China Housing Daily reporter Fu Shanshan reported from Shanghai
On February 7, it was reported that China Merchants Shekou Industrial Zone Holding Co., Ltd. *** hereinafter referred to as "China Merchants Shekou", 001979At the beginning of the year, SZ) made a new adjustment to the company's organizational structure, merging its seven regional companies into five.
Before this adjustment, there were originally 7 regional companies in the real estate development sector of China Merchants Shekou, including: North China, East China, Jiangnan, Central China, Southwest China, South China, and Shenzhen. After the adjustment, China Merchants Shekou has formed East China, South China, North China, Jiangnan and West China.
In this adjustment, the Shenzhen and South China regions were merged into new areas, and the Central China and Southwest regions were abolished and merged into other regions.
For this adjustment, a reporter from China Real Estate News confirmed the news to a relevant person in China Merchants Shekou, who did not directly confirm the authenticity of the news, but said that "the company will make an announcement later", but as of press time, China Merchants Shekou did not issue an announcement on organizational changes.
At present, the real estate industry is still in a period of deep adjustment, and it has long been the consensus of the industry that real estate enterprises are turning inward, "moving the knife" on the organizational structure, and seeking benefits from management. According to the rough statistics of China Real Estate News, since 2024, many leading real estate companies such as Vanke, Longfor, Jinmao, Greentown, and China Resources have made adjustments to their organizational structures.
In the eyes of industry insiders, the core of the organizational adjustment of real estate enterprises this year is still focusing on convergence, and regional merger is the main trend. For example, Longfor promoted the merger of city companies, Jinmao merged with East China and Suzhou-Anhui regions, and China Resources Land also reorganized 5 regions and 20 regional companies, etc.
This time, the organizational adjustment of China Merchants Shekou is also of a similar logic.
First of all, the Shenzhen region and the South China region will be integrated into the new South China region, and the entire Greater Bay Area will be presented in a more complete and powerful regional form.
In the past, in the era of real estate impact scale, real estate companies split the organization into multiple centers, in order to cultivate stronger regional companies and make the group bigger and stronger. However, now, the real estate market continues to be sluggish, and the development strategy of real estate enterprises has also changed, with strategic focus, regional focus, and business focus. Through this focus, real estate enterprises can give full play to their advantageous resources in advantageous areas, improve their deep cultivation capabilities, and improve operational efficiency.
From the perspective of gross profit margin, in the first half of 2023, the gross profit margin of the Shenzhen area of China Merchants Shekou will still maintain 2303% high level. The merger of Shenzhen and South China into the New South China Region also facilitates the company to focus its most advantageous resources and strength on the most profitable areas.
In this adjustment, the central and southwest regions "disappeared" from the territory of China Merchants Shekou. This adjustment reflects the current performance-oriented criteria of real estate enterprises.
In fact, from 2022 onwards, many real estate companies in the industry have proposed that profit should be used as the performance evaluation criterion more than sales. At present, the 2023 annual report of China Merchants Shekou has not yet been released, but it can be seen from its 2023 semi-annual report that among the seven major regions, the gross profit margin in Central China and Southwest China is low.
In particular, the gross profit margin of China Merchants Shekou in Central China during the period was only 738%, less than one-third of the Shenzhen region, less than half of the East China region and the Jiangnan region, and the bottom among the major regions.
Lv Bin, deputy general manager of China Merchants Shekou and general manager of Central China, said at the 2023 debriefing and appraisal conference that the market in 2024 is not optimistic, and Central China is facing many risks such as poor inventory structure, high cash pressure, and heavy profit pressure. This also reveals the problems existing in the Central China region of China Merchants Shekou.
In the first half of 2023, the operating income of China Merchants Shekou in the southwest region fell sharply by more than 30%, ranking among the top in major regions. In the same period, although the gross profit margin in southwest China was higher than that in central China, there was still a gap compared with other regions, which was 1335%。
According to some industry insiders, after the cancellation of the Central China and Southwest regions of China Merchants Shekou, there is a high probability that they will be merged into other regions.
In addition to "fusion", in order to find new performance growth points in the great changes in the industry, the establishment of new departments is also a major focus of the current adjustment of real estate enterprises. For example, Vanke established a commercial division at the beginning of the year to strengthen its commercial capabilities.
This time, in addition to merging some regions, there is also news that China Merchants Shekou has established "China Merchants Construction Management" to enter and develop the construction business, but the news has not been confirmed by China Merchants Shekou.
If the news is true, China Merchants Shekou will become one of the earliest companies among the leading central enterprises to focus on the agency construction business. For China Merchants Shekou to enter the agency construction business, some real estate industry observers believe that with the clearing of the real estate industry, the number of non-performing assets in the market has increased and needs to be dealt with urgently, and this market background provides opportunities for the development of agency construction, and many real estate companies are accelerating the layout of this business. However, agent construction is a "hard bone", and now there are many competitors in the agent construction market, and it is not easy for China Merchants Shekou to "get a piece of the pie".