HONG KONG: Hong Kong shares closed at a more than one-year low on Monday, as concerns lingered about the new Omicron coronavirus variant, while Meituan slumped after it forecast a weaker outlook following its largest-ever quarterly loss in three years.
The Hang Seng index fell 1.0% to 23,852.24, while the China Enterprises Index lost 0.9%, to 8,498.26 points. Both the indexes ended at their lowest since October 2020.
The new variant has spread in several nations, with more countries imposing travel restrictions to try to seal themselves off, while Hong Kong reported two such cases last week.
Food delivery giant Meituan slumped 7.1%, the biggest percentage decliner on the Hang Seng Index, dragging down the benchmark 155 points.
Meituan plunged the most in more than three months, after it reported a 10 billion yuan ($1.57 billion) loss in the July-September period, compared with a profit of 6.3 billion yuan a year earlier. This was its worst ever quarterly performance since the third quarter of 2018.
“We believe the short-term impact of the pandemic as well as macro-headwinds does not alter the secular momentum of food delivery, as demonstrated by Meituan with its solid execution and providing better transparency on take rates and ROI approach to subsidies,” said Jefferies.
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