Reappear to reduce holdings! Li Ka-shing and his son once again sold H shares of the Postal Savings Bank in bulk.
On October 18, the reporter learned from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange's disclosure platform that Li Ka-shing reduced his holdings of 101 million H shares of the Postal Savings Bank on October 14 and 17, and cashed out about HK $475 million (about 434 million yuan) in just four trading days. This is also the third time that Li Ka-shing has sold shares of the bank in bulk since the listing of PSBC's H-shares.
It is worth noting that since the second half of this year, as the H-share share price of the Postal Savings Bank has further risen, Li Ka-shing has increased his efforts to reduce his holdings in the Postal Savings Bank. According to the shareholding data disclosed in the 2024 semi-annual report of the Postal Savings Bank, from July 1 to October 13, Li Ka-shing significantly reduced his holdings of about 178 million shares of the Postal Savings Bank, which may be cashed out by more than HK $800 million according to the average transaction price in the range.
As of the close of trading on October 18, PSBC's H shares closed at HK$4.79 per share, up 1.48% on the day.
In the second half of the year, it reduced its holdings by about 278.6 million shares
On October 18, the latest information disclosed by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange showed that Li Ka-shing and Li Zeju father and son reduced their holdings of H shares of the Postal Savings Bank twice a few days ago, including 78.517 million shares on October 14 and about 22.801 million shares on October 17. In other words, in just 4 trading days, Li Ka-shing has reduced his holdings of 101 million shares of Postal Savings Bank.
According to the data, in the reduction actions on October 14 and October 17, the average trading prices in the market were HK$4.63 per share and HK$4.737 per share respectively. Based on the average trading price in the market, the total cash out of Li Ka-shing and his son is about 475 million Hong Kong dollars (about 434 million yuan).
After this round of reduction, the proportion of shares held by Li Ka-shing and his son in the Postal Savings Bank further declined. As of October 17, the former's H shares held by the Postal Savings Bank had dropped to 1.581 billion shares, accounting for 7.96% of the H shares issued by the Postal Savings Bank.
The reporter noted that Li Ka-shing's reduction mainly occurred in the second half of this year. As of the end of June this year, the 2024 semi-annual report of the Postal Savings Bank showed that Li Ka-shing and Li Zeju held a total of about 1.971 billion H shares of the Postal Savings Bank through the Li Ka-shing Foundation and other institutions, which had dropped to 1.793 billion shares before the reduction on October 14.
Between July 1 and October 13, Li Ka-shing also reduced his holdings of about 178 million shares of the bank. If calculated according to the average trading price of HK$4.536 per share for 70 trading days during the period, Li Ka-shing and his son may have cashed out more than HK$800 million before. In other words, the 278.6 million shares of the Postal Savings Bank that were reduced during the year allowed Li Ka-shing to receive more than HK$1.2 billion in cash.
Since the beginning of this year, with the rapid recovery of the stock prices of domestic listed banks, the A-share stock prices of many large state-owned banks have repeatedly hit record highs. At the same time, the share prices of large Chinese banks listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange are also gradually rising. Taking the Postal Savings Bank as an example, from 2024 to October 18, the cumulative increase in the H-share range of the Postal Savings Bank has reached 37.01%. On October 7, with the hot market of A-shares and Hong Kong stocks, the H-shares of the Postal Savings Bank also hit a new high of HK$5.39 per share in the past two years, with an increase of about 50.7% from 2024 to October 7.
For the other shareholders of Postal Savings Bank's H shares, Li Lu, known as "Buffett's successor" in the industry, bought Postal Savings Bank's H shares through its Himalaya Capital at the end of 2020, and continued to increase his holdings to 1.274 billion shares at the beginning of 2021, and as of the end of June 2024, Himalaya Capital has held shares for three and a half years and still has "not sold a share".
The second largest shareholder of PSBC's H-shares, Shanghai International Port (Group) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "SIPG"), increased its position twice in the first half of this year. Among them, SIPG Group increased its holdings of about 103.5 million H shares of Postal Savings Bank on January 31, and purchased about 176 million H shares on March 8. According to the closing stock price of the bank's H shares on the day of the two increases, the two additional positions of about 280 million shares cost a total of about HK$1.05 billion, and this part of the holdings has achieved a floating profit of more than 20% during the year.
It has reduced its holdings twice, and previously responded that it would be used for charity
The 96-year-old Li Ka-shing has been the richest man in Hong Kong for many years. According to Forbes' 2024 Forbes Hong Kong Rich List released in February this year, Li Ka-shing is still at the top of the list, but the share price of his real estate development company, Cheung Kong Asset Group, has fallen by a third from last year, bringing Li's fortune down to $36.2 billion.
