Text/Yangcheng Evening News reporter Huang Ting
After suffering the impact of the epidemic and sluggish business conditions in 2020, the performance of Nongfu Spring, the "nature's money printing machine", will pick up in 2021 and return to double-digit growth.
According to the 2021 financial report released by Nongfu Spring on March 28, the annual revenue of Nongfu Spring in the past year was 29.696 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 29.8%; the profit attributable to owners of the parent company was 7.162 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 35.7% .
The revenue of tea beverages increased by nearly 50%; the revenue of other products such as soda drinks increased by as much as 66%, but only accounted for 6% of the total revenue.
The revenue of each product outperforms the industry average
High profitability has always been the reason for Nongfu Spring's attention.
In 2020, Nongfu Spring’s IPO price was HK$21.5 per share when it landed on the Hong Kong stock market. With a dazzling performance, the scale of frozen capital was as high as HK$677.7 billion, which was the largest “frozen capital king” in the history of Hong Kong stocks at that time.
After the listing, the stock price rose all the way to 68.4 Hong Kong dollars per share, and the valuation was as high as 138 times. It successfully established the status of "Shui Mao" and promoted the chairman and general manager Zhong Suisui to the throne of China's richest man.
However, in 2020 when the epidemic broke out, the myth of Nongfu Spring's high profitability was interrupted for a time, and there was a situation of weak growth.
In 2020, revenue fell by 4.76% year-on-year, and the growth rate of net profit dropped to 6.52%. In addition to the impact of the epidemic, there are also factors behind the gradual saturation of the market.
"With the improvement of Chinese consumers' awareness of the pros and cons of water species, the market for mountain spring water has reached a certain ceiling, and the future and international trends are dominated by mineral water." China Food Industry Analyst Zhu Danpeng pointed out that it is not difficult to see that Nongfu Spring has realized its own shortcomings and is increasing the speed and intensity of the layout of categories other than spring water.
As the two major revenue sources, Nongfu Spring's packaged drinking water and beverage business revenue will show a recovery trend in 2021.
Among them, the revenue of packaged drinking water products was 17.058 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 22.1%, and it was still the main source of revenue, with a contribution rate of 57.4%.
The revenue growth of tea beverages, functional beverages, fruit juices and other products was 48.3%, 32.3%, 32.2% and 66.0% respectively.
In the highly competitive beverage segment, Nongfu Spring's achievements last year almost all outperformed the industry average.
According to the data of the China Beverage Industry Association cited in the financial report, the operating income of China's beverage manufacturing industry increased by 13.5% year-on-year, of which bottled drinking water increased by 12% year-on-year, tea drinks and other soft drinks increased by 12% year-on-year, and fruit juice drinks increased by 14%.
The launch of new products has been significantly accelerated
For a long time, the high gross profit margin of Nongfu Spring has been talked about by the outside world.
It was mentioned in its prospectus that from 2017 to 2019, the gross profit margins of Nongfu Spring's packaged drinking water were 60.5%, 56.5% and 60.2% respectively, dubbed "nature's money printing machine".
The financial report shows that in 2021, the gross profit of all categories of Nongfu Spring will be 17.656 billion yuan, an increase of 30.7% from 13.508 billion yuan in the same period of the previous year, and the gross profit margin has also increased slightly from 59% in the same period of the previous year to 59.5%.
Behind the slight increase in gross profit margin, the launch of new products of Nongfu Spring's product lines will be significantly accelerated in 2021.
For example, for the tea drinking track, while attracting new consumer groups with the "tea π" cup of tea, the old-fashioned tea beverage Oriental Leaf has launched new flavors of green mandarin Pu'er and black rice tea, as well as "beat" milk tea products and new winter limited flavors of cocoa. milk tea.
The promotion of new products has also brought trouble to Nongfu Spring.
In June last year, the promotion of a dawn white peach-flavored sparkling water from Nongfu Spring mentioned that "the dawn white peach is produced in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan", although the company has since responded that "there are no ingredients imported from Fukushima, Japan in the ingredients of this product", but This negative event caused the market value of Nongfu Spring to directly evaporate 280 billion Hong Kong dollars.
Zhu Danpeng believes that the new products in 2021 will continue the high-profit "playing style" of Nongfu Spring in the past, and Nongfu Spring has chosen a relatively stable method in the promotion of new products, so no matter from the perspective of revenue or net profit, it does not exceed The self-approved cost-to-sales ratio, the whole new product promotion and income are relatively obvious, which also drives the steady growth of the group's overall performance.
"However, for the beverage track that has gradually 'introduced' in recent years, Nongfu Spring has to implement a multi-brand, multi-category, multi-scene, multi-channel, and multi-consumer strategy to achieve sustainable growth."
At the same time as the release of the financial report, Nongfu Spring also officially announced a "big deal" dividend plan.
According to the dividend distribution plan, based on the operating conditions in 2021, the board of directors will propose to distribute a final cash dividend of 0.45 yuan per share for the year ended December 31, 2021 (a total dividend of approximately 5.061 billion yuan) at the upcoming annual general meeting. The dividend ratio As high as 71.7%, nearly 1 times higher than last year.
As of June 30, 2021, Zhong Suisui, as the head, directly holds 17.15% of Nongfu Spring, and indirectly holds 66.82% of the company's equity through Yangshengtang, holding a total of 83.98% of Nongfu Spring.
Based on this calculation, through this dividend, Zhong Suisui will have an account of about 4.25 billion yuan.
According to the "2022 Global Rich List" released by the Hurun Research Institute, 68-year-old Zhong Suisui's wealth has dropped by nearly 100 billion yuan, but he remains China's richest man with 455 billion yuan.