Financial Services Association, Feb. 1 (Editor Tang Yetian) With the advent of February, the box office winner for the first month of 2024 was “The Annual Meeting Can't Be Stopped!” This dark horse movie with the highest comedy ratings in the past five years tells a funny story of migrant workers before and after the annual meeting of a large group. Outside of the screen, stories of listed companies' annual meetings also continue to unfold.

New Oriental Annual Meeting, Yu Minhong “takes over”

After breaking out of the dispute at the end of 2023, Dongfang Selection held a Lunar New Year's greetings via live broadcast. Dong Yuhui, who became a senior partner of Oriental Selection and founded the new company “Walk with Hui,” showed up. While the other anchors were reciting congratulations, Dong Yuhui burst into tears and hugged Yu Minhong. Meanwhile, at the New Oriental Annual Meeting, some employees were singing their own accusations, “They all do live broadcasts and engage in cultural tourism, no one cares about education. Lao Yu is already in his sixties. Every day he livestreams and says sorry.” The rant video was personally posted by Yu Minhong.

After the turmoil between Dongfang Selection and Dong Yuhui came to an end, news such as plans to launch cross-border e-commerce business on TikTok and a 57.4% year-on-year decline in mid-term net profit for the 2024 fiscal year has been released one after another since the new year. In January 2024, the Hong Kong Stock Oriental Selection fell 17%, outperforming the Hang Seng Technology Index (falling 20%), and underperforming as well as the Hang Seng Index (down 9%).

On the evening of January 31, Oriental Selection and New Oriental jointly announced that New Oriental and Yu Minhong each promised to purchase a total of HK$700 million of the company's shares at market prices. On February 1, the Hong Kong Stock Oriental Selection market once surged 6.5%. The agency commented that the increase in shareholding demonstrated the confidence of the group and management and supported market expectations. However, the market is very divided about the company's positioning as MCN, retail, and product companies. At this stage, there is still uncertainty about the model. Organizational capabilities and supply chain stability are gradually being consolidated and explored, and brand power is still being built.

Gree's annual conference storm: You can get a 200 million year-end bonus and a free work phone at the same time

The annual meeting is also a window for some companies to announce their performance and explain their development strategies.

On the evening of January 31, A-share Gree Electric issued an announcement, saying that it had recently paid attention to false news such as “On January 28, Chairman Dong Mingzhu said that the year-end bonus of 200 million yuan will be given at Gree 2024 Global Dream Festival, which is actually a Gree phone”. A special statement was made that the company's additional 200 million yuan year-end bonus had nothing to do with free work phones; and that the company decided to equip every employee with a free work phone.

Migrant workers can get both a 200 million year-end bonus and a free work phone. Before the rumor went viral, Gree Electric had just held an annual meeting (the “2024 Global Dream Festival” in the statement), and once again hit the social networking platform hot list due to ridicule on a music alley show at the conference. Also at the next annual meeting, Gree Electric Chairman Dong Mingzhu revealed that Gree's profit in 2023 was about 29 billion dollars, tax revenue reached a record high, and shouted out to shareholders that if they have confidence in Gree, they can hold Gree shares for a long time. Since the annual meeting, A-share Gree Electric has risen close to 5% in four trading days.

Gree Electric, which is in the focus of public opinion, is the same A-share white electric leader as Haier Group and Midea Group. At the annual business meeting held by the Midea Group on January 16, the news that “beautiful people have written the best business performance in history” was also revealed. So far, Midea Group's stock price has also risen 5%.

On January 27, at the Haier Group Work Summary and Commendation Conference, it announced that the total global profit for 2023 was 26.7 billion yuan, an increase of 6%, ranking first in the retail sales volume of the world's major home appliance brands for 15 consecutive years, and the stock price has risen 1% so far.

According to China Merchants Securities's opinion, driven by the domestic sales boom of air conditioners in 2023, Baidian generally showed strong fundamental performance, and leading home appliance companies generally contributed to double-digit performance growth certainty, compounded by continuous share repurchases and rolling equity incentives to ensure the strength of their business strategies. In addition to public opinion, the market also gave a positive response to “vote with a money bag” to listed companies with good performance.

HNA Annual Meeting: 400 million yuan cash wall and 60,000 employees

Some companies merged their annual meetings into work arrangement meetings. For example, they are expected to turn losses into profits (estimated net profit of 300 million yuan to 450 million yuan in 2023), achieve their first operating profit in the past five years, and recently hit the hot search HNA Holdings due to the 400 million red envelope wall.

At the HNA Airlines special conference on January 20, Fang Wei, chairman of the board of directors of its current holding shareholder Dongda Group, stated that the meeting was consistent with the content of the annual meeting, and proposed handing out red envelopes to ordinary employees at the meeting. Then, on January 29, Hainan Airlines Group and its member companies held red envelope distribution ceremonies all over the country. A total of nearly 60,000 employees from 35 companies in the aviation sector “offered” red envelopes. A profitable enterprise can get 10,000 yuan red envelopes for each ordinary employee, and a loss-making enterprise can get a 5,000 yuan red envelope for each ordinary employee.

“Sending red envelopes” is not limited to HNA. According to the official WeChat account of Liaoning Fangda Group on January 18, Fang Wei recently conducted continuous research on its listed companies such as Northeast Pharmaceutical and ZTE Commercial. In the investigation, in addition to guiding company-related work, Fang Wei also recommended handing out cash red envelopes to employees. The arrangement is: employees of the two companies will pay 10,000 yuan per person, retired employees of ZTE Commercial will be paid 3,000 yuan each, and retired employees of Northeast Pharmaceutical will be paid 2,000 yuan per person. In addition to the above three companies, Fangda Group also has two A-share listed companies, Fangda Carbon and Fangda Special Steel.