I saw Hai Di Lao listed on the US stock market recently and their share price seems over valued. What are your thoughts? How is it possible that they are able to hire so many Chinese nationalities? Is there no quota for local ratio for the workforce?

Many of the Chinese nationalities at HDL are actually citizens, or PR.

Consider the number of HDL outlets they have in Singapore, vs their global worldwide count. In 2018 they added 200 new restaurants, boosting Haidilao’s worldwide total to 466.

The addition of outlets also pushed revenue up 59.5% year-on-year to 16.97 billion yuan ($2.52 billion) for the year ended Dec. 31, 2018. Net profit increased 60.1% to 1.65 billion yuan - so they are also net profitable despite the surging costs.

There is definitely a quota and Singapore is just one of the many markets HDL is in. In fact, as HDL continues to expand and grow, the revenues from Singapore would not be very impactful to their overall finances.

As for the hiring of chinese nationalities, there is definitely a quota. If you go often enough and start engaging the staff in conversations, you will realise a majority of them are actually PR or citizens