While China's $143 billion pig-farming industry has been hit by African swine fever and now the coronavirus, analysts say a number of pig stocks can still gain more altitude.
No commercially viable vaccine is available to treat the disease, which has roiled the world's largest pork market, leading to mass culling, including of all-important mother pigs. So this could be a very important development. Muyuan, based in central China's Henan province, has 15 "buy" recommendations and just one "hold" from analysts, according to Bloomberg data. The company is popular with northbound traders, who own a 2.8 percent stake in it.
Huaxi Securities analyst Zhou Sha says she expects the coronavirus' impact on the sector will be "limited". The public health crisis has infected more than 85,000 people and killed more than 3,000, most of them in China. She recommended large farming groups that are better capable of defending against the onslaught of African swine fever, including Wends Foodstuffs, New Hope Liuhe, Jiangxi Zhengbang Technology, and Tech-Bank Food.