Business

On the final day of the Chinese New Year, workers from the catering industry headed to community testing centres to get tested for COVID-19. On Feb 10, Sophia Chan Siu-Chee, secretary for Food & Health said in a press conference that restaurants may be allowed to extend their business hours until 10 p.m starting Feb 18 after the Chinese New Year Holidays, if numbers of COVID-19 cases continue to go down.  In addition to extended operating hours, restaurants can allow four people to dine in per table restaurant staff test for covid every 14 days and the establishment must use the LeaveHomeSafe mobile application so customers can keep record of their visit.  All community test centers in Hong Kong have been fully booked on days prior to Feb 18th.  People wait outside Henry G Leong Yau Ma Tei Community Centre to get tested for Covid on the last day of Chinese New Year. “My manager told us all to get tested as soon as possible so we can go to work,” said Monica Rai, 28, waitress. She was at Henry G Leong Yau Ma Tei Community Centre with two other co-workers.   Regarding the LeaveHomeSafe app, MsRai said that her workplace does not enforce it on customers.  “It’s useless,” she said. “Customers walk right past the QR code and managers are also indifferent.”  Restaurants that do not comply with the new regulations will have to shut down for 14 days and the restaurant license owners may be fined a maximum amount of HK$50,000 and face imprisonment for  six months.  

Kuaishou Technology (1024), China’s short-video service provider, saw its shares nearly tripled in its trading debut in Hong Kong on Friday, boosting the company’s market valuation to a high of US$180 billion (HK$ 13.95 trillion) following its initial public (IPO) offering, the largest in Hong Kong since 2019. The stock hit a high of HK$345 in the morning before stabilising to close at HK$300, up 160.87% percent from its IPO price of HK$115 a piece. Kuaishou's share sale of  US$5.29 billion (HK$41.3 billion) is the biggest in Hong Kong following Budweiser’s Asia unit’s IPO, which raised HK$5.75 billion in 2019. Wesley Wong, a 29 year old investment banker, made a profit of HK$20,500 after selling one lot or 100 shares of Kuaishou at HK$320. He subscribed to the shares via a local brokerage and put up about HK$1 million. The stock was in hot demand with retail investors bidding for 1,204 times the amount of shares available for open subscription. Kuaishou makes its profit from providing live-streaming, online market and E-commerce and  games services, and advertising, the company said in its listing document. The successful listing of Kuaishou will bring confidence to other Chinese video service providers, including ByteDance and  Bilibili, to float their shares in the Hong Kong stock exchange, said Bloomberg Intelligence senior analyst Vey-Sern Ling in a report.  Kuaishou’s larger rival Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok owned by ByteDance, is planning to file an IPO in Hong Kong, according to Reuters. Douyin has 600 million daily active users while Kuaishou only has 262.4 million daily active users. “The markets in which we operate are highly competitive, and we face significant competition,” Kuaishou said in its prospectus. It posted a revenue of HK$49 billion in the first nine months of 2020, up 49 percent from the same …

Bar and restaurant owners urged the government to loosen COVID-19 restrictions on dining to help the industry survive, representatives said in a press conference Wednesday, while also calling for additional government subsidies. Their demands include reopening dine-in services and bars past 6pm under conditions that businesses observe disease prevention measures and expanding the gathering limit to more than two people. The government could use the time between Chinese New Year's Eve and the third day of the holiday to "test" whether the relaxation would be practical, the group suggested.  Marcus Liu, a member of the New People's Party who spoke at the press conference, said the operational cost of a restaurant is about HK$400,000 to HK$500,000 monthly, and that so far, government subsidies have been inadequate.  The government, under the Anti-epidemic Fund, has given a one-off HK$25,000 and HK$50,000 three times to eligible liquor-licensed premises.  The Employment Support Scheme also helped employers pay salaries to staff with a maximum $9,000 per employee per month.  But business owners say the aid is insufficient and they had to choose between paying rent or employee salaries, said Joe Chan, a representative of the Hong Kong Bar & Club Association.  Some bar owners said to him they were planning to suspend business after Chinese New Year because they saw no future, Mr Chan added.  “The theory that the virus is not active during the day and gets active in the evening -- we all don’t understand,” he said, regarding the dine-in ban past 6pm.  He added that they have complied with seating capacity and hygiene practices such as checking the temperature of guests and disinfecting table surfaces after use. Around 140 bars shut down over the past three months, accounting for 10% of the sector, said the vice-president of the Hong Kong Bar and …