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Recently, Yongtai Energy (600157. SH) issued a number of announcements, including the planning of major events and suspension of trading, the progress of share repurchases, and the change of the purpose of the repurchase, and issued a letter to all shareholders in an attempt to convey information to investors.
Behind the package announcement, as a coal power giant with a market value of more than 20 billion yuan in A-shares, Yongtai Energy, whose share price has fallen to a record low, is struggling on the edge of the life and death line of "delisting at a face value of 1 yuan".
In fact, since the company experienced a debt crisis in 2018, the stock price has not improved, and its stock price has hovered around 2 yuan for a long time, and although Yongtai Energy has issued several announcements in the past two years to increase its holdings in the hope of boosting the stock price, the effect is little.
Contrary to the stock price trend, Yongtai Energy's performance in the past two years has been very good, its non-net profit increased by 184.90% in three years, and in the first half of this year, the company's net profit still showed double-digit growth.
Although the company's combination punch for the shell can be called the most powerful in the company's history, it is still uncertain whether it can help the company boost its stock price and get out of the quagmire of "1 yuan face value delisting".
In order to protect the shell, a number of measures such as restructuring and repurchase are carried out in parallel
On July 24, after three consecutive days of decline, Yongtai Energy closed at 1.1 yuan per share, and once fell to 1.01 yuan per share on the same day. At noon on the same day, Yongtai Energy urgently issued the "Announcement on Increasing the Share Repurchase Amount" and the "Announcement on Changing the Use and Cancellation of the Repurchased Shares".
According to the two announcements, the company will increase the total amount of funds for repurchasing shares and change the purpose of repurchased shares, and the total amount of repurchase funds will be adjusted from "not less than RMB 150 million, not more than RMB 300 million" in the repurchase announcement on June 25 to "not less than RMB 500 million, not more than RMB 1 billion"; The purpose of the repurchase has also been changed from "for employee stock ownership plans or equity incentives" to "for cancellation to reduce registered capital", which is not only more vigorous, but also very obvious in the sincerity of the repurchase.
In addition, the repurchase progress announcement shows that from June 26 to July 24, the company has paid about 169 million yuan, and a total of 151 million shares have been repurchased, accounting for 0.68% of the company's total share capital.
Subsequently, Yongtai Energy threw out the announcement of planning major events and suspension of trading, saying that it is planning to purchase a controlling stake in assets including but not limited to energy storage companies and high-quality coal resources by issuing shares and paying cash, in view of the uncertainty of related matters, the company will be suspended from the opening of the market on July 25, 2024, and the suspension is expected to last no more than 10 trading days.
It is worth noting that at the same time as the suspension of the acquisition of assets, there is also a letter to all shareholders to maintain the company's stock price.
In the letter, Yongtai Energy reiterated the company's good fundamentals and continuous growth performance, and pointed out that the continuous production of Haizetan Coal Mine will further increase its performance, and finally emphasized again that it will continue to boost its stock price. But it's not hard to see from the many comments from retail investors that they don't seem to be buying it.
Interestingly, I don't know if it was affected by the urgent issuance of multiple announcements in one day, and there was a misrepresentation in the letter to all shareholders, which was originally the net operating cash flow for the first quarter of 2024, and was written as 2014.
Intensive increase in holdings in stages has little effect
Titanium Media APP noticed that in 2023, the coal sector will rise by 11%, ranking 7th among the 31 major industries in Shenwan. From the perspective of individual stocks, many stocks have come out of the "slow bull" market, such as Jizhong Energy (000937. SZ), Lu'an Huanneng (601699. SH), Shanmei International (600546. SH), Hengyuan Coal Power (600971. SH), Huaibei Mining (600985. SH) and so on, all of which rose by more than 30% during the year. Some of the targets have even hit new highs, such as China Shenhua (601088. SH), the company's share price rose to 32.52 yuan per share on December 26 last year, hitting a new high in nearly 15 years.
Since the beginning of this year, the comprehensive deepening of the power system reform support policies have been frequent, and the recent high temperature weather in many places has greatly increased the demand for electricity, and the power sector in the secondary market has continued to heat up. According to incomplete statistics, since the beginning of this year, the leading industry in the market, power stocks have won the top spot, with more than 210 stocks rising by more than 30% during the year, of which nearly 40 are power stocks.
However, in the middle of the two tracks, Yongtai Energy, as a leading company in the industry, failed to seize the market, and its stock price performance continued to be sluggish in recent years. Since the second half of 2019, its stock price has hovered between 1 yuan and 2 yuan for a long time.
In this regard, most investors on the interactive platform have repeatedly asked Yongtai Energy about the low stock price, whether there is a risk of delisting, and how to maintain the market value. However, in this regard, the company's previous answer was a little helpless, it has been emphasizing that the company's production and operation are stable, the performance continues to grow significantly, the energy storage transformation project is implemented in an orderly manner, and the development prospects are good, but due to the influence of many factors in the market, the company's value has not been reasonably reflected.
Titanium Media APP also found that in the past five years, the senior management of Yongtai Energy has also increased its holdings many times at different stages to stimulate the stock price. Among them, it increased its holdings twice in 2020, when the company's stock price began to enter a downward channel and began to fluctuate around 1.5 yuan.
In 2021 and 2022, Yongtai Energy was busy with debt restructuring and had no plans to increase its holdings. In 2023, the company will further increase its holdings in July and October, respectively. In June this year, the company once again announced a plan to increase its holdings.
