Text/Liu Xiaobo
These two days have been non-stop.
On the morning of October 22, he attended Vanke's annual media-oriented business exchange meeting in Shanghai. Then in the afternoon, I went to Suzhou and visited 2 projects.
In these few hours in Suzhou, there have been big news from Evergrande and SOHO China. Coupled with Vanke, in one day, witnessed the three major housing enterprises in this era of change, facing different choices, different fates, a lot of feelings.
So, even though it was late at night on October 22, I decided to write this article and publish it in the early morning of October 23.
1. Vanke is in the process of transformation
At the Vanke exchange meeting, Yu Liang, Chairman of Vanke, Sun Jia, CEO of Vanke South Region, Zhang Xu, Vice President of Vanke Group and Chairman of Wanwei Logistics, and Zhu Baoquan, CEO of Wanwuyun, introduced the relevant business progress and answered questions from reporters.
For the judgment of the current real estate industry, Yu Liang gave 16 words: "Respect common sense, return to normalcy, after the pain, there are still opportunities." ”
This means that the period of rapid real estate growth has passed. The previous high-speed growth is the product of a specific period, and the future industry will return to normal, and everyone must return to common sense and not be too aggressive. The real estate industry is going through pain, but there are still opportunities in the future.
Recently, the market has been frequently rumored to be good, has the "policy bottom" of real estate appeared again, and will there be a rebound in the future? In this regard, Yu Liang's answer is that Vanke does not predict the future, and real estate will usher in another spring sooner or later. But every spring is different, not simply a repetition of history.
Will it participate in saving Evergrande, or will it take advantage of the market downturn to carry out large mergers and acquisitions? In this regard, Yu Liang's answer is: "When the industry comes in winter, everyone is cold, and in the case of cold, first solve the problem of how to spend the winter, and first ensure their own safety in order to save people." ”
He also said, "As an influential enterprise in the industry, vanke is willing to do something beneficial to the industry under the condition of ability permitting." But this consideration is first and foremost under the principle of marketization. ”
Vanke's operation has always been relatively stable. By the mid-year report this year, Vanke had entered the green grade on the "three red lines". And with 200 billion yuan in cash.
However, it is worth noting that in the recent soil auctions in various places, Vanke's figure has rarely been seen. Why is it that the debt is not high, and the cash in hand is abundant, but the land is not taken?
It is generally speculated that Vanke is holding back a big move, and there may be a relatively large-scale acquisition. In this regard, Yu Liang was tight-lipped and did not disclose valuable information.
Before Hopson created the exhibition, there was news that Vanke and Country Garden had talked with Evergrande about acquiring Evergrande property, but the price had not been negotiated.
Evergrande Property currently has a market value of about 42 billion yuan, and even if it buys its equity in full at a premium of 30%, it will not be difficult for Vanke. Evergrande Property is also considered by the market to be a relatively high-quality asset.
However, if you listen to the introduction of Zhu Baoquan, CEO of Wanwu Cloud (Vanke's property management business sector), you will find that Vanke has been 1 generation ahead of its peers in property management, and there may not be a need to acquire Evergrande Property.
Vanke has made the traditional residential property into three major sections: first, the traditional residential property management, increasing the value-added services of the owners; second, urban property management, assisting the local government to manage a street, a large urban area; third, commercial property management.
The above figure is an important page in Zhu Baoquan's PPT, he told everyone: the traditional residential property management business, Vanke intends to control the business growth rate within 30% per year; the commercial property management piece, that is, "all things Liangxing", the growth rate is controlled at 30%-60%.
What is really vigorously developed is the "Cloud City of All Things" business, which has no competitors at present, that is, to be the preferred property steward of the government, to assist local governments in threading needles, coordinate various departments, industries and enterprises in urban management and services, and improve the quality of the entire city.
At present, Vanke has won a number of projects such as Xiamen Gulangyu Island, Shenzhen Shatou, Shenzhen Fubao, Beijing Fengtai, Yangzhou Nanhexia and so on, starting from Hengqin.
The goal of the future is to manage 100 cities and 100 streets. In terms of property management, Vanke hopes to concentrate the project relatively, that is, the projects of urban property management, residential property management and commercial property management are best to be together, so that it is easy to produce scale effects. To this end, they came up with a concept – high concentration streets.
If the ordinary community management business does not match the "high concentration street" that Vanke hopes to achieve, they have no incentive to acquire.
In short, when the property management companies of other real estate developers are still fighting for scale in the residential properties, Vanke Property Management has entered the stage of urban management and has made a reputation, and there are basically no competitors. As for the business height reached by World Wide Logistics, it is also refreshing, and it will not be repeated here.
Vanke is quietly transforming and has made important progress.
