Text | Huaxia Energy Network
The hydrogen energy industry is still hot, but corporate IPOs are even more difficult.
Huaxia Energy Network noted that 2022 can be said to be the "highlight year" of hydrogen energy investment and financing. At the level of industrial investment, according to incomplete statistics, there were 26 hydrogen energy investment and financing during the year, with a total financing amount of more than 8.5 billion yuan, and it was also in this year, since June, Shanghai Zhizhen, Jie Hydrogen Technology, Guofu Hydrogen Energy, and Synergy Hydrogen Energy (now listed, HK: 09663) have submitted prospectuses.
By 2023, 49 domestic hydrogen energy companies will complete 59 financings, but the total amount of financing will decrease from 2022 to less than 7 billion yuan.
Some industry insiders said that since the second half of 2022, investment around hydrogen fuel cells has cooled down, not only in the primary market, hydrogen energy investment has gradually entered a cooling-off period (see Huaxia Energy Network's previous report "Hydrogen Energy Investment Enters a Cooling-off Period, Where Are the Real Industrial Opportunities?|Depth"), and the secondary market is also closing the door of opportunities for hydrogen energy companies.
In October last year, the IPO process of Hydrogen Jet Technology and Shanghai Zhizhen was suspended by the Shanghai Stock Exchange, and Guofu Hydrogen Energy announced that it had withdrawn its listing application.
Recently, the State Council's "National Nine Articles" on the capital market were promulgated, requiring the improvement of the listing standards of the main board and the Growth Enterprise Market, the improvement of the evaluation standards for the scientific and technological innovation attributes of the Science and Technology Innovation Board, and the strict refinancing review and control of guiding opinions, which once again raised the listing threshold.
Among the hydrogen energy companies waiting for IPOs, Guofu Hydrogen Energy and REFIRE Energy have both chosen to switch to Hong Kong stocks and have submitted IPO applications to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Can HKEX become a "safe haven" for hydrogen companies?
The IPO process of popular hydrogen energy companies
After waiting for 21 months, Hydrogen Jet finally terminated its IPO on the Science and Technology Innovation Board on March 29. As a subsidiary of SAIC Group, Hydrogen Jet Technology is mainly engaged in the research and development, design, manufacturing, sales and engineering and technical services of fuel cell stacks, systems and core components. According to its prospectus, the company's fuel cell stacks and system products can benchmark the first-class level at home and abroad in terms of product consistency, reliability and durability.
Regarding the termination of the IPO, Jet Hydrogen Technology said: "The current IPO environment is generally biased towards mature enterprises, and after Jet Hydrogen Technology withdraws its listing application on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, it may be able to regroup with a more flexible attitude and accelerate its investment and development in the emerging application fields of hydrogen energy, so as to launch the next round of impact on the capital market." ”
Guojin Securities disclosed in its latest research report that in 2023, the cumulative installed capacity of fuel cell systems of Hydrogen Jet Technology will rank second in the industry, accounting for 10%, second only to Sinohytec (HK: 02402). However, the road to listing is far less smooth than that of its "predecessor" Sinohytec.
IPO process of 6 hydrogen energy companies (Mapping/Huaxia Energy Network)
Judging from the IPO process of 6 hydrogen energy companies, although the operation has been in the loss for many years, Sinohytec, the "first share of hydrogen energy", may be the luckiest, and has completed the capitalization of A+H shares, while Synergy Hydrogen Energy has been competing in Hong Kong stocks for nearly two years and officially landed in Hong Kong stocks after submitting its IPO for the second time.
The four companies that had participated in the A-share IPO, Guofu Hydrogen Energy, Hydrogen Jet Technology, REFIRE Energy, and Shanghai Zhizhen were all wiped out.
Two of them, REFIRE and Guofuhee, have chosen to switch to Hong Kong stocks in 2024, submitting IPO applications to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on February 29, 2024 and March 20, 2024 respectively.
From the perspective of the industrial links in which each company is located, Sinohytec, Jet Hydrogen Technology, REFIRE Energy, and Synergy Hydrogen Energy are all mainly engaged in hydrogen fuel cells, and they all rank among the top five in terms of hydrogen fuel cell system shipments.
Founded in June 2016, GUOFUHEE is an integrated solution provider of hydrogen energy equipment, focusing on the R&D and manufacturing of upstream and downstream core equipment for hydrogen production.
Shanghai Zhizhen is a professional supplier of fuel cell metal bipolar plates in China. The bipolar plate is one of the core components of hydrogen fuel cells, accounting for about 8%-15% of the current fuel cell system cost, and its customers include fuel cell and system companies such as Hydrogen Jet Technology, Xinyuan Power, Future Energy, Hydrogen Chen Technology, and Weichai Power.
One of the difficulties: the threshold for IPO profitability in emerging industries has been raised
With the tightening of supervision in the domestic capital market, the number of A-share companies once hit a new high in a decade. Among them, enterprises in the hydrogen energy industry have a certain representativeness.