Judging from the announcement, Yongtai Energy involves a wide range of personnel every time it increases its holdings, even including middle management at the director level and assistant level. Taking the latest shareholding increase announcement in June this year as an example, the chairman, executive vice chairman, vice chairman and general manager, directors (excluding independent directors), and chairman of the board of supervisors increased their holdings of the company's shares by no less than 1 million shares. The company's deputy general manager (excluding part-time directors), chief accountant, secretary of the board of directors, and assistant to the chairman of the board of directors increased their holdings of the company's shares by no less than 500,000 shares. Even the company's director-level personnel have increased their holdings of the company's shares by no less than 300,000 shares; The number of shares of the company increased by the company's assistant-level (deputy chief engineer level) by no less than 150,000 shares. So far, the above increase has been completed.
Although the company's executives actively participate in the shareholding plan, but many investors do not buy it, after the company issued an announcement in June this year, some shareholders said in the stock bar, "What is the use of 10 million shares? "For Yongtai Energy, which has a share capital of 22.2 billion, increasing its holdings of millions of shares is like a drop in the bucket, and it can't make waves. At least 1 billion shares have to be repurchased to be useful, which means that it is sincere" and "obviously to attract retail investors to take over". Judging from the performance of the secondary market, the effect of the intensive increase of executives' holdings on the stock price is not obvious.
In contrast, the upper limit of the repurchase amount reached 1 billion yuan, and it will be used for cancellation after the repurchase, and the strength to stabilize the stock price can be called the most in recent times.
It is worth mentioning that although the company frequently increases its holdings of shares, Yongtai Energy is stingy in terms of dividends. Titanium Media APP noticed that Yongtai Energy did not pay dividends from 2017 to 2022. As of the end of 2022, Yongtai Energy has achieved a cumulative net profit of 13.729 billion yuan and a cumulative cash dividend of 1.619 billion yuan since its listing, with a dividend rate of 11.77% since listing; As of the end of 2022, the undistributed profit was 9.086 billion yuan.
In 2023, the company will finally pay dividends, but it will only pay 0.055 yuan (tax included) for every 10 shares, so as to calculate a total cash dividend of 122 million yuan.
The performance continued to improve, and it was in a debt crisis
According to public information, Yongtai Energy landed on the main board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange on May 13, 1998, and was initially controlled by PetroChina, and in 2007, Wang Guangxi and others began to get a controlling stake.
From 2020 to 2023, the proportion of power business revenue to total revenue is 50.66%, 43.05%, 44.22% and 55.48% respectively, and the proportion of coal business is 26.13%, 40.07%, 38.51% and 41.23%.
However, the two businesses have shown very different development curves in recent years. Since 2021, the power business, which has contributed the most revenue, has entered a period of encroachment on profits, with gross profit margins of -5.45% and -6.87% in 2021 and 2022, and will recover to 10.68% in 2023. The gross profit margin of the coal business, which is the second largest in terms of revenue, has been increasing, from 41.8% in 2020 to 60.78% in 2022 and 49.82% in 2023.
However, on the whole, as a coal power stock with a market value of 24.4 billion yuan, Yongtai Energy's performance in recent years is not inferior.
In 2021~2023, the company's operating income will increase from 27.180 billion yuan to 30.120 billion yuan, the net profit attributable to the parent company will double from 1.128 billion yuan to 2.266 billion yuan, and the net profit attributable to the parent company after deducting non-profits will increase from 828 million yuan to 2.359 billion yuan, an increase of 184.90%.
In the first half of 2024, the company's coal business maintained good profit margins, and the operating efficiency of the power business continued to improve. According to the performance forecast, its attributable net profit is expected to be 1.160 billion yuan ~ 1.260 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14.54% ~ 24.41%. The company said that the company's performance in the second half of 2024 will be higher than the level of the first half of 2024 and the same period in 2023, and the company's performance will continue to maintain a good growth momentum.
It is worth noting that Yongtai Energy, which has a good performance, has also fallen into a debt crisis. In 2018, Yongtai Energy's short-term financing bonds of 1.5 billion yuan were overdue, triggering a debt crisis.
Affected by this, Yongtai Energy's asset-liability ratio remained high, and it was even as high as more than 70% from 2013 to 2019. In September 2020, Yongtai Energy was put on delisting risk warning. Subsequently, thanks to the implementation of debt restructuring, Yongtai Energy withdrew other risk warnings on April 30, 2021, and its asset-liability ratio also decreased, and as of December 31, 2023, the company's asset-liability ratio fell to 52.17%, which is at a low level in the industry.
However, it is also after this round of heavy losses that Yongtai Energy's share price is relatively sluggish, and the stock price has hovered around 2 yuan for a long time and has not improved.
In the letter to all shareholders, Yongtai Energy also revealed its scars and compared the data of debt reorganization, the company said that the company attaches great importance to the reorganization (reorganization) repayment of principal and interest, and actively fulfills the requirements of repayment of principal and interest in the reorganization and reorganization plan, and since the occurrence of debt problems to the end of December 2023, the company has accumulated cash repayment of principal of 18.534 billion yuan and repayment of principal of 17.442 billion yuan by equity and debt. Interest payments amounted to RMB11.944 billion, totaling RMB47.920 billion, and the scale of interest-bearing liabilities decreased significantly from RMB70.9 billion to RMB41.1 billion, a decrease of RMB29.8 billion, a significant decrease from before the reorganization, and the Company's financial position was further optimized.
The data shows that Yongtai Energy's current operating cash flow is abundant, and the company's operating net cash flow in 2021~2023 will be 5.119 billion yuan, 6.443 billion yuan, and 7.025 billion yuan respectively, and the operating net cash flow in the first quarter of 2024 will reach 1.115 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 1.99%.
It can be seen that Yongtai Energy does not have much thunder point in financial data, and can the restructuring be smooth and can Yongtai Energy be reborn? Titanium Media APP will continue to pay attention. (This article was first published on the Titanium Media APP, author|Yu Ying, editor|Cao Shengyuan)