaries.
Would your board be more pleased being known as predominantly a professional consulting firm, or as a hardware and technical services supplier?
Hi Sun Official: We would prefer not to find ourselves pigeonholed as either a hardware or software/consulting firm, but are promoting ourselves more as an internet financing specialist, a leading payment services provider as well as financial IT.
After our fundraising drive reaches completion, we ultimately wish to be seen as a consolidated diverse enterprise, with a special focus on payment and integrated financial services business, and related IT consulting business.
We currently hold an 80% stake in China offline acquiring, 100% of a financial IT firm, 100% of a telecom play, 100% in a payment platform, 100% power meters and 33% EFT-POS.
To go a little bit into details, we help vendors/merchants to process cashless payments via POS (point of sale) terminals, we help banks and financial firms to develop and setup core banking systems, and we also help payment institutions to develop and setup their own payment platform. Meanwhile, we are the main shareholder of the world's No.3 EFT-POS player, and we also supply core chips for EFT-POS machines.
Asia Fund Space: Hi Sun serves a variety of sectors.
Of these, which are mainly driven by government policy and which by real-time on-the-ground demand?
Furthermore, what is your particular outlook for these industries going forward?
Hi Sun Official: Most of our businesses are driven by real-time on-the-ground demand. As well, government policies in developing e-payment and internet financebroughtclear regulatory direction and serve as important operating support.
We are currently most upbeat about our China offline acquiring business, the scale of which has maintained a high rate of growth.
At the end of 2014, five billion bank cards in China were issued, with 12 million bank card merchants connected and 42.4 trillion yuan in transaction volume yearly with a three-year CARG of 36% and 27%, respectively.
We believe we will enjoy a continuous blossoming in the scale of bank card acquiring business with the increasing number of merchants using EFT-POS systems helping boost overall transaction volume.
We already have more than 500,000 merchants in China using our acquiring services. Another promising aspect to our fast-growing payment processing solutions is that we offer one calendar day (D+1) and intraday (T+0)clearing value-added services to the merchant with a certain charge, while it is normally one trading day (T+1) timeframe needed to officially process such payments from consumer to the merchant, It brings big demand especially before long vacations in China.
For our financial IT segment. The Chinese banks' main IT system, the core banking system has been developed from first generation (1G) to fourth generation (4G), which of course we are benefiting from the system upgrading of the banks and financial institutions.
For our payment platform segment, we are the developer and supporter of China mobile's e-wallet ("And Wallet").We are also seeing strong support from China Mobile, which serves hundreds of millions of users.
Hi Sun Technology (China) Ltd (00818) is principally engaged in the provision of payment processing solutions, provision of financial solutions, sales of electronic power meters and solutions, provision of telecommunication solutions and provision of payment platform solutions. The Company holds approximately 33% interest in PAX Global Technology Ltd (00327). PAX is principally engaged in the development and sales of electronic funds transfer point-of-sales ("EFT-POS") products and provision of related services.
(Note: This story is contributed by Andrew Vanburen. Mr. Vanburen has served as a government official focused on international trade at the American Institute of Taiwan in Taipei, and worked in financial journalism for nearly a decade in both Beijing and Shenzhen.
He holds a Master's Degree from New York University. He is currently Director at Hong Kong-based Asia Fund Space. For more information, please visit: www.asiafundspace.com
