Yangtze River Business Daily reporter Shen Yourong
Investors are full of expectations Hongbo shares (002229. SZ) turned over, but it turned out to be disappointed.
On the evening of April 12, Hongbo Co., Ltd. issued a revised announcement on the performance forecast, showing that the company's net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies in 2023 (hereinafter referred to as "net profit") is a loss of 50 million yuan - 58 million yuan. Three months ago, the company was forecasting a profit.
On April 15, the Fujian Supervision Bureau of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (hereinafter referred to as the "Fujian Securities Regulatory Bureau") issued a decision on administrative supervision measures, and issued a warning letter to Hongbo shares and relevant responsible persons.
That night, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange also issued a letter of concern to Hongbo shares and initiated disciplinary procedures.
In 2023, because of its involvement in the AI business and the express train of the global AI giant NVIDIA, Hongbo shares will become a big bull stock in computing power. The company's previously announced annual profit is also because of the AI business. But now, accounting firms do not recognize the recognition of AI business revenue.
Hongbo shares are mainly engaged in security printing, lottery new channel services and books and high-end packaging business, in recent years, the company's operating performance is bleak, net profit after deducting non-recurring gains and losses (hereinafter referred to as "deducting non-net profits") for six consecutive years.
Whether Hongbo shares can finally turn over with the help of AI business remains to be tested.
Visual China Diagram
The performance changed face, and the stock price fell to the limit
After three months, Hongbo's operating performance has changed significantly.
On January 11 this year, Hongbo Co., Ltd. released a performance forecast, the company expects that the net profit in 2023 will be 37.4 million yuan - 56.1 million yuan, a year-on-year turnaround, an increase of 149.82%-174.73%, and the estimated non-net profit will be 28.4 million yuan - 42.6 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 132.32%-148.49%, and it has also achieved a turnaround.
At that time, the company explained that the turnaround in 2023 and the significant year-on-year increase in operating income were mainly due to the company's active search for new business growth points and the development of business in the field of artificial intelligence since 2022. Last year, the company's wholly-owned subsidiary, Beijing InBev Digital Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "InBev Digital"), focused on the market positioning of AGI's full-stack ecological service platform, grasped the first-mover advantage in the industry, achieved a breakthrough from zero to one, and achieved excellent results.
Three months later, on April 12, Hongbo issued a revised announcement on the performance forecast, and the revised performance was a net profit loss of 50 million yuan - 58 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 22.74% - 33.4%, and a loss of 65 million yuan - 75 million yuan after deducting non-net profit, a year-on-year decrease of 14.64% - 26.02%.
In just three months, why did it change from expected profit to loss? Hongbo explained that the company's wholly-owned subsidiary, InBev Digital, will carry out cooperation with Beijing Jingneng International Holdings Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Beijing Jingneng") in 2023 on the procurement of equipment for the construction of intelligent computing centers, and by the end of 2023, the company has received the first contract payment of about 500 million yuan from Beijing Jingneng for the above-mentioned cooperation projects, and the company has delivered some equipment and obtained a phased equipment acceptance confirmation. The company further in-depth communication with the annual audit accountant, Shanghui accounting firm (special general partnership) believes that the company should be the project all equipment delivered and completed the final deployment before the revenue can be recognized, and the relevant income will be deducted from the operating income. As a result, the company has made corrections to the financial indicators in the earnings forecast.
In other words, Hongbo's AI business, which had high hopes before, made its performance forecast "change face".
From profit to loss, there has been a substantial change in performance, and Hongbo shares have received a warning letter from the Fujian Securities Regulatory Bureau. The Fujian Securities Regulatory Bureau believes that Ni Hui, the then chairman of Hongbo shares, and Pu Wei, the chief financial officer, failed to perform their duty of diligence and responsibility, and bear the main responsibility for the above problems, and decided to take administrative supervision measures to issue warning letters to Hongbo shares, Ni Hui and Puwei, and record them in the integrity file database of the securities and futures market.
On April 15, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange issued a letter of concern to Hongbo shares, and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange believes that there are significant differences in the performance forecast amendment announcement compared with the original performance forecast and the nature of profit and loss has changed, which violates the relevant regulations of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, and will subsequently initiate disciplinary procedures against the company and related parties.
On April 16, the share price of Hongbo shares fell to the limit.
It has been subject to regulatory attention many times
The AI business, which led to the change in the performance of Hongbo shares, has helped Hongbo shares become a big bull stock.
The K-line chart shows that on January 20, 2023, the closing price of Hongbo shares was 6.72 yuan / share, and on August 22 of that year, the stock price rose to 45.29 yuan / share, an increase of 573.96%.
The sharp rise in stock prices stems from Hongbo's layout of AI business. In 2022, Hongbo Co., Ltd. established a wholly-owned subsidiary, InBev Digital, and cooperated with Zhongguancun Zhongheng Cultural Technology Innovation Service Alliance and NVIDIA to establish the Beijing AI Innovation Empowerment Center (hereinafter referred to as the "Empowerment Center") to carry out project construction and operation services in the field of artificial intelligence technology. The main business of the Empowerment Center is to provide 100P NVIDIA high-performance computing and AI inference training computing power rental. Hongbo Co., Ltd. will change the use of the remaining amount of 100 million yuan raised in the early stage for the implementation of the empowerment center project of InBev Digital.
On May 8, 2023, Hongbo Co., Ltd. further disclosed that InBev Digital Technology and Wuji Intelligent (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. signed a computing power leasing service contract, and InBev Digital Technology will provide high-performance GPU computing power rental services to Wuji Intelligent within 12 months after the agreement is signed, and no more than 256 servers will be delivered in the first phase with a total computing power of not less than 1280P.
Judging from the latest announcement of the revision of the 2023 annual performance forecast disclosed by Hongbo shares, in 2023, InBev Digital has made some achievements, but from the attitude of the accounting firm, it is still difficult to judge whether it can finally bring real profits to the company.
In recent years, Hongbo's operating performance has been unsatisfactory.
From 2018 to 2022, the company's operating income was 706 million yuan, 627 million yuan, 474 million yuan, 574 million yuan, and 546 million yuan respectively, showing a downward trend. During the same period, the company's non-net profit continued to lose, with losses of 7.422 million yuan, 13.6131 million yuan, 66.4758 million yuan, 9.5975 million yuan and 87.8582 million yuan respectively. In addition, in 2023, the company will deduct non-net profit for 6 consecutive annual losses.
Hongbo shares have repeatedly planned to carry out industrial transformation through mergers and acquisitions, but the results are not good.
According to the announcement, since 2017, Hongbo has successively planned to transform into big data, mobile games, RFID smart label production and Internet of Things technology services, and 5G, but most of them have failed. In 2020, Hongbo shares will change hands. The following year, the company planned to acquire Guangzhou Keyu for 408 million yuan to enter the field of small household appliances. However, in August 2022, Hongbo terminated its acquisition of Guangzhou Keyyu.
Hongbo shares have been subject to regulatory attention many times. On January 21 and December 4, 2023, Hongbo Co., Ltd. announced that the company received regulatory letters and warning letters from the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and the Fujian Securities Regulatory Bureau. The main illegal acts include: misreporting the foreign investment as the subject of "transactional financial assets", resulting in an inflated total profit of 1,016,900 yuan, including the income from liquidated damages that should be included in the "non-operating income" account into the "main business income" account, resulting in an inflated main business income of 981,300 yuan, and the erroneous application of the total amount method to recognize the income of the printing business, resulting in the company inflating the main business income and main business cost of 8,829,700 yuan.
Continuous losses, in the future, can Hongbo rely on AI business to turn over?
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