An opera company "buried alive" 280,000 shareholders

City Boundary

2024-06-18 20:00 Posted on the official account of Beijing Municipality

01. 30 down limits, locked in advance for delisting

On June 18, the photovoltaic manufacturing company Akcome Technology (stock abbreviation "ST Akcome") opened at 0.37 yuan per share, down 5.13%, with a total market value of 1.657 billion yuan after falling for the 30th consecutive trading day.

▲ (ST iKang's stock price trend from March to June 16 this year.) Photo source/Xueqiu)

"Panicked, sleepless at night." Li Hong used these words to describe her life in the past month or so. "Myself and my family, a total of more than 1 million have stepped on thunder."

According to data from Oriental Wealth Choice, as of May 20, the total number of shareholders of ST iKang was as high as 276,800. Under the continuous fall limit, these investors do not even have the opportunity to leave the market to "cut meat". "We trusted iKang a lot, but we ended up being 'buried alive'!" An investor posted angrily in the stock bar of iKang Technology.

According to the A-share delisting rules, as long as the stock price of a company's shares is less than 1 yuan for 20 consecutive trading days, the mandatory delisting condition will be triggered. That is to say, Akcome Technology is currently only 1 trading day away from delisting.

But in fact, the fate of Akcome Technology has long been "locked". On June 12, at the high-efficiency heterojunction HJT 740W+ club industry summit held in Shanghai, Zhang Jinjian, vice chairman and chief operating officer of iKang Technology, appeared in it, and he publicly said that "now I can tell you a conclusion": "iKang's stock price has been below one dollar for 20 consecutive trading days, and it will be transferred to the three-board market." ”

The SFC has also stepped in. On the evening of the same day, iKang Technology issued an announcement saying that the China Securities Regulatory Commission had decided to file a case against the company and its actual controller Zou Chenghui due to suspected violations of information disclosure laws and regulations.

Previously, when the company's shares were still listed and traded, the headquarters of Akcome Technology was revealed to have been "empty".

As early as June 11, some netizens posted videos and photos saying that the headquarters of iKang Technology in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province was empty. According to the photos leaked at the scene, the door of the office building was closed, and even the office computers were gone, leaving only empty workstations and some green plants that had not been moved. "City Boundary" dialed the company's headquarters on the homepage of Akcome Technology's official website, but the microphone on the other side prompted that the number had been shut down in arrears.

▲ (Hangzhou headquarters of iKang Technology.) Source/China Securities Journal)

At the entrance of the Hangzhou headquarters of iKang Technology, a notice was posted, which read, "Due to the company's internal work arrangements in the near future, there may be no staff working here", and said that visiting shareholders can go to the company's headquarters in Zhangjiagang City, or call a special line.

Tianyancha public information shows that iKang Technology's registered place is in Hangzhou, but its office address is in Zhangjiagang Economic and Technological Development Zone, Jiangsu Province. One investor said he was in Elken's Zhangjiagang office building and saw employees still working as normal. City Boundary dialed the dedicated telephone number on the notice, but no one answered.

However, at the summit on June 12, Zhang Jinjian also responded to the question of the whereabouts of the company's executives: "Our chairman has definitely not run away. I had just separated from him in Zhangjiagang before I came to the event, and he and I have been basically in the company recently. ”

Zhang Jinjian pointed out that the problem that the company is facing now is that the ST post-ST caused panic among investors, causing a run on the market, which affected normal operations, "the storm came too quickly, and there was no time to react." He also said, "Some of the company's bases have state-owned equity participation or local government participation, and we will actively face it and deal with it properly." ”

But this is obviously not an explanation that the majority of investors are willing to accept. After all, they had eaten the "reassuring pills" provided by the company several times before this, but these reassuring pills were ultimately hollow rice balls.

At the beginning of the year, iKang Technology released a performance forecast for losses in 2023. Naturally, this has also caused concern among many small and medium-sized shareholders. On February 5 and April 15 this year, someone asked the company's board secretary whether the company would be ST on the interactive platform of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, and the company's reply at that time was that there was no such risk at present.

▲ (ST iKang's reply on the interactive platform on April 15.) Screenshot / City boundary)

Zou Chenghui is not only the founder, chairman and president of the company, but also acts as the secretary of the board of directors. Therefore, in the eyes of many small and medium-sized shareholders, this reply is tantamount to a commitment made by Zou Chenghui himself. But no one expected that the words were still in their ears, and only half a month later, the "thunder" of iKang Technology exploded.

