Produced by Radar Finance Hongtu Text | Edited by Li Yihui | Deep Sea
On July 25, the lithium battery diaphragm leader Enjie shares hit a new low for the year.
Recently, the company received a warning letter from the Yunnan Securities Regulatory Bureau. The reason was that the company’s actual controller family failed to accurately identify and report the scope of persons acting in concert, resulting in inaccurate disclosure of relevant information about listed companies. At the same time, due to other violations, the Yunnan Securities Regulatory Bureau took measures to order corrections and issue warning letters to the actual controller family of Enjie Shares and its concerted actors.
Among the above-mentioned persons who were issued warning letters, they include the company’s chairman Li Xiaoming (Paul Xiaoming Lee), vice chairman Li Xiaohua, etc. Among them, Li Xiaoming is known as the richest man in Yunnan.
This is not the first time that Li Xiaoming and Li Xiaohua have been involved in a storm. In 2022, the brothers were placed under residential surveillance at a designated residence by the public security agency for related matters.
However, he won the shares of Enjie, the richest man in Yunnan, and now the stock price has been falling. It has fallen by about 47% since the beginning of the year. The current total market value is 28.2 billion yuan.
In terms of performance, according to the company’s performance forecast, Enjie’s net profit attributable to the parent company in the first half of this year is expected to drop by 74.5%-81.62% year-on-year.
Industry analysts believe that the technical barriers to diaphragms are relatively high and there is room for price reduction. As the industry leader, Enjie Co., Ltd. has begun to seize the market by exchanging price for volume. But on the other hand, falling product prices means shrinking profits, a process that is undoubtedly painful and torturous.
Many people in the family of the actual controller were warned
Tianyancha data shows that Enjie Co., Ltd. was established in 2006 and is located in Yuxi City, Yunnan Province, with a registered capital of 977.7561 million yuan.
On July 23, Enjie Shares announced that the company had recently received the "Decision on Taking Measures to Order Corrections and Issue Warning Letters to Enjie Shares" (Administrative Supervision Measures Decision [2024] No. 015) issued by the Yunnan Securities Regulatory Bureau.
At the same time, the company's actual controller Li Xiaoming's family, the company's shareholders Heyi Investment and Heli Investment received the "Measures of ordering corrections and issuing warning letters to the actual controller family of Enjie Shares and their concerted actions" issued by the Yunnan Securities Regulatory Bureau. Decision" (Administrative Supervision Measures Decision [2024] No. 016).
After investigation, the actual controller family of Enjie Co., Ltd. did not accurately identify the scope of persons acting in concert and report to the company. Enjie Co., Ltd. did not find any inconsistency in the same information during the information disclosure management process, resulting in multiple regular reports, temporary reports, etc. The information disclosed in the information disclosure documents about persons acting in concert with the actual controller family is inaccurate.
In response, the Yunnan Securities Regulatory Bureau decided to take administrative regulatory measures to order Enjie Shares to make corrections and issue a warning letter.
In addition, after investigation, it was found that the actual controller of Enjie Co., Ltd. had inaccurate identification of persons acting in concert and disclosure of relevant equity information, failed to disclose the simplified equity change report in a timely manner as required, and stopped buying and selling the company's stocks, which was an excessive violation of regulations. The situation of reducing shareholdings.
Specifically, since the listing of Enjie Shares, the actual controller family has not identified Heyi Investment and Heli Investment (before September 27, 2021) as concerted actors of the actual controller family, resulting in unforeseen circumstances among the aforementioned parties. Fulfill reporting and announcement obligations as required and stop buying and selling company stocks.
Regarding the excessive and illegal shareholding reduction, after investigation, Li Xiaoming is a shareholder of more than 5% of Enjie shares and a member of the actual controller family, and Heyi Investment and Heli Investment (before September 27, 2021) are members of the actual controller family of Enjie shares. Persons acting in concert reduced their holdings of 12.381 million shares of Enjie through centralized bidding transactions between December 24, 2019 and February 14, 2020. The cumulative reduction of shares accounted for 1.54% of the total shares of listed companies. The above-mentioned behavior violated the provisions of Article 9 of the "Several Provisions on the Reduction of Shareholdings by Shareholders, Directors, Supervisors and Senior Management of Listed Companies" (China Securities Regulatory Commission Announcement (2017) No. 9).
