Image source: Zhongfang Newspaper Gallery
Liu Wei/From Beijing
While selling assets and defaulting on debts, the "pot lid" of Lu Zhiqiang, the actual controller of the "Oceanwide Department", is no longer enough.
On November 2, China Oceanwide Holdings Group Limited announced that two tranches of notes of the overseas subsidiary of Oceanwide Holdings Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Oceanwide Holdings", 000046.sz) of the Company's holding subsidiary had defaulted and the relevant collateral had been taken over. At present, the company is actively negotiating with the holders of the above two notes to seek a solution.
As one of the most important listing platforms of the "Oceanwide System", the latest third quarter financial report shows that as of the end of the third quarter of 2021, the monetary funds of Oceanwide Holdings were 4.365 billion yuan, short-term borrowings were 12.954 billion yuan, and the non-current liabilities due within one year were 31.647 billion yuan, and the capital chain was seriously under pressure.
In the past three years, Oceanwide Holdings has been exposed to tens of billions of yuan of risk after selling tens of billions of assets, which also means that the company has not yet passed the dangerous period.
At present, the crisis facing The ocean is still spreading. Some Oceanwide investors revealed to reporters that since January 2021, the wealth management products issued by Minsheng Wealth, a subsidiary of Oceanwide Holdings, have been unable to be paid on time. The cumulative amount of redemption funds faced by investors has reached the level of tens of billions, and after negotiating with Oceanwide, the redemption commitment obtained has been repeatedly postponed.
A person who once worked in the "Oceanwide Department" told reporters that at this time, the actual controller still has the illusion of not falling, which is obviously unrealistic. Only the introduction of war investment or debt restructuring can fundamentally solve the problem, but the time span in the middle is obviously that many investors and creditors cannot afford to wait.
Earlier, it was reported that Oceanwide Holdings would sell the Beijing Minsheng Financial Center and cash out 20 billion yuan. On November 3, the reporter called the secretary office of the board of directors of Oceanwide Holdings for an interview, and some staff members said that the asset belonged to Oceanwide Group, and the specific transaction details were not clear.
Asset sales are difficult to fill the debt "black hole"
On October 31, Oceanwide Holdings froze its new equity, and the target enterprise of the frozen equity was Oceanwide Power Holdings Co., Ltd., with an amount of 1 billion yuan of frozen equity, and the freezing ended from October 22, 2021 to October 21, 2024.
The reporter's statistics found that in addition, the 887 million shares of Minsheng Securities held by Oceanwide Holdings and the 803 million shares of Oceanwide Holdings held by China Oceanwide have also been frozen by the courts in recent months.
Assets that are "frozen" cannot bring source living water to Oceanwide in a short period of time, and Oceanwide is currently experiencing the pain of "breaking the flow".
In order to realize the assets, on January 21 this year, Oceanwide Holdings signed the "Share Transfer Contract of Minsheng Securities Co., Ltd." with Shanghai Fengquanyu, and Oceanwide Holdings transferred about 13.49% of the shares of Minsheng Securities to Shanghai Fengquanyu. After the completion of the share transfer, Oceanwide Holdings' shareholding in Minsheng Securities will be reduced to about 31.03%.
On July 19, Oceanwide Holdings announced that it would transfer to Wuhan Financial Holdings not less than 20% of the total number of shares. However, by September 13, Wuhan Financial Holdings decided to formally terminate the acquisition of Minsheng Securities.
However, on September 30 this year, the secretary of the board of directors of Oceanwide Holdings still said in response to investors' questions that in view of the decline in the company's shareholding in Minsheng Securities and the company's seats on its board of directors have been less than half, it can no longer control the relevant decisions of its board of directors, and the company decided not to include Minsheng Securities in the consolidated scope of the company's consolidated financial statements.
In 2020, Minsheng Securities achieved operating income of 3.632 billion yuan, an increase of 35.13% year-on-year, and net profit attributable to the parent company of 919 million yuan, an increase of 72.54% year-on-year.
The above-mentioned person who has worked in the "Oceanwide" Minsheng Securities said in an interview that "as an enterprise controlled by Oceanwide, Minsheng Securities can be regarded as a high-quality asset of the Oceanwide Department," and the sale of the equity of Minsheng Securities is undoubtedly "painfully cut love".