On the last day of April, iKang Technology finally released its 2023 annual financial report, and during the reporting period, iKang Technology's revenue was only 4.662 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 30.32%; The net profit attributable to the parent company was -826 million yuan, a significant loss for the third consecutive year.

What is more worrying is that iKang Technology announced on this day that due to continuous losses, the auditor issued an audit report with a qualified opinion on the material uncertainty related to continuing operations, and at the same time issued a negative opinion on the company's internal control in 2023; From May 6, Akcome Technology will be subject to other risk warnings, and the stock abbreviation will also be changed to "ST Akcome".

Then, on May 31, ST Aikang released two major negative news: 62 bank accounts of its four subsidiaries were frozen, with a total of 84.0224 million yuan frozen, and the actual freeze was 20.3437 million yuan;

Investors who woke up from a dream panicked and wanted to retreat, and the company has since begun the road of "continuous decline".

In the eyes of many people, he fell for Zou Chenghui at that time. "I was a little worried, but when I saw the reply of the secretary of the board of directors in mid-April, I was relieved. But I didn't expect that only half a month later, the company was ST, and now it is about to be delisted. One investor publicly said, "I lost 1.2 million!" ”

Interestingly, two days after the "hat", on May 8, Akcome Technology also explained this matter in an investor survey: when the company replied to questions on the investment platform, the audit opinion of the 2023 annual audit report had not yet been determined, "and the company's board of directors believes that in the next 12 months, there will be no major problems in the company's ability to continue operations, and there will be no misleading investors."

However, the things that make the majority of small and medium-sized shareholders "chill" are not only that.

On February 27 this year, iKang Technology disclosed a shareholding increase plan, announcing that the company's controlling shareholder, iKang Industrial and its affiliates, plan to increase their holdings by 100 million to 200 million yuan within 6 months, and the increase price will not exceed 3.5 yuan per share. However, to date, there has been no action on the part of the controlling shareholder and related parties. That is, not a single single share has been bought.

In fact, the major shareholders and related parties of iKang Technology currently only hold 6.4% of the company's shares, and they do lack the motivation to save the company.

At the beginning of the company's listing in 2011, Zou Chenghui controlled 43.63% of the shares through three companies including iKang Industrial Group. However, from 2017 to 2022, the controlling shareholder has continued to reduce its shareholding in the company, cashing out more than 2 billion yuan. As of the end of March this year, the 6.4% shares held by Zou Chenghui through four companies including iKang Industrial Group have basically been pledged. So far, Zou Chenghui himself does not hold any shares in the company.

After Akcome Technology was listed in 2011, it carried out two private placements, raising a total of about 5.6 billion yuan. However, during the listing period, the company's dividend was only 212 million yuan.

The major shareholders first reduced their holdings and cashed out, and now they are "untrustworthy", so some investors posted in the stock bar questioning that iKang Technology's false release of information is a "malicious delisting".

Ms. Li, along with others, has taken to social media to shout, email and phone calls to iKang's management, but so far, she said, has not received any response from the company. "Investment is risky, but if it's malicious fraud, I don't admit it."

It's not just investors who are worried.

On June 8, ST Akcome issued an announcement announcing that the high-efficiency solar cell module production line of the company's three subsidiaries - Ganzhou Akcome Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd., Zhejiang Akcome Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd., and Huzhou Akcome Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. will be suspended from June 8. On June 12, another subsidiary, Suzhou Akcome Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd., also announced a shutdown. During the shutdown, only living expenses are paid to employees.

On social media, an employee from Ganzhou Akcome Optoelectronics, a subsidiary of the shutdown, expressed his feelings: "I was still working on the morning of the 7th, but I issued a notice to stop work on the 8th, and we were still pressed to pay our wages for several months, and I don't know if we can get it." ”

02. The photovoltaic "wind chaser" who is constantly transforming

The reason why AKCOME Technology has been able to attract many investors to take heavy positions is naturally due to its glamorous experience: this company, founded in 2006, was once the leader of the photovoltaic manufacturing sector and the first photovoltaic accessories company listed on the A-share market in China.

The establishment and development of iKang is inseparable from Zou Chenghui. After graduating from university, he worked in the banking system, and later gave up his "iron rice bowl" to work in an aluminum factory. In 2005, Wuxi Suntech landed on the U.S. stock market, and its founder, Shi Zhengrong, became the "richest man in China", which also made photovoltaic a hot track. Zou Chenghui, who was 32 years old at the time, also relied on a borrowed 6 million yuan to plunge into the wave of photovoltaic entrepreneurship.

AKCOME Technology started from making solar aluminum frames and photovoltaic brackets for photovoltaic accessories. But in the first year of business, the company lost 7 million. Zou Chenghui once said that when he heard the financial director finish talking about this number, he went out to the hotel alone and opened a room, and sat at the head of the bed and cried for more than an hour.

