The richest man's "money printing machine" failed. Under attack from both sides, Zhong Suisui finally lost his position as the richest man. According to the latest 2024 Rich List released by Hurun Research Institute, Zhang Yiming, the 41-year-old founder of ByteDance, i

The richest man’s “money printing machine” has failed.

Under attack from both sides, Zhong Suisui finally lost his position as the richest man.

According to the latest 2024 Rich List released by Hurun Research Institute, Zhang Yiming, the 41-year-old founder of ByteDance, has a net worth of 350 billion, surpassing Zhong Suisui to become the new richest man in China.

As for Zhong Suisui, due to the slowdown in the performance of Nongfu Spring , which has put the stock price under pressure, and the performance of Wantai Biotechnology , which has declined sharply, his net worth has dropped to 340 billion yuan, a decrease of 110 billion yuan from last year, temporarily ranking second.

Ranked third is Ma Huateng, the helmsman of Tencent . Due to Tencent's remarkable performance in games, advertising, cloud business, etc., which has promoted the improvement of the company's overall performance, Ma Huateng's wealth has increased by 35 billion compared with last year, reaching 315 billion, ranking third.

It is worth noting that the wealth gap between Zhang Yiming and Zhong Suisui is only 10 billion yuan. According to Cailian News, ByteDance's revenue growth and profit margin both declined in the first three quarters of 2024, which means ByteDance is also encountering performance challenges. Therefore, whether Zhang Yiming can secure his position as the richest man remains to be tested.

Of course, for Zhong Suisui, this is not the first time he has lost his position as the richest man this year. Previously, due to performance growth, the stock price performed well. Pinduoduo founder Huang Zhengze briefly surpassed Zhong Suisui to become the richest man in China. However, it did not last long. Later, because Pinduoduo’s performance did not meet expectations, the stock price plummeted. Huang Zhengze He was quickly surpassed by Zhong Suisui. The change in the position of the richest man in

reflects the changes in the market trends.

The reason why Zhong Suisui is able to secure his position as the richest man is mainly because he holds two listed companies, Nongfu Spring and Wantai Biotech. And in terms of ownership structure, Zhong Suisui's shareholding ratio has reached absolute control. The ultra-high shareholding ratio determines that changes in Zhong Suisui's wealth are closely related to changes in the stock prices of these two companies. Once the stock prices fluctuate significantly, it will have a great impact on Zhong Suisui's wealth.

In the past two years, due to changes in the market trend, AI has become the mainstream trend in the market, consumption and medicine are no longer the "mainstream" of the market, and Zhong Suisui's wealth has begun to shrink slightly. After entering 2024, as Zhong Suisui fell into the whirlpool of public opinion, Nongfu Spring was greatly affected.

In the financial report, Nongfu Spring even made it clear that a large number of public opinion attacks and malicious slanders against the company and its founder appeared on the network, which had a serious negative impact on its brand and sales, making Nongfu Spring's packaged drinking water product revenue for the first time There was a sharp decline.

This situation was very rare in the past. Against this background, Nongfu Spring fell by more than 33% during the year. Coupled with the plummeting performance of Wantai Biologics, it seems not surprising that Zhong Suisui lost his position as the richest man.

So as public opinion gradually subsides, does it mean that Zhong Suisui's "difficulty" has passed? We believe the answer is no.

"Mercury retrograde" is not over yet

2024 will be a very sad year for the richest man. This is also the first time Zhong Suisui has encountered the darkest moment in the 28 years since he founded Nongfu Spring.

What Zhong Suisui didn't expect was that he could completely control his listed companies at a very high ratio and ensure the stability of the company's business and equity. However, he underestimated the power of public opinion.

This kind of "loss of control" is helpless for Zhong Suisui.

Faced with the impact of public opinion, Zhong Suisui also changed his previous silence and took the initiative to go to the stage to respond to the public's many questions about him and Nongfu Spring in recent years.

Not only that, in the face of the falling stock price of Nongfu Spring, Zhong Suisui’s Yangshengtang even launched a HK$2 billion buyback plan.

Although he did everything he could, he had little effect.

According to Nongfu Spring’s 2024 mid-term report, Nongfu Spring’s packaged drinking water business revenue in the first half of the year was 8.531 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 18.3%; the revenue proportion fell to 38.5% from 51% in the same period last year. It is reported that this is also the first time that the proportion of Nongfu Spring’s packaged drinking water sector has fallen below 40%.

Therefore, in the financial report, Nongfu Spring also emphasized that public opinion attacks and malicious slander had a serious negative impact on its brand.

In order to regain lost market share, Nongfu Spring has launched green bottled purified water since April this year. As a result, Zhong Suisui also took the initiative to start a price war in the bottled drinking water market. According to relevant reports from Chinese entrepreneurs, green bottled water has been promoted for a long time in first-tier cities. The price of 12 bottles of 550ml green bottled water is as low as 8.9 yuan or 9.9 yuan per bottle, which translates into a retail price of about 7 to 8 cents per bottle. The retail price of green bottled purified water in some counties has dropped to 1 yuan.