Based on the above violations, the Yunnan Securities Regulatory Bureau decided to take administrative supervision measures to order corrections and issue warning letters to Li Xiaoming, yanma, sherry lee, Li Xiaohua, yanyang hui, jerry yang li, Heyi Investment, and Heli Investment.
According to the company’s past announcements, the current actual controllers of Enjie shares are six members of the Li Xiaoming family, including Paul Xiaoming Lee, his younger brother Li Xiaohua, Li Xiaoming’s wife Yan Ma, and his sister-in-law Hui Yanyang (yang yang hui) ), daughter sherry lee, nephew jerry yang li.
Except Li Xiaohua, the other five are all American nationals. Although Li Xiaohua is a Chinese national, he also obtained a U.S. green card.
After being placed under supervision, Enjie Shares, the company’s actual controller and its persons acting in concert all apologized to investors in the announcement, and the company’s actual controller and its persons acting in concert promised to use their own and self-raised funds in the future. Within 12 months, stocks that have been excessively reduced or illegally reduced will be repurchased, and the profits generated will be turned over to Enjie Shares.
Radar Finance noticed that during the period when the stock price of Enjie was at a high level, the Li Xiaoming family conducted a large-scale centralized reduction of holdings. According to media statistics, from December 2021 to June 2022, Li Xiaohua indirectly reduced his holdings by 2.0337 million shares and directly reduced his holdings by 2.9185 million shares through Heli Investment and Shanghai Hengzou. At the same time, shareholders Sherry Lee and Jerry Yangli also reduced their holdings. In this round of reduction, the Li family cashed out more than 2 billion yuan in total.
In addition, since 2023, Enjie Shares has frequently disclosed shareholder pledge announcements. According to the shareholder share pledge change announcement on July 10, Li Xiaohua, Heyi Investment and persons acting in concert hold 401 million shares of Enjie, of which 50.96% are pledged, accounting for 20.88% of the company's total share capital.
Brothers Li Xiaoming and Li Xiaohua were once placed under residential surveillance
Enjie Co., Ltd. stated in its 2023 annual report that the company is the world's largest supplier of lithium battery separators in terms of shipments, and its market share is also the world's largest.
As the “diaphragm boss”, Enjie Co., Ltd. has been making rapid progress in the field of lithium batteries, but the Li Xiaoming brothers started in the tobacco industry.
Public information shows that Li Xiaoming was born in 1958 and Li Xiaohua was born in 1962. The two grew up in well-off families. Their father was the director of Yunnan’s No. 1 Plastics Factory.
After graduating from college, his brother Li Xiaoming joined the Kunming Plastics Research Institute of China and became the deputy director in just 2 years. He was only 26 years old at this time.
In 1989, Li Xiaoming, who had been the deputy director for five years, got an opportunity to go to the United States for further study, and immediately left for graduate school at the University of Massachusetts. Not long after Li Xiaoming went to the United States, his younger brother Li Xiaohua also came to the University of Massachusetts, where he also majored in polymer materials.
After graduation, the Li brothers worked in the United States for several years before returning to China to start a business in 1996. In their hometown of Yuxi, Yunnan, they jointly established Hongta Plastic with local state-owned enterprises. Its main business is cigarette labels and bopp films used for cigarette packaging. For cigarette packaging, the company's customers include Yunnan's Hongta Group and Hongyun Honghe Group, as well as other well-known tobacco companies such as Heilongjiang Tobacco and Sichuan and Chongqing China Tobacco.
embraced the tobacco company, and the Li brothers started a family. The prospectus of Enjie Co., Ltd. has recorded that since entering the cigarette film industry in 1996, after years of market development, it has accumulated a number of large-scale high-quality tobacco enterprise customers. Relying on the resource advantages of these customers, the company expanded into new business areas in 2006 and successfully entered the cigarette label industry. industry and developed rapidly.
The so-called new business refers to the fact that in 2006, the Li brothers acquired Yunnan Yuxi Innovation Color Printing Co., Ltd., which was later renamed Yunnan Innovation New Materials Co., Ltd. in 2011. In September 2016, the company was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, with the stock name Innovation Shares.
At the beginning of its listing, the main business of Innovation Shares did not include lithium battery separators. It was not until 2018 that the company completed the asset restructuring of Shanghai Enjie and changed its name to Enjie Co., Ltd., thus entering the lithium battery separator business.
Starting from cigarette films and cigarette labels, developing and growing in the packaging industry, and then entering the new energy field, the Li Xiaoming family has successfully captured the limelight several times, and finally became Enjie Shares.
