Bank of China International: Total retail sales of consumer goods in August met expectations, optimistic about Tencent (00700) and JD.com (09618).

Bank of China International released a research report stating that the National Bureau of Statistics announced on September 14th the total retail sales of consumer goods for August. The total retail sales of consumer goods in August increased by 2.1% year-on-year, which is basically in line with expectations. In the first eight months, online retail accounted for 25.6% of total retail sales, which held steady compared to July but decreased by 0.9 percentage points year-on-year. The bank recommends TENCENT (00700) as the top choice in the Chinese internet industry, as it is expected to benefit from providing cloud services to businesses and brands, as well as increasing advertising revenue from e-commerce. At the same time, JD-SW (09618) is expected to be a major beneficiary of the government's policy for household appliances trade-in, and both companies are trading at -1 standard deviation from historical trading ranges.