Interface News Reporter | Ding Jingjing
On the evening of April 22, Yaxing Bus (600213. SH) issued the "Announcement on Major Litigation and Freezing of Bank Account Funds". According to the announcement, it has recently received legal documents such as "Civil Complaint" and "Summons" served by the court.
According to the announcement, the plaintiff Harbin Yiheng Bus Passenger Transport Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Yiheng Bus) purchased the vehicles of Yaxing Bus through Harbin Yaxing Automobile Sales Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Harbin Yaxing Sales), and due to the failure problem, the above two were required to return the purchase price and compensate for losses totaling about 80.8149 million yuan, and bear the litigation costs of this case.
At present, the lawsuit has been filed and has not yet been heard. However, due to the above-mentioned product liability dispute case, the funds in the account of Yaxing Bus in the Hebei Cangzhou Station Branch of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Co., Ltd. were frozen by the court, and the frozen amount was RMB 9.0451 million.
In this regard, Yaxing Bus said in the announcement that the period of capital freezing will not have an important impact on the company's main production and operation activities, and the company's business development and capital turnover are normal. There is uncertainty about the outcome of the lawsuit, and the impact on the company's profit and loss cannot be determined. The company is actively negotiating with relevant parties to properly resolve the freezing of bank account funds, unfreeze bank accounts as soon as possible and return to normal status.
Frequently caught up in litigation turmoil
Jiemian News noticed that in June last year, Yaxing Bus sued Harbin Yaxing Sales Company and Yiheng Bus. According to the announcement disclosed by Yaxing Bus on June 3 last year, Yaxing Bus signed a vehicle sales contract with Harbin Yaxing Sales Company in April 2018, agreeing that Harbin Yaxing would purchase vehicles from Yaxing Bus, and Harbin Yaxing would resell the vehicles to Yiheng Bus. After the contract was signed, Yaxing Bus fulfilled its obligations as agreed, but Harbin Yaxing and Yiheng Bus still owed part of the payment and did not pay.
Therefore, Yaxing Bus sued Harbin Yaxing Sales Company and Yiheng Bus for this, demanding immediate payment of the principal of about 2409.38 yuan and liquidated damages for late payment, and ordering Yu Mingjie, the actual controller of Yiheng Bus, to bear joint and several liabilities, and the above three defendants to bear the litigation costs, attorney fees and property preservation costs of the case.
Yaxing Bus, formerly known as Yangzhou Automobile Repair Factory, is the earliest bus manufacturer since the establishment of China. In 1996, Jiangsu Yaxing Bus Group Co., Ltd. was formally established, and in 1999, it was listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, becoming the first listed company in Yangzhou and one of the few listed companies in the domestic bus industry.
In September 2011, Yaxing Group transferred its 112.2 million state-owned shares of Yaxing Bus to Weichai Yangzhou for free. At present, Yaxing Bus is a listed company controlled by Weichai Group, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Shandong Heavy Industry. The company's main business is the research and development, manufacturing and sales of bus products, covering all types of buses from 5 to 18 meters, mainly used in highways, buses, tourism, groups, new energy buses and school buses and other markets.
In fact, in addition to the above-mentioned litigation with Yiheng Bus and Harbin Yaxing Sales, Yaxing Bus has been mired in litigation disputes in recent years. According to Jiemian News, since 2023, Yaxing Bus has issued a total of 18 announcements on litigation matters, including 12 announcements on major litigation matters, which involve litigation with Jiangsu Chunlan Clean Energy Research Institute Co., Ltd., Harbin Yaxing Automobile Sales Co., Ltd., Heilongjiang Gongxiang Transportation Co., Ltd., Huangshi Hongtai Public Bus Co., Ltd. and many other enterprises.
Most of these lawsuits involve two main situations. In one case, Yaxing Bus is the defendant, and the passenger transport companies that purchased Yaxing passenger vehicles are the plaintiffs, and the plaintiff believes that the purchased vehicles have a fault problem, so they are unwilling to support the remaining payment, and the failure problem causes its operation to suffer losses, and requires Yaxing Passenger Transport to update and repair the purchased vehicles and compensate for the losses.
Huangshi Hongtai Public Bus Co., Ltd., which had sued Yaxing for the same reason, told Jiemian News that the bus purchased from Yaxing Bus had serious battery problems, and the battery attenuation was serious after only more than two years of use, resulting in insufficient endurance of the bus and making it difficult to operate. However, Yaxing Bus said that it only provides a 3-year warranty, and does not provide warranty services beyond the time limit. This warranty is lower than the government's policy that "commercial vehicle manufacturers should provide a warranty period of not less than 5 years or 200,000 kilometers".
In another case, Yaxing Bus is the plaintiff and the passenger transport company is the defendant, and Yaxing Passenger believes that the passenger transport company is unwilling to pay the remaining payment, so it files a lawsuit against it.
In addition, for the quality problems of Yaxing passenger vehicles, Yaxing Bus also sued Jiangsu Chunlan Clean Energy Research Institute Co., Ltd. on August 23 last year, mentioning that the purchased batteries affected the operation of end customers due to quality problems, and demanded compensation of 33.8128 million yuan, and at the same time bear the litigation costs and preservation fees of this case.
Net profit loss for four consecutive years and facing the risk of delisting
In recent years, while being riddled with lawsuits, due to the superposition of various factors such as the decline of national "subsidies" and the slowdown in economic growth, Yaxing bus sales have declined year by year since 2017. According to the financial report data, the sales volume of Yaxing Bus in 2017 was 5,742 units, and in 2021 and 2022, the sales volume will drop to 2,023 and 2,950 units respectively. Last year's sales fell further to 2,096 units, a drop of more than 60% from 2017.
The performance of Yaxing Bus has also been unsatisfactory, and it has lost net profit for 4 consecutive years. From 2020 to 2022, Yaxing Bus's net profit will lose 157 million yuan, 17.2741 million yuan, and 193 million yuan respectively, a year-on-year increase of -757%, 89.55%, and -1068.44%, respectively. The 2023 performance has not yet been disclosed, but on January 31 this year, the 2023 annual performance forecast released by Yaxing Bus shows that it is expected that last year's performance will continue to lose, with a net profit loss of 380 million yuan to 260 million yuan, an increase of 96.89% to 34.72% year-on-year from the previous year's loss.
For last year's performance of the loss again, Yaxing Bus said that on the one hand, affected by the cancellation of new energy vehicle purchase subsidies and other factors, the market competition is more intense, the company's product sales are less than expected, resulting in a decrease in the company's main business income;
In addition, the performance forecast also mentioned that the net assets attributable to shareholders of listed companies are expected to be -220 million yuan to -100 million yuan by the end of 2023.
Negative net assets also triggered a delisting warning. In January, March and April this year, Yaxing Bus issued 3 risk warning announcements for delisting risk warnings.