The difficulty of hydrogen energy companies to go public is mainly affected by two reasons.
One of the difficulties is related to the tightening of capital market policies, which further raises the threshold for the profitability of companies to be listed. This puts forward a requirement for enterprises that are not profitable at the stage of submitting their statements.
At the press conference of the State Council Information Office on March 15 this year, the relevant person of the China Securities Regulatory Commission emphasized that one of the three major requirements for the stricter listing threshold includes further strict review of unprofitable enterprises, requiring "unprofitable enterprises to fully demonstrate their ability to continue operations" and "disclose the expected profitability". According to the report of Jigao Hydrogen, in a series of changes in the past year or so, the trend of further tightening of the review for related emerging industries such as hydrogen energy and fuel cells has become clearer.
Judging from the disclosed performance, Guofu Hydrogen Energy, Hydrogen Jet Technology, REFIRE Energy, and Shanghai Zhizhen all have losses.
Among them, Guofuhee will have a cumulative loss of 246 million yuan from 2021 to 2023, with losses of 75 million yuan, 96 million yuan and 75 million yuan respectively;
From 2021 to the first half of 2023, the cumulative loss of Hydrogen Technology was 308 million yuan, with losses of 58 million yuan, 120 million yuan and 130 million yuan respectively;
REFIRE has a cumulative loss of 1.66 billion yuan from 2021 to the first nine months of 2023, with losses of 654 million yuan, 546 million yuan and 460 million yuan respectively;
From 2019 to 2021, Shanghai Zhizhen has a cumulative loss of 176 million yuan, and a net profit of 33 million yuan, 131 million yuan, and 14 million yuan respectively.
The listed hydrogen energy "predecessors" Yihuatong and Synergy Hydrogen Energy are still in the red after listing.
Since Yihuatong landed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 2020, it has been in a situation of increasing revenue but not increasing profits. According to the financial report, Sinohytec's operating income in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 will be 572 million yuan, 629 million yuan, 738 million yuan, and 801 million yuan, and the net profit loss will be 22.5236 million yuan, 162 million yuan, 166 million yuan, and 243 million yuan.
The second IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Synergy Hydrogen Energy, also did not perform very well. It is worth noting that by 2023, Synergy Hydrogen Energy's revenue will decline for the first time in nearly 3 years. (See Huaxia Energy Network's previous report "Losses continue to expand, Synergy Hydrogen Energy's first annual report after listing is released")
According to the financial report, Synergy Hydrogen Energy's operating income in 2021, 2022, and 2023 will be 457 million yuan, 748 million yuan, and 700.6 million yuan respectively, and its net profit will be -703 million yuan, -273 million yuan, and -404.4 million yuan respectively.
The general loss of enterprises also reflects the phased problems of the entire hydrogen energy industry.
Difficulty 2: Hydrogen-related industries are in the early stage of commercialization
In the past two years, hydrogen energy companies have focused on the field of hydrogen fuel cells.
For fuel cell companies, their business model is mainly the sales of hydrogen fuel cells, and the domestic hydrogen fuel cell industry is still in the early stage of commercialization, and there is uncertainty about large-scale application, which directly affects the valuation of enterprises in the capital market.
In this regard, at the two sessions this year, Zhang Guoqiang, chairman of Sinohytec, put forward relevant suggestions on the large-scale implementation of hydrogen energy.
Zhang Guoqiang said that it is necessary to promote the large-scale application of hydrogen energy and drive the industry to improve quality and reduce costs with scale. It is suggested that the demonstration application of hydrogen energy in the field of transportation should be promoted in an orderly manner, and the application of hydrogen energy in the fields of energy storage, power generation, metallurgy, and chemical industry should be expanded to promote the large-scale development of the industry.
Zhang Guoqiang mentioned "expanding the application in energy storage, power generation, metallurgy, chemical industry and other fields", and its upstream industry is green hydrogen production.
The above-mentioned industrial investors told Huaxia Energy Network that the current industrial capital is still optimistic about the new opportunities brought by the hydrogen production industry, and with the intensive launch of green hydrogen projects led by central state-owned enterprises, in the next few years, it will bring greater market space and benefits to upstream and downstream enterprises in hydrogen production.
In the process of green hydrogen production equipment, some companies with comparable strength have emerged, and it is expected that these emerging companies can obtain relatively reasonable valuations in the capital market.
For those companies that bypass Hong Kong stocks, even if they cannot solve the problem of losses in the short term, the capital market person believes that "although Hong Kong stocks have such and such problems, it is recommended that companies with opportunities complete capitalization as soon as possible." This will help the company to further standardize its development in the future. ”
The current IPO blockage also has a direct impact on the flow of capital in the primary market. The above-mentioned industrial investors said that it is precisely because the hydrogen energy industry has "over-pursued" fuel cells in the past few years, and now the company's listing expectations are poor.