In September 2021, the company's stock price reached a maximum of more than 300 yuan per share. On the Hurun Report that year, Li Xiaoming and Li Xiaohua's wealth was as high as 72.5 billion and 54 billion yuan respectively. But on the 2023 Hurun Rich List, the wealth of Li Xiaoming and Li Xiaohua's family shrank to 18 billion yuan and 13.5 billion yuan respectively.
At the same time, Li Xiaoming has been in constant trouble in the past two years. In November 2022, Enjie Co., Ltd. issued a major announcement stating that Li Xiaoming and the company's vice chairman and general manager Li Xiaohua were placed under residential surveillance at a designated residence by the public security agency due to related matters.
On August 25, 2023, Enjie announced that Li Xiaoming recently received the "Decision to Cancel the Case" issued by the public security agency. According to relevant regulations, he decided to cancel the aforementioned case. Currently, both Li Xiaohua and Li Xiaoming are performing their duties normally in the company.
In February of this year, an investor asked Enjie Shares a question. The general idea was that a stock major v issued an article pointing out that the company’s actual controller Li Xiaoming cashed out tens of billions, immigrated to the United States with his family, and stopped upgrading and investing in industrial technology.
Enjie Shares later responded on the investor interaction platform, "None of the above information is true."
Enjie Shares' profits fell sharply
The annual report shows that after the completion of major asset restructuring in 2018, Enjie Shares' main business can be divided into Category three: film products (lithium battery isolation film, cigarette film and flat film), packaging printed matter (cigarette labels and sterile packaging), packaging products (special paper, holographic anti-counterfeiting anodized aluminum and other products).
Among them, membrane products are the absolute main revenue of the company. flush ifind data shows that from 2021 to 2023, the company's membrane products revenue accounted for 86.61%, 89.35% and 89.38% respectively.
However, after years of rapid development, the diaphragm industry is no longer prosperous. The market competition is fierce and prices continue to decline. In last year's annual report, Enjie Co., Ltd. stated that due to downstream destocking and cost reduction requirements, the concentrated release of new production capacity by diaphragm companies, and intensified market competition, the overall product price of the diaphragm industry has continued to decline for a year.
Affected by this, the company's operating income in 2023 was 12.042 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 4.36%, and the net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was 2.527 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 36.84%.
China Post Securities pointed out that due to the intensified competition in the industry, the company’s separator product prices have been adjusted, resulting in the company’s gross profit margin declining quarter by quarter starting in 2023. Compared with the gross profit margin of over 40% in 2022, the decline is greater.
Since the beginning of this year, Enjie’s earnings have continued to be under pressure. According to the latest performance forecast, the company expects the net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies to be approximately 258 million yuan to 358 million yuan in the first half of 2024, a year-on-year decrease of 74.5% to 81.62%.The reason for the performance change of
is that in the first half of 2024, the overall supply and demand pattern of the lithium battery isolation film industry was slightly loose. The combination of downstream cost reduction pressure and intensified market competition caused the price of lithium battery isolation film products to decline.
It is reported that the diaphragm industry started a price war in the second half of last year and continues to this day. My Steel Network data shows that the price of wet separators from February to March was 1.3 yuan/square meter, and by April 3 it had dropped to 0.9 yuan/square meter.
Under this circumstance, as stated in the performance forecast, Enjie "actively responds to market competition and increases market expansion efforts." The relevant person in charge of the company told the media that the company will actively adjust prices starting from the third quarter of 2023 and will Continue to consolidate its leading position.
However, some people believe that the price of separators will continue to drop in the future. According to Zhang Jinhui, a senior researcher at Xinchen Information, due to oversupply, companies have taken the initiative to reduce prices in tenders. Prices will continue to fall in the future, and some companies may start to lose money.
Domestic competition is fierce, and the industry leader Enjie Co., Ltd. has set its sights on overseas markets. According to the China Post Securities Research Report, in 2023, the company's overseas sales revenue will be 2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of more than 50%. The company's diaphragm base in Hungary has been completed and the first coated film production line has been started. The US market has initially planned to build a 700 million square meter coated separator production line.
However, it should be noted that the sales of new energy vehicles in Europe and the United States have slowed down. Data shows that sales from January to May 2024 will only increase by 6.84% year-on-year.
The slowdown in downstream growth will directly reduce the demand for materials in all upstream links. Can going overseas help Enjie Group get out of the gloom? At present, there is still great uncertainty.
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