The reporter found through combing the data that since 2019, in order to solve the debt problem, Oceanwide has successively sold the Oceanwide International Land Near Chaoyang Park in Beijing's East Fourth Ring Road, the Wuhan Central Business District Land, the Wuhan Oceanwide Entrepreneurship Center, the Zhejiang Minsheng Financial Center and the Oceanwide Diaoyutai Hotel, idg, as well as some shares in financial assets such as Minsheng Trust, Minsheng Securities, and Minsheng Bank, accumulatively cashing out more than 30 billion yuan.
However, despite this, the debt problem faced by Oceanwide has not been solved.
As of the end of the first half of the year, Oceanwide Holdings had a total of 170.820 billion yuan in assets and liabilities of 136.288 billion yuan, of which short-term borrowings and current liabilities due within one year totaled 43.317 billion yuan. At the same time, 295 million shares of the actual controller of the company were judicially auctioned, and the proportion of equity pledge has exceeded 80%.
At the same time, Oceanwide's quasi-capital pool products have thunderstorms from time to time, which have triggered investors to complain to relevant departments in many places.
A Oceanwide investor told reporters, "After the negotiations with Oceanwide were fruitless, we have sent relevant materials to the local securities regulatory bureau to prove it, as well as tried to solve the problem through legal means." ”
"Multi-front operations" drag down corporate finances
Since 2015, Oceanwide Holdings, which started with real estate, has adjusted the direction of the company to finance under the leadership of Lu Zhiqiang, chairman of Oceanwide Group.
Under the strategic concept of real estate and finance, Oceanwide Holdings has clearly put forward the strategic development goal of building an international enterprise group with finance as the main body, industry as the basis and Internet as the platform for the integration of industry and finance.
As an important part of the strategic goal, in the past few years, Oceanwide Holdings has successively obtained securities, trust, futures, leasing, Internet finance and other licenses, and obtained the entry coupon for engaging in financial business. But this also dragged the ocean into a situation of "multi-front operations".
From the 2020 financial report of Oceanwide Holdings, it can be seen that its operating income accounts for insurance, securities, trusts and real estate, accounting for 38.91%, 29.65%, 15.95% and 15.19% of revenue, respectively, but in the insurance revenue that accounts for nearly 40%, its gross profit margin is only 2.82%. By the middle of 2021, the gross profit margin of the insurance business slipped to -2.36%, and the profitability level was worrying.
According to the disclosure of the three quarterly reports on October 30, 2021, Oceanwide Holdings achieved a total operating income of 14.1 billion yuan in the first three quarters of 2021, an increase of 52.8% year-on-year; and achieved a net profit attributable to the mother of -1.79 billion yuan, compared with -610 million yuan in the same period last year, and the loss margin expanded year-on-year.
A person close to Oceanwide Holdings said that in recent years, "Oceanwide has used leverage excessively in the process of buying a large number of assets on the one hand; on the other hand, it has extended excessively to the financial industry and overseas real estate, which have eaten up a lot of their funds." ”
According to the 2020 annual performance report, the total operating income from January to December 2020 was 14.06 billion yuan, an increase of 12.17% over the same period of the previous year; the net profit attributable to the shareholders of the listed company was -4.62 billion yuan, which was from profit to loss over the same period of the previous year.
For the loss in 2020, Oceanwide Group mentioned in the financial report that Oceanwide Holdings said that it was affected by many factors, including an impairment provision for U.S. real estate projects, Indonesian power plants and related goodwill, the settlement income of the Wuhan Central Business District project did not meet expectations, and minsheng Trust made an impairment charge for individual risk projects.
The above-mentioned person said, "Oceanwide Holdings' project in Wuhan has been invested for many years but has not started construction, and it has eaten a lot of funds and cannot sell it." "In the rapid sale of projects to withdraw funds, the company's business can not withstand the "one collection and one contraction" such a toss, therefore, also damaged the financial situation of the entire company.
Looking at Oceanwide Holdings' investments and operations in recent years, the investment and financing cash flows generated by Oceanwide Holdings in the financial direction are almost pointed in two different directions.
According to the financial report, from 2016 to 2020, the investment cash flow of Oceanwide Holdings was -16.304 billion yuan, -2.495 billion yuan, -2.801 billion yuan, 7.320 billion yuan and 10.279 billion yuan, an increase of -140.79%, 84.69%, -12.26%, 361.33% and 40.42% year-on-year.
