Enviado: 5/11/2007 3:54Nostradamus acertou mais uma vez... o perigo amarelo
PetroChina Passes Exxon's Market Value as Shanghai Shares Surge
By Ying Lou
Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) -- PetroChina Co. passed Exxon Mobil Corp. as the world's largest company by market value as it started trading in Shanghai for the first time.
PetroChina's Class-A shares more than doubled, advancing as high as 48.62 yuan ($6.52) from their sale price of 16.7 yuan. They reached 45.03 yuan at 9:44 a.m., valuing the company at $1.03 trillion. Exxon is worth $488 billion on the New York Stock Exchange.
China's largest oil and gas producer has been listed since 2000 in Hong Kong where it advanced 78 percent this year as investors sought to profit from the world's fastest-growing major economy. The Beijing-based company's shares soared as the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong rose 53 percent and the CSI 300 Index of shares listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges increased 168 percent.
``Local investors might have a different risk tolerance level to global investors, so we may see PetroChina's A-shares trading at a premium'' to its Hong Kong stock, said Lei Wang, a co-manager of Thornburg International Value Fund in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which oversees $16 billion.
PetroChina trades at 24 times earnings in Hong Kong, compared with Exxon's valuation of 13 times. The Chinese oil producer's market value is higher than Russia's gross domestic product.
The company had 20.5 billion barrels of oil and gas reserves in 2006, compared with 22.1 billion for Irving, Texas- based Exxon, data compiled by Bloomberg show. PetroChina has been adding new reserves at an average annual rate of 5 percent for the past three years, a faster pace than Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP Plc, the world's largest oil companies by sales.
Surpassing Shenhua
The sale, the world's biggest this year, surpassed the 66.6 billion yuan generated by China Shenhua Energy Co. in September. Mainland Chinese investors have until now been prevented from directly buying PetroChina stock, missing out on a 15-fold surge as economic growth turned the nation into the largest oil consumer after the U.S. and as crude prices reached a record $96.24 a barrel in New York.
Investors applied for more than 3.3 trillion yuan of stock, almost 50 times the amount PetroChina sold. Chinese companies now represent five of the world's 10 largest by market value, raising investor concerns that the market is too expensive.
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. sold its stake in PetroChina this year, reaping an eightfold gain that contributed to a 64 percent increase in third-quarter profits for the Omaha-based company. Berkshire had 2.34 billion shares as of the end of 2006, the largest holding after state-owned China National Petroleum Corp.
Buffett said on Oct. 24 that Chinese share prices have risen too fast.
`Carried Away'
``It's easy to be carried away in the stock market when things are going very well,'' he said in the northern Chinese city of Dalian. ``We at Berkshire never buy stocks when we see prices soaring.''
Gains in PetroChina's Class-A stock in Shanghai may have more to do with Chinese investors seeking returns from their $2.3 trillion in savings than the outlook for the company's exploration and production operations, or its refining business, known as downstream, said Larry Grace, an oil analyst at Kim Eng Securities Co. in Hong Kong.
``Production is static with limited upside for the next three to four years,'' Grace said. ``As for the downstream, the price controls and overall regulatory trend limit the company's earnings.''
China controls fuel prices to shield consumers in the world's most-populous nation from accelerating inflation. The policy limits the ability of PetroChina and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. to pass on the burden of higher crude oil costs.
UBS AG's China venture, UBS Securities Co., Citic Securities Co. and China International Capital Corp. arranged PetroChina's Shanghai share sale.
To contact the reporter on this story: Ying Lou in Hong Kong at ylou1@bloomberg.net .
Last Updated: November 4, 2007 20:55 EST