China's New Oriental leads slide in education stocks on concern over new rules

Scholar Education

23/07/2021 10:25

** Hong Kong shares of New Oriental Education & Technology
Group Inc  9901.HK  lead a slide in China's education stocks,
plunging as much as 50.4% to HK$25.20, the lowest since listing
on Nov. 9, 2020
    ** Stock ends down 40.6% on Friday, the lowest close since
listing; the biggest percentage decliner on the Hong Kong bourse
    ** The second biggest percentage decliner Scholar Education
Group  1769.HK  drops 28.5%, third biggest decliner Koolearn
Technology Holding Ltd  1797.HK  falls 28.1%. China Beststudy
Education Group  3978.HK  declines 21.5%
    ** Brokers say market talk of China about to unveil rules on
reducing homework and off-campus tutoring and concern that the
Chinese government may turn after-school tutoring into a
non-profit business trigger the sell off    
    ** "The going non-profit rumour turned out in the very last
minutes and investors took a defense move of dumping the
(educational) stocks before clarifying," a sales director at a
regional brokerage said
    ** China is poised to unveil a much tougher than anticipated
crackdown on the country's $120 billion private tutoring
industry, including trial bans on vacation tutoring and
restrictions on advertising  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL3N2NY4RP
    ** The Hong Kong Hang Seng sub-index tracking information
technology firms  .HSCIIT  drops 2.5%, the Hang Seng Tech Index
 .HSTECH  plunges 3%
    ** The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index  .HSCE  eases 1.7%,
and the benchmark index  .HSI  falls 1.5%


 (Reporting by Donny Kwok; editing by David Evans)
 ((donny.kwok@thomsonreuters.com))