By Yifan Wang
Shares of New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. and Koolearn Technology Holding Ltd. jumped in Hong Kong on Monday, extending their momentum of recent days as investors welcomed the latest success of the companies' new e-commerce livestreaming business.
New Oriental gained as much as 25% by the noon trading break. Its online tutoring unit Koolearn Technology fared even better, soaring 78%.
New Oriental, one of China's oldest providers of after-school tutoring services, pivoted to e-commerce in 2021, when it took a hard hit after Beijing banned for-profit tutoring for most school-age children.
On Friday and over the weekend, New Oriental's livestreaming clips made social media headlines in China, after former tutor-hosts began selling products in both Chinese and English. On Sunday, the company said its daily sales volume over the past few days jumped around tenfold thanks to the popularity of the bilingual delivery model.
Analysts said the company's gross merchandise volume reached nearly 20 million yuan (US$2.98 million) on Sunday, citing industry data. "If the company can sustain such sales momentum, it has the potential to become one of the largest e-commerce livestreaming organizations" in China, Cinda Securities analysts said in a recent note.
The company's celebrity founder Yu Minhong said last week that he had started a new livestreaming team focused on educational products such as smart devices and stationery.
Other education companies followed the optimism. Virscend Education Co. was up 27%, while Scholar Education Group jumped 25%.
Write to Yifan Wang at yifan.wang@wsj.com
$(END)$ Dow Jones Newswires
June 13, 2022 00:12 ET (04:12 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.