But Zou Chenghui is still a person who can endure hardships. He then devoted himself to production, and the company ushered in a turnaround in the second year, with a revenue of more than 10 million, and earned back the lost money, and within a few years, it achieved the top spot in the segment of solar frames.

In 2011, Akcome Technology was successfully listed. This year, its revenue was only 1.524 billion yuan, of which solar frame revenue accounted for more than 85%, which is the company's largest business segment. At that time, the revenue of photovoltaic leaders was basically in the scale of 10 billion yuan. However, iKang's business model is single, and this segment is not at the core of the industry, and the market size is limited.

Holding the 870 million yuan raised by the listing in his hand, Zou Chenghui pondered in his heart how to transform the company.

Since then, iKang Technology has embarked on the road of "chasing the wind".

As soon as it was listed, iKang Technology entered the downstream photovoltaic power generation field through acquisitions, and laid out new energy power generation operation and maintenance services, transforming to "integrated operation of metal processing, new materials, and solar power plants". Zou Chenghui, who is a financial background, obviously has his own views on this: he admitted in an interview with the media that the main reason for this is that the electricity of photovoltaic power stations can be purchased by power grid companies at a fixed price, with stable income, and can be regarded as a "quasi-financial" business.

However, under a series of acquisitions and investments, Akcome Technology's cash flow is also in a tight state. In 2014, its net operating cash flow was still negative, and it only increased to 39 million yuan in 2016. By 2018, iKang Technology's operating income had increased to 4.843 billion yuan, but its net profit had been hovering at more than 100 million yuan since 2014.

As a result, in 2018, the company packaged and sold the assets of a number of photovoltaic power plant projects under its jurisdiction. By 2022, the photovoltaic power station business will only contribute more than 50 million yuan of revenue to the company, which has become a thing of the past.

However, this could not stop Zou Chenghui from continuing to "toss". In some media reports, iKang has been jokingly called the "actor" and "actor" company in the photovoltaic field.

In addition to the halo of "the first share of domestic photovoltaic accessories", there have been countless hot concepts superimposed on the top of the head of Akcome Technology: around 2017, it shouted the slogan of "100 billion market value dream", pointing to the trillion market of "energy Internet"; In 2018, the concept of blockchain became popular, and the company also made a layout in energy blockchain, big data, and the Internet of Things. It also plans to get involved in the field of power lithium batteries and enter new energy vehicles. In addition, it also said that its wholly-owned subsidiary used the power station operation and maintenance platform developed by Huawei, and was involved in the "Huawei concept stock".

Its most recent transformation began in 2021. This choice has pushed the market value of Akcome Technology to its peak; But after the collapse of the company's building, there is also a view in the market that it is not unrelated.

03. Gambling on the next generation of photovoltaic cells, domestic and foreign difficulties

In 2020, with the release of the dual carbon strategy, the domestic photovoltaic industry ushered in an investment boom. At the same time, the efficiency improvement of P-type PERC cells, which dominates the photovoltaic cell technology, has reached a bottleneck, and the next-generation photovoltaic cell technology has reached a fork in the road.

In the iteration and game of new and old technologies, all leading enterprises are stepping up their layout. Among them, heterojunction (HJT) cells, as well as perovskite cells, are hot topics in the market.

iKang Technology has once again seized the front end of the wave. In 2021, the company announced that it would start the research and development of HJT heterojunction cells.

This news naturally also aroused the excitement of the market: HJT heterojunction cells, as a combination of crystalline silicon cell and thin-film cell technology, have higher stability and efficiency, but the investment is huge and the threshold is higher.

Just do it. In January 2022, iKang Technology's 8GW heterojunction cell project was settled in Rui'an, with a total investment of 11.2 billion yuan. In this year, the company also actively purchased production lines and expanded production capacity.

But in 2023, the company has almost no public investment in production lines. It was not until December last year that iKang Technology successively announced the production and construction of two production projects of heterojunction and perovskite tandem cells, with a total investment of more than 3 billion yuan, which has been greatly reduced compared with the expansion pace a year ago.

Surprisingly, in the information revealed by these two investments at the end of last year, iKang Technology has "evolved" again - the most popular perovskite tandem cell at that time has become its new beach-grabbing direction.

▲(AKCOME Technology's booth at Shanghai SNEC in 2023)

As a result of its continuous transformation, iKang Technology has struggled to focus on products and technologies, and its financial position has been unstable. With the huge investment in new technologies, in 2021, iKang Technology lost 406 million yuan, and in 2022, the company lost another 834 million yuan. However, there are gains: in the composition of revenue, its solar cell/module business has continued to rise, reaching 53% and 81% respectively, becoming the company's main business.