Under the price war, the effect that Nongfu Spring wanted to achieve has not been fully realized. Moreover, the listing of C’estbon has also brought great challenges to Nongfu Spring’s dominance in the bottled water market.

According to the Chishi Consulting report, in the entire packaged drinking water market, Nongfu Spring ranked first with a market share of 23.6% in 2023, China Resources Beverage ranked second with a market share of 18.4%.

In other words, Nongfu Spring’s deepest moat has begun to encounter greater challenges.

It should be noted that although the proportion of drinking water revenue has declined, the tea beverage sector has begun to prosper. The financial report shows that in the first half of the year, the Nongfu Spring tea beverage sector had revenue of 8.43 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 59.5%, accounting for 38% of total revenue. The tea beverage segment is also the stabilizer of Nongfu Spring’s performance. According to Nielsen retail data, sales of Oriental Leaf increased by more than 90% year-on-year from January to June 2024, doubling compared with the same period last year. As of now, Oriental Leaf's share in the sugar-free tea market exceeds 70%, occupying an absolute dominant position.

But it is worth noting that Zhong Suisui’s biggest concern at the moment is not the drinking water sector, but the biomedical sector.

Bigger hidden worries

Drinking water with your left hand brings good health to your right hand. This was once an invincible weapon for Zhong Suisui.

In 2019, Wantai Biotech's bivalent HPV vaccine was approved for sale. As the first domestic manufacturer to develop a bivalent HPV vaccine, Wantai Biotech was promoted to the altar.

In April 2020, Wantai Biotech was listed on the A-share market. In just one and a half years, its stock price increased by more than 4,500%. As a top player in the vaccine industry, Wantai Biotech's bivalent HPV vaccine's strong financial ability has been quickly verified by the market.

According to the financial report, from 2020 to 2022, Wantai Biotech's revenue reached 2.354 billion, 5.750 billion and 11.185 billion respectively.

In March 2022, the bivalent HPV vaccine of Watson Biotechnology was officially approved for sale, and the price war in the bivalent HPV vaccine market began. In just one year, the bivalent HPV vaccine market is on the verge of collapse.

In August this year, the Shandong Provincial Public Resource Trading Platform disclosed that the Shandong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention announced the purchase of bivalent HPV vaccine for girls of school age in Shandong Province in 2024. Yuxi Zerun Biotechnology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Watson Biotechnology, paid 27.5 yuan/tube The winning bid price.

In two years, the price of the bivalent HPV vaccine has dropped by nearly 90%. In the fierce competition environment of

, although their performance was very poor, they did not let the two companies give up. Instead, they became more aggressive in the price competition.

The result is that this approach not only collapsed the two-valent HPV vaccine market, but also destroyed the nine-valent HPV vaccine market.

Under the crazy price war, Wantai Biotechnology's performance began to gradually collapse. In 2023, Wantai Biotech's total revenue dropped to 5.511 billion, a year-on-year decrease of more than 50%. Its net profit was 1.248 billion, a year-on-year drop of 73.65%.

Entering 2024, Wantai Biotech’s performance has further collapsed.

According to the third quarter financial report of Wantai Biotechnology, the company's operating income in the first three quarters was 1.948 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 60.79%; the net profit attributable to the parent company was 267 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 85.25%; the non-net profit attributable to the parent company was 40.996 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease. 97.55%.

Looking at a single quarter, Wantai Biotech’s third-quarter revenue was 582 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 27.72%; net profit attributable to the parent company was 6.1686 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 94.18%; non-net loss after deducting was 22.5246 million yuan.

For Wantai Biotechnology, this is a very bad signal.

Compared with Watson Bio, Wantai Bio's pipeline is too single. Although the nine-valent HPV vaccine is expected to be strong, the competition is very fierce.According to the statistics of Medical Cube, there are currently 17 types of HPV vaccines in China that have entered the clinical research stage. Among them, there are 9 nine-price and higher-priced vaccines. Most of them have entered Phase III clinical trials and are expected to enter the market in the next one to two years. domestic market.

It can be seen that the situation of Wantai Biotech is not optimistic. Despite this, Wantai Biotech's share price performance is the best in the entire vaccine sector, with a decline of less than 2% during the year. Compared with larger companies such as Zhifei Bio, Watson Biotech, Kangtai Bio, CanSino, etc. With the decline, Wantai Biotech is obviously overvalued by the market. Of course, this may also be related to the high concentration of Wantai Biotech shares.

But in general, Wantai Biotech's current net profit of 267 million yuan is not enough to support a market value of 92 billion. Regardless of comparing Watson or Kangtai, the future expectations of these two companies are better than Wantai Biotech, but the market value Just over 20 billion.

In addition, the performance of Watson and Kangtai in the third quarter has stopped falling, while Wantai's performance continues to deteriorate. From a performance perspective, the challenge of the richest man has just begun.