It is worth noting that before Li Ka-shing's reduction in the Postal Savings Bank, there had been two reductions.
On May 11, 2023, according to the disclosure of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the Li Ka Shing Foundation reduced its holdings of 22.49 million H shares of Postal Savings Bank at an average price of HK$5.43 per share, with a total amount of about HK$122 million. After this reduction, the Li Ka Shing Foundation holds approximately 1.980 billion H shares of PSBC, accounting for 9.97% of the issued H shares.
At that time, the Postal Savings Bank responded that the Li Ka-shing Foundation had always maintained a good relationship with the Postal Savings Bank, and that the Foundation had no opinion on the operation and development of the Postal Savings Bank. The foundation was established to promote charitable projects, and all the proceeds from the investment were used for charitable purposes.
Since the second half of 2022, the Li Ka-shing Foundation has cumulatively reduced its holdings of about 83.189 million H shares of PSBC through on-site trading. Regarding the first reduction of holdings, the Li Ka-shing Foundation responded to Hong Kong media at that time: "The establishment of the foundation is to promote charitable projects, all transactions are to support the relevant goals, and all the proceeds from the investment are allocated to charity." ”
According to public information, when the H-shares of the Postal Savings Bank were listed in September 2016, Li Ka-shing and Li Zeju bought 2.267 billion H shares of the bank through their foundations. The Li Ka-shing Foundation said at the time, "Li Ka-shing sees it as a long-term investment, and he has absolute confidence in PSBC and believes that it is suitable as a financial investment." ”
The Li Ka Shing Foundation was founded in 1980 to support education and healthcare projects. So far, Li Ka-shing has been promoting education, medical care and public welfare poverty alleviation, and has invested more than HK$30 billion, of which 80% is in the mainland and Hong Kong.
The Postal Savings Bank will adjust the agency rate
In terms of business, the Postal Savings Bank has recently received good news. A few days ago, the Postal Savings Bank issued a savings agency rate adjustment plan, which is expected to save about 15.058 billion yuan in comprehensive agency fees, and the adjustment has also significantly exceeded market expectations.
Specifically, the Postal Savings Bank recently announced the bank's savings agency rate adjustment plan, from demand deposits, call deposits, to three-month, half-year, one-year to three-year and other savings deposits The tiers have been adjusted to varying degrees. If based on the agency savings deposits in 2023, the comprehensive agency rate for the Postal Savings Bank will be reduced from 1.24% to 1.08%, and the savings agency fee will be reduced from 115.623 billion yuan to 100.565 billion yuan.
In the previous announcement, the Postal Savings Bank said that in recent years, the net interest margin and net interest margin of the banking industry have continued to narrow, and in the context of the passive adjustment of the pricing of RMB deposit savings agency fees, taking into account the current and future interest rate environment and trends, the Postal Savings Bank and the Postal Group have actively negotiated and from the perspective of the interests of all shareholders, it is proposed to further reduce the tiered rate of agency savings deposits.
It is worth mentioning that the Postal Savings Bank will also revise the passive adjustment mechanism this time. According to the announcement, the original rule is that when the average net interest margin of the four major state-owned banks fluctuates by more than 24% compared with the average net interest margin of the previous 10 years at the last adjustment, the adjustment can be triggered. The change of the reference period from 10 years to 5 years is also conducive to the Postal Savings Bank's response to changes in the interest rate environment in a more timely and effective manner.
For the reduction of the savings agency rate, industry researchers generally believe that the reduction exceeds market expectations and helps significantly alleviate the bank's profit pressure.
Ma Xiangyun, an analyst at Changjiang Securities, believes that the Postal Savings Bank's agency rate reduction is more than expected, which will help start the valuation repair, which can save 15.1 billion yuan in agency fees, which is equivalent to increasing the pre-tax profit of the year by 9 percentage points, which will significantly ease the pressure on profitability. The team believes that the adjustment will retroactively improve the rate from July 1 onwards, directly boosting short-term performance.
Ma Kunpeng, an analyst at China Securities Securities, believes that in the short term, the new scheme of the agency rate of the Postal Savings Bank is conducive to guiding the optimization of the deposit structure and alleviating the downward pressure on interest margins. In the long run, differentiated adjustment plans can effectively guide outlets to enhance customer stickiness and effectively promote the transformation of wealth management. The adjustment of the agency rate will help PSBC better achieve the goal of "stabilizing net interest, raising non-interest, and reducing costs", and achieve good revenue quality and efficiency and stable profit release.
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Source | Brokerage China
Edit | Wang Qingsong
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