The corresponding financing cash flow was 30.206 billion yuan, 7.790 billion yuan, -9.754 billion yuan, -12.657 billion yuan and -15.933 billion yuan, with a year-on-year increase of 23.10%, -74.21%, -225.20%, -29.77% and -25.88% respectively. Investment cash flow is gradually rising, but Oceanwide Holdings' financing cash flow is gradually shrinking.
How many chips do Lu Zhiqiang have left in his hands?
In September, it was reported that Oceanwide Holdings was seeking to sell its main office building in Beijing, the Minsheng Financial Center, to China Taiping Insurance Group, with a possible price of about 20 billion yuan under discussion.
If the transaction is concluded, the funds will be used to repay the subsidiary's debts after default, which will also be a beneficial supplement to Oceanwide Holdings' cash flow. But as of now, the deal has not been officially confirmed by Oceanwide Holdings.
The reporter combed and found that there are still many fixed assets and financial assets that can be put on the "shelves" of the entire Oceanwide Department, but whether they can be sold smoothly is another matter.
For example, on January 22, 2020, Oceanwide Holdings announced that it would sell its real estate project in San Francisco for $1.006 billion, which is estimated to be an asset sold by Oceanwide Holdings for 1.91 billion yuan.
By March 29, 2020, Oceanwide Holdings announced that it would raise the consideration for the above transaction to $1.2 billion, which appears to have recovered some of its losses. Subsequently, however, the deal was repeatedly delayed due to due diligence deadlines.
Finally, on December 30, 2020, Oceanwide Holdings issued an announcement that due to the impact of the new crown epidemic in the United States, the transaction of the sale of assets by a wholly-owned overseas subsidiary expired on December 31, 2020.
The same failure to complete the transaction also occurred in the sale of Its financial assets by Oceanwide Holdings.
On July 19 this year, Oceanwide Holdings intends to sell to Wuhan Financial Holdings a stake of not less than 20% of the total number of shares in Minsheng Securities.
However, less than two months later, on September 13, Wuhan Financial Holdings decided to formally terminate the acquisition of Minsheng Securities. The costs incurred by the parties in connection with the project shall be borne by each party.
How many chips do Oceanwide still have in its hands? The reporter combed and found that as of now (excluding the time difference between industrial and commercial information changes), China Oceanwide Holding Group, as the fourth largest shareholder, holds 4.61% of the shares of Minsheng Bank, holds 66.8% of the shares of Minsheng Securities, holds 16.98% of the shares of Legend Holdings, holds 93.4% of the shares of Minsheng Trust through Wuhan Central Business District Company and Zhejiang Oceanwide Construction Investment, and holds 71% of the shares of Asia-Pacific Property Insurance through Wuhan Central Business District Company and Minsheng Trust.
The above financial assets, including but not limited to, will become chips in the hands of Oceanwide. But how much of this can be monetized is unclear.
It can be seen that the pledge ratio of Oceanwide's controlling shareholders has reached 63.31%, and Nearly 5 billion shares of China Oceanwide Holding Group and Oceanwide Holdings have been frozen, which cannot be counted in the scope of activating corporate liquidity in a short period of time.
Huang Lichong, president of Huisheng International Capital, told reporters, "Over the years, companies investing in the Minsheng Department have occupied a lot of funds in Oceanwide, these companies are the objects of regulatory clearance, and Oceanwide's money is often lost through the investment losses of the People's Livelihood Department, such as the Minsheng Trust." He said that the business of Oceanwide is a commercial center, using a capital-intensive financial business model, and the capital chain has become more and more tense after a long period of accumulation.
Bai Wenxi, chief economist of iPG China, believes that from the current situation of Large-scale auctions and freezes of Oceanwide assets, Oceanwide's efforts in the past one or two years have not yet pulled enterprises out of the quagmire of liquidity crisis. Therefore, Oceanwide may need to carry out a comprehensive restructuring from the aspects of business, assets and liabilities to resolve the debt and liquidity crisis as soon as possible, otherwise It may be difficult for Oceanwide to ease up in the short term.
"I have been in business for more than 30 years, but I underestimate the difficulties encountered in the past two years." At the beginning of this year, Lu Zhiqiang apologized to investors in the form of a letter. The bitter fruit of this underestimation, how many people need to swallow together, it will take time to verify.