Wang Zonghe of Penghua Fund: The bull market flickered more than 3 million people who got on the bus and ran away, and some people have lost 6 percent

Text| Hu Tiehua

Nowadays, many fund companies are becoming more and more adept at marketing.

In each round of bull market, fund companies will select fund managers with better overall performance in recent times to hype up and market, so as to achieve the effect of rapid expansion of scale.

The fund company is large, the management fee is full of money, and the fund manager is also proud, and he has gained fame and fortune.

But as we all know, there are few winning generals in the cruel market of A-shares. This means that those who enter the market at the hottest time are often trapped by the rapidly changing market depth and cannot be untied for several years.

The funds issued by Wang Zonghe, the former "national fund manager", are typical cases.

01 The bull market is desperately shouting

In July 2020, Penghua Fund began to hype its fund manager Wang Zonghe's "Penghua Ingenuity Selection".

At that time, it coincided with the hot time of a new round of bull market, and the subscription funds of the fund reached 137.1 billion yuan on the day of issuance, far exceeding the maximum fundraising limit of 30 billion yuan. According to the announcement, as of the end of 2020, the total number of households holding Penghua Ingenuity Selection was about 1.46 million, of which individual investors accounted for 99.53%.

At the end of 2020, Penghua ingenuity selected holders

Then, two months later, the "Penghua Innovation Future 18-Month Closed-end Fund", which was still managed by Wang Zonghe, the "National Fund Manager", and participated in the strategic placement of Ant Financial, was officially launched.

In the live broadcast room, Wang Zonghe purchased 1 million yuan from Penghua Innovation Future Fund on the spot, and Penghua Fund also subscribed 10 million yuan out of his own pocket, attracting a group of people to "rush to buy". In the end, the fund, which had an upper limit of 12 billion yuan and was originally scheduled to raise until October 9, 2020, ended its fundraising in two days. According to the announcement, as of the end of 2020, the total number of households holding Penghua Innovation was about 2.26 million, and individual investors accounted for 100%.

At the end of 2020, Penghua Innovation Future Holders

Although it was very popular when it was released, the subsequent performance was not satisfactory.

First of all, let's talk about Penghua Ingenuity Selection, this fund began to decline after the net value reached 1.3 in February 2021, and now, it seems that the net value is even 0.7 It is difficult to keep.

Penghua ingenuity selects the net value trend, source: Tiantian Fund

Penghua's innovative future has gone through ups and downs, first Ant Financial failed to go public, and then its net value almost never looked back on the way down, causing countless people to "suffer heavy losses". At present, its net value has fallen below 0.4, a new low since its establishment, and the earliest people on the car have lost more than 6 percent.

Penghua Innovation's future net value trend, source: Tiantian Fund

It is worth noting that although the name of this fund contains the words "innovative future", and it is clearly mentioned in the prospectus that "the theme of innovative future defined by this fund refers to high-quality enterprises that are driven and supported by innovation in the process of China's economic structural transformation and industrial upgrading, so as to achieve sustainable development", but in the actual operation of the fund, it still bought a large number of traditional consumer and bank stocks, which is quite suspected of "selling dog meat on the head of a sheep".

For example, in the first quarter of 2021, the fund's largest heavy stock was Tencent Holdings, which was in time for the most stringent regulation in the history of China's Internet industry, and the industry as a whole was also facing problems such as peak traffic caused by demographic transformation, and there was no relationship with the "innovative future". In the end, everyone knows that Tencent's share price has fallen from a peak of more than 700 yuan/share at that time to 300 yuan/share today, and it has experienced a "knee cut" in two years.

In addition, the fund's second-largest holdings at that time, Ping An of China, fourth-largest holdings, Kweichow Moutai, fifth-largest holdings, Midea Group, sixth-largest holdings, Gujing Gongjiu, eighth-largest holdings, China Resources Beer, ninth-largest holdings, China Merchants Bank, and tenth-largest holdings, CNOOC, were not related to the theme of "innovating the future".

Since then, stocks belonging to the banking and consumer sectors, such as Kweichow Moutai, Bank of Ningbo, Wuliangye, Gujing Gongjiu, Shanxi Fenjiu, etc., have frequently appeared in the fund's holdings.

Technically speaking, this is fund style drift. For the style drift of funds, the regulator has been strengthening supervision. In April 2022, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) issued opinions on accelerating the high-quality development of the public fund industry. According to the opinions, fund managers should be guided to adhere to the concept of long-term investment and value investment, and take effective regulatory measures to restrict behaviors such as "style drift" and "high turnover rate" to gain short-term trading benefits.

Speaking of style drift, several other funds managed by Wang Zonghe also have this problem.

For example, Penghua pension industry stocks managed by Wang Zonghe, this fund holdings have also appeared many times in Kweichow Moutai, Wuliangye, Gujing Gongjiu, Shanxi Fenjiu and other stocks, and even Zijin Mining, Yunda shares, and CATL have also appeared in the top ten holdings of the fund, really buy what you want, completely ignoring the theme of "pension industry". Similarly, the fund has failed to bring gains to the people in recent years, and the net value of the fund has been falling since reaching 4.67 in February 2021, and now the net value has only fluctuated around 2.5.

The trend of the net stock value of Penghua pension industry, source: Tiantian Fund

In fact, on the whole, Wang Zonghe's Penghua Innovation Future, Penghua Ingenuity Select Mix, Penghua Consumption Preferred Mix, Penghua Growth Value Mix, Penghua Pension Industry Stocks These funds are generally about the same, and well-known companies in traditional industries such as liquor and banks frequently appear in the top ten holdings of the fund.

Obviously, the holdings are almost the same, why do you still issue so many thematic funds? Is it just because the bull market is coming, so they change their tricks to raise funds and expand the scale?