2. The key moment of Evergrande
After the central bank officials repeatedly and publicly talked about the Evergrande incident, characterized it, and proposed a solution path, two big news came from Evergrande today.
First: On October 21, Evergrande remitted a public market DOLLAR bond of $83.5 million (about RMB530 million) due September 23 to the trustee Citibank account, which will be paid to the bondholders before the grace period expires on October 23.
Second: Evergrande held a special meeting on the resumption of work and production, and Xu Jiayin revealed the following important information:
It can be seen that Evergrande still bets on the future on new energy vehicles. In the future, Evergrande will form an industrial pattern dominated by new energy vehicles and supplemented by real estate.
Judging from Xu Jiayin's suggestion that "Evergrande will not buy land for 10 years in principle, but now it cannot sell land at a low price", the return of interest on US dollar bonds, and the repeated sale of Evergrande's property controlling rights, the company's financial situation seems to have improved. The machine that had been stopped began to spin again.
According to the Beijing News, at this meeting, Evergrande announced three major strategic decisions for self-help: one is to unswervingly and go all out to achieve the resumption of work and production; the second is to fully implement the sales of existing buildings and significantly reduce the scale of real estate development and construction; and the third is to achieve the transformation from the real estate industry to the new energy automobile industry within 10 years.
A few days ago, Yi Gang, governor of the central bank, talked about Evergrande's problem in more detail, and his statement at that time was:
First, we must avoid the risk of Evergrande's infection to other real estate enterprises. The second is to avoid risk transmission to the financial sector. Evergrande's liabilities are about 300 billion US dollars, of which one-third are financial liabilities, creditors are scattered, and collateral, and overall, the spillover of the Evergrande incident to the financial industry is controllable.
Our principle of responding to the Evergrande incident is to fully respect and protect the legitimate rights and interests of creditors and property owners in strict accordance with the order of payment stipulated by law. In this process, it is especially necessary to protect the legitimate rights and interests of consumers who have purchased houses. We will adhere to the principle of the rule of law and ensure that the legitimate rights and interests of all creditors and stakeholders are treated fairly. In general, we are confident that we can control the risk within a certain range and avoid systemic risk.
It seems that people who bought Evergrande houses don't have to worry so much.
3. Pan Shiyi's SOHO China was investigated
Pan Shiyi's SOHO China has once again become the focus of news attention:
Among them, the expression "The Inspection Bureau of the Beijing Municipal Taxation Bureau has carried out a case inspection according to law through the analysis and judgment of the tax big data analysis", which means that the tax department has found some clues.
As we all know, Pan Shiyi has always wanted to withdraw from China's real estate industry. On June 16 this year, he posted the following Weibo post, announcing that Blackstone Group of the United States is about to acquire SOHO.
Prior to the transaction, Pan Shiyi and his wife Zhang Xin held 63.93% of SOHO China's equity through the family trust; assuming the completion of the transaction, the Pan Shiyi family would retain only 9% of the equity, making it the second largest shareholder. Blackstone will hold 91% of the total 5.2 billion shares, delisting the company. Blackstone was priced at HK$5 per share and the maximum cash consideration for the Tender Offer was HK$23,658 million.
If the transaction is completed, the Pan Family could cash out HK$14.28 billion.
Then came the news that the transaction required a pass through China's State Administration of Market Supervision, because the scale of operations of Blackstone and SOHO China triggered the provisions of the Antitrust Law on "concentration of undertakings".
On September 10, Blackstone suddenly announced that it would not buy it, and Pan Shiyi would "not sell" because it was difficult to complete the transaction within the previously expected deadline.
So "Pan Shiyi ran away and failed" statement, brushed the screen on the Internet.
At 4:00 a.m. Beijing time on September 12 (4:00 p.m. Eastern Time on September 11), Pan Shiyi and his wife suddenly appeared on the field of the women's singles final of the 2021 US Open and entered the live broadcast screen of CCTV.
This means that when the information on soho's sale to Blackstone on "deal cancellation" was officially released, the Pan Shiyi couple was not in China.
After that, there is the latest development of this "suspected tax evasion".
Whether the current Pan Shiyi is in China or in the United States is not clear.
What does the future hold for SOHO China, an office development and operator? Let's wait and see.
In short, this is a big era of change. The fate of businesses and individuals is changing dramatically. The fork in the road has appeared, everyone's choices are not the same, and the ending must be different.
In Yu Liang's words, this is the era of "shrinking the balance sheet" of the real estate industry. The so-called "balance sheet reduction" borrows the concept of the financial field, which is actually deleveraging and reducing production capacity, that is, subtraction.
Doing subtraction is always painful. It means that more businesses and individuals will withdraw from the industry. It's not a question of whether you want to evacuate or not, for many businesses and individuals, fate has long been predestined.