AKCOME Technology has also enjoyed the huge market dividends released by the concept of new technologies. In November 2021, the share price of Akcome Technology reached a high of nearly 6 yuan, with a market value of more than 27.5 billion yuan.

Investing in photovoltaic modules and a new generation of photovoltaic cell technology, and actively expanding production and expansion, iKang Technology is in a prosperous situation, and investors are also looking at the future it is "betting on". However, for iKang Technology, the company's profitability was limited, and there was a tight cash flow during the previous transformation.

According to the financial report, by the end of 2023, iKang Technology only had short-term borrowings of up to 2.654 billion yuan, while monetary funds were only 1.621 billion yuan in the same period, which was not enough to cover the scale of borrowings. As of the end of last year, the company's pledged and pledged restricted assets reached 6.449 billion yuan. In 2023, the company's asset-liability ratio will be as high as 77.81%, and the balance of guarantees outside the scope of the consolidated statement will be 1.006 billion yuan.

Although it has been losing money for three consecutive years, in the company's recent publicity, its HJT heterojunction cell business is still a "thriving" scene.

AKCOME Technology has said that in 2023, it will lay out four high-efficiency solar cell module production bases in Suzhou, Jiangsu, Ganzhou, Jiangxi, Huzhou, Zhejiang and Zhoushan, Zhejiang, and has achieved 3.2GW of HJT cell production capacity, and plans to have 15GW of HJT cell production capacity in 2024.

Even on May 23, after the company's stock price has continued to fall to the limit, iKang Technology also released news on its official WeChat, saying that in the latest Bloomberg New Energy Finance Tier 1 list of global photovoltaic module manufacturers in the second quarter of 2024, the company is once again on the list, and it is also "one of the few HJT (heterojunction) manufacturers on the list".

Two days after "wearing a hat", in the investor survey, iKang Technology did not forget to emphasize that the company is still the "top three leading enterprises in the world" in photovoltaic cells, and heterojunction cells. On May 16, ST iKang also announced that the state-owned capital of Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province plans to invest 350 million yuan in Ganzhou Aikang Optoelectronics.

Until June 7, the stock trading price has been below 1 yuan for 14 consecutive trading days, and after coming to the verge of delisting, iKang Technology successively announced the temporary suspension of production of four subsidiaries, and the real situation of the company hidden under the water was finally brought to the table. According to publicly available financial information, the four subsidiaries will all lose money in 2023, with a total loss of more than 300 million yuan.

At present, among the four major solar cell module production bases of iKang, only the production base in Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province has not announced the suspension of production.

How will AKCOME solve the current crisis? Zhang Jinjian once said that the follow-up company will control the scale of production, maintain a small and precise business direction with heterojunction cells as the core at the joint venture company level and base level, and deeply cultivate the European and Asia-Pacific markets to meet customer needs and delivery as much as possible.

He also said that Elken currently has 1.7GW of undelivered module orders on hand, including orders for heterojunction, which will be difficult to digest in the short term. "It is not easy for customers to place orders with iKang, and I hope to have the opportunity to communicate with fellow partners and deliver orders with everyone."

But for the nearly 280,000 investors, will they ever trust the company's promises again?

In the past few years of continuous losses, the photovoltaic industry has also been in the stage of "long slope and thick snow". In the past two years, the industry has experienced cyclical fluctuations due to the alternation of old and new production capacities, and the prices of polysilicon, wafers, cells, and modules.

On June 11, the 17th (2024) International Solar Photovoltaic and Smart Energy (Shanghai) Conference and Exhibition (hereinafter referred to as "Shanghai SNEC") was held. This is an annual event in the industry, known as the "photovoltaic Spring Festival Gala". Akcome Technology, which had already booked a booth, temporarily announced its withdrawal from the exhibition on June 6. Two days after the opening of the conference, another photovoltaic company, Jiangsu Sunshine Co., Ltd. (stock abbreviation "ST Sunshine"), was also delisted, becoming the "first delisted stock" of photovoltaic this year.

Many people in the industry still remember that at the conference in May last year, Li Zhenguo, president of photovoltaic leader LONGi Green Energy, directly told the audience that under the collective pressure of the industrial chain, manufacturers in the photovoltaic industry will "die half" in the future.

Now, the shuffle has begun. Only the "light chaser" who really has the technical strength can go through the cycle.

(Li Hong is a pseudonym in the article)

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