Ant Group reduced its holdings in ZhongAn Online to 10.37%, responding that it was a normal investment decision

The Paper's reporter Hu Zhiting

Ant Group reduced its holdings in ZhongAn Online.

According to the equity disclosure of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, on January 18, ZhongAn Online (06060. HK), the single largest shareholder, Ant Technology Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Ant Group), reduced its holdings in about 46.5371 million shares of ZhongAn Online, and its shareholding ratio decreased from 13.54% to 10.37%. The other two shareholders of ZhongAn Online's "Three Horses", Tencent and Ping An of China, have the same shareholding ratio of 10.2054%.

ZhongAn Online told the surging news that the reduction is a normal investment decision of shareholders, and the company's business development is normal.

Ant Group also responded to the surging news that the reduction is a normal investment decision, although the holding of ZhongAn's shares has decreased, but the strategic cooperative relationship between the two sides will remain unchanged, and Ant is always optimistic about the long-term development of ZhongAn.

There are many related party transactions between Ant Group and ZhongAn Online. According to a related party transaction announcement released by ZhongAn Online in December last year, on November 11, 2021, ZhongAn Online and Ant Group signed the Platform Service Framework Agreement, during which Ant Group and its subsidiaries provided platform services for health insurance, air travel insurance, e-commerce and other forms of insurance, and ZhongAn Online paid platform service fees to Ant Group or its subsidiaries, mainly insurance agency fees. According to ZhongAn Online's estimated market demand and future business growth needs, the annual upper limit for 2022 under the agreement is 1.517 billion yuan. Prior to this, the upper limit of related party transactions in 2020 and 2021 under the agreement between ZhongAn Online and Ant Group was 2.01 billion yuan and 3.048 billion yuan respectively.

In September 2017, ZhongAn Online officially landed on the H-share market, becoming the first internet insurance stock in China. As the first stock of Internet insurance, the stock price performance of ZhongAn Online has also attracted much attention. In the first quarter of 2021, the market value of ZhongAn Online once again exceeded HK$100 billion, and the stock price hit a new high in three years. Subsequently, the stock price of ZhongAn Online showed a downward trend. As of press time, ZhongAn Online reported HK$29.050/share, up 4.32%.

In the first half of 2021, ZhongAn Online achieved a net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company of about 755 million yuan, an increase of about 54% year-on-year, achieving its first underwriting profit. In an announcement released last week, ZhongAn Online disclosed that the company achieved a total of about 20.36 billion yuan in original insurance premium income last year, an increase of 22% year-on-year, further accelerating the growth compared with 2020, highlighting the operating advantages of ZhongAn Online as a professional licensed institution under the new regulatory regulations.

Responsible editor: Zheng Jingxin Photo editor: Jin Jie