02 It is difficult to fill the big pit

Perhaps because of the successful shaping of the image of the "national fund manager", the fund issuance of Penghua Fund was very smooth during the bull market, and the scale of the fund managed by Wang Zonghe himself also rose from more than 3 billion in 2019 to more than 50 billion in 2020, and he was also appointed as the deputy general manager of Penghua Fund in January 2021 and was successfully promoted to management.

In fact, judging from Wang Zonghe's past performance, although there are good funds such as Penghua Consumption Optimization and Penghua Pension Industry, there are also funds with mediocre performance. For example, Penghua Macro flexible allocation mix, Wang Zonghe's tenure from June 13, 2012 to September 20, 2019, only gained 55.68% in 7 years and 100 days. Another example is Penghua Jincheng Mixed Fund, which only achieved a return of 6.9% in more than 3 years from June 1, 2016 to June 19, 2019 when Wang Zonghe was in office.

Wang Zonghe's career returns

Looking back now, most of the funds issued by Wang Zonghe during the bull market, including Penghua Innovation Future, Penghua Ingenuity Select Mix, Penghua Growth Value Mix and other funds, have all lost money, which is in obvious contrast with the atmosphere of Penghua's hype and the expectations of the people at that time.

Since the beginning of this year, I don't know if it is because of the performance of the crotch, Wang Zonghe has successively stepped down from the position of fund manager of many of his funds. According to the data of Tiantian Fund, Wang Zonghe stepped down as the fund manager of Penghua Ingenuity Selection on April 22, the fund manager of Penghua Innovation Future on March 25, the fund manager of Penghua Consumption Preferred Mix on March 11, the fund manager of Penghua Value Win-Win Two-Year Holding Period Mixed on March 4, the fund manager of Penghua Select Return Three-Year Fixed Opening Blend and Penghua China 50 Blend on February 11, and the fund manager of Penghua Growth Value Blend and Penghua Quality Return Two-Year Fixed Opening Blend on February 4.

Now, Wang Zonghe no longer manages any of Penghua's funds, and after earning a generous management fee, he "brushes off his clothes", leaving only the remorseful people "messy in the wind".

From this point of view, Wang Zonghe has mastered the most profound meaning of fighting landlords: grasp the opportunity to play big, and then run away after playing.

As for Wang Zonghe's successor, it is also difficult to say.

At the beginning of 2022, Yan Siqian, the former fund manager of ICBC Credit Suisse, joined Penghua Fund and took over the management of Penghua Innovation Future by Wang Zonghe on March 25 this year.

Since Yan Siqian took the helm of the fund, its net value has fallen from 0.54 to around 0.4 today. Since the beginning of this year, although the market performance has been sluggish, there are still some sectors that have performed well, such as the AI sector at the beginning of the year and the auto parts sector at the beginning of the year.

Penghua Ingenuity Selection has encountered a similar situation, Wang Zonghe has stepped down as the fund manager of the fund on April 21 this year, and Lang Chao and Chen Xuanmiao have become the new fund managers. Since then, the fund's net value has fallen from around 7.5 to below 7.

The mess left by Wang Zonghe to future generations is difficult to clean up.

03 The people lose money, but they protect their harvest in drought and flood

Although it failed to make money for the people, with a huge asset management scale, Penghua Fund still achieved good performance.

According to the content disclosed in the 2023 semi-annual report of Guosen Securities, a shareholder of Penghua Fund, as of the end of June 2023, the asset management scale of Penghua Fund was 1.152 trillion yuan, and in the first half of the year, Penghua Fund achieved operating income of 2.117 billion yuan and net profit of 488 million yuan.

Penghua Fund data for the first half of this year, source: Guosen Securities 2023 interim report

In fact, it has always been Penghua Fund's strategy to hype its own fund manager through the bull market, and then expand the scale to charge more management fees.

Before 2013, the management scale of Penghua Fund was less than 100 billion yuan, which exceeded 120 billion yuan when the bull market came in 2015, and exceeded 500 billion yuan at the beginning of the bull market in 2020, and now its management scale has exceeded one trillion yuan.

With the continuous expansion of scale, the revenue and net profit of Penghua Fund have also increased significantly. In 2014, Penghua Fund's revenue was 913 million yuan and its net profit was 299 million yuan. By the time of the bull market in 2015, Penghua Fund's revenue became 2.232 billion yuan, and its net profit was 678 million yuan. Last year, Penghua Fund's revenue jumped to 4.364 billion yuan, and its net profit was 1.001 billion yuan.

However, the attentive reader may see a problem: if a fund is always hyped up to expand its scale during a bull market, then it is destined that every bull market will have a large number of people who are stuck at the high point as analyzed earlier.

Judging from the data, it is true, taking Penghua Innovation Future Fund as an example, since its establishment, its cumulative loss has exceeded 3 billion yuan, but it still received more than 160 million yuan in management fees.

In the past few years, the management scale of Penghua Fund has always been in the top 20, but the profit ranking fluctuates between 20-200, which can also be seen that the management scale of Penghua Fund does not match the earning power of the people.

However, since the beginning of this year, Penghua's new fund issuance has also been difficult.

The deadline for the one-year holding period of Penghua high-end equipment was postponed from June 16 to July 7, and less than 300 million yuan was finally raised; Penghua Ruijian Hybrid has also been postponed from the original deadline of June 27 to July 7.

Touting their dreams during the bull market, after the tide receded, the people no longer seemed to believe the story told by Penghua Fund. Leeks also have an awakening day, but this tuition is a bit expensive.

[Disclaimer: The individual stocks and funds involved in this article are only case studies and are not intended as buy or sell recommendations.] Investment is risky, and you need to be cautious when entering the market.