On the evening of January 9, China Evergrande (3333HK) issued an announcement in response to the report "Evergrande has never been profitable" released by short-seller GMT Research earlier.
Evergrande said that there was no actual basis for the relevant reports, and that "the company's financial statements for the past years have been audited by PwC and have obtained a standard unqualified opinion." ”
It is reported that in the relevant short selling report, GMT Research believes that Evergrande has changed the sales revenue recognition method since 2021, which has reversed the revenue of more than 664 billion yuan and the net profit of 102 billion yuan, and the contract liabilities have also increased significantly, and the profits from these sales will also be reconfirmed in theory.
While there is little evidence, Evergrande's gross profit over the past two and a half years is only 16 billion yuan, and it is suspected that those profits never existed, the agency said.
In response to the above questions, Evergrande responded that the report suspected that there was no lack of correlation in profits simply based on low gross profit, "Since 2021, the decline in profits has not only been due to the decline in selling prices caused by industry difficulties, but also related to the proportion of properties sold by the company with low gross profit." ”
Regarding the company's change in revenue recognition method in 2021, Evergrande explained, "It is mainly because the company has adopted a more compliant accounting treatment according to the current environment in the context of the liquidity crisis and the loss of a large number of personnel." ”
For example, Evergrande has lost 272% of its share capital in the past two and a half years, while the proportion of real estate companies such as Aoyuan, Fantasia and Yuzhou Real Estate is much lower than that of Evergrande.
In response, Evergrande responded that the company's serious losses are related to scale and asset quality, and because of the large losses, it believes that the company's profits have never been correlated.
Evergrande also stressed that the short selling report did not give substantial evidence that the company had never made any profits, and the so-called conclusion was only the author's speculation and suspicionAnd the short selling report uses the results of 2023 to demonstrate its accuracy against the company in 2016, which has no substantive basis.
In addition, Evergrande said that the report has been reviewed by the company's audit committee member and auditor, Shanghui Pak Bhd, which said it would not withdraw their previous audit opinion on the company's financial statements.
However, regarding GMT Research's question about the "low ratio" of Evergrande's contract liabilities, Evergrande did not respond in the announcement.
In an earlier short-selling report, GMT Research cited as an example that at the end of 2020, Country Garden and Evergrande had contracted liabilities as a percentage of the total number of properties under construction, respectively, compared to around 50% in 2010. After revising the revenue indicator, Evergrande's indicator rose to 57% at the beginning of 2021, which is on par with Country Garden.
It is worth mentioning that for the current Evergrande, the most concerned by the outside world is the winding-up petition hearing that will be held on January 29.
On December 4 last year, Evergrande's petition for winding-up was retried in the Hong Kong High Court, and the petitioner said that it would not ask the court to grant a winding-up order and did not object to Evergrande's application for adjournment. Subsequently, China Evergrande said that it would take time to discuss the restructuring plan, so it requested an adjournment, and the remaining creditors did not object to the adjournment application. After hearing submissions, the judge adjourned the winding-up hearing to 29 January 2024.