Under the epidemic, various industries are like treading on thin ice. As a capital-intensive and personnel-intensive industry, the real estate industry, which already has a Damocles sword of "landlords do not fire", is now facing a sales crackdown, particularly hard hit, even if Country Garden Holdings, the "number one housing enterprise in the universe", can not be spared.

According to public data, in February 2020, Country Garden Holdings, together with his joint venture company and associated company, realized contract sales of about 20.92 billion yuan in the company's shareholders' rights and interests in a single month, a decrease of 49.97% compared with the same period in February 2019. The contract sales floor area belonging to the shareholders' rights and interests of the company is about 2.52 million square meters, 50.43% less than the same period in February 2019.

Do you save yourself or him in the face of market difficulties? If we had acted earlier, there would have been more hope. Country Garden Holdings first announced a wave of personnel adjustments.

01 Country Garden Holdings personnel adjustment or layoffs in disguise?

On February 24th, Country Garden Holdings announced the adjustment of a number of regions and groups, including the merger of the headquarters investment and design centers to form an investment planning center; the reduction of 14 regions, leaving a total of 55 regions and headquarters; 38 senior executives changed defense. there is a rotation of functional executives and regional presidents at headquarters.

In Country Garden Holdings's message to the outside world, this move is to achieve the purpose of enhancing the competitiveness of enterprises by delegating the powers and responsibilities of the group, streamlining business processes, and coordinating regional management.

However, we note that the local regions where Country Garden Holdings merges this time are not limited to small and remote regions, such as Shandong, northern Shandong, northern Henan, western Henan, Hubei, Wuhan, Shanghai and Jiangsu. East Zhejiang and Ningbo are large-scale business regions located in the core business circle.

The merger with the region was accompanied by changes in the positions of 38 senior executives of Country Garden Holdings, many of whom were given other positions on the basis of their original duties, that is, several positions, while another 34 senior executives were dismissed.

Generally speaking, the adjustment of organizational structure is mostly related to the advance and retreat of personnel. Although Country Garden Holdings officially did not disclose the total number of personnel changes, there are media reports that a person close to Country Garden Holdings said, "the merger area is true, and so are the layoffs. 34 senior executives have been laid off only apparently." "

Coincidentally, Country Garden Holdings has been plagued by "layoffs" in the past year.

Around this time last year, an article entitled "Country Garden Holdings starts a large-scale personnel adjustment: some departments have identified 50 per cent layoffs" was fermented online. Country Garden Holdings's employees have been plagued by "layoffs" since construction began on February 12, and "this time it involves a wider range, from headquarters to regions," the news said.

Then, founder Yang Guoqiang denied the layoffs, "it is certainly not layoffs. It is not easy for us to recruit everyone. We do not want anyone to be laid off in our company due to changes in market conditions." "

But the silent data confirm some facts. According to Country Garden Holdings's financial report, Country Garden Holdings had 116000 employees at the end of June 2019, down 15000 from 131000 at the end of 2018.

For the obviously inconsistent remarks, Country Garden Holdings President and Executive Director Mo Bin responded, "Country Garden Holdings is not layoffs, but to optimize the organizational structure, do performance reviews, employees also advance and retreat." In other words, these 15000 people have been "optimized".

At the same time, Country Garden Holdings overseas project personnel are also "optimizing". Country Garden Holdings Forest City, located in Malaysia, has so far laid off nearly 500 people, and relevant media reported that Country Garden Holdings will make two more rounds of layoffs after the Spring Festival.

It has been repeatedly exposed that personnel "optimization", Country Garden Holdings has always been known for speed, "the first room in the universe" what are you worried about?

02 、More than one trillion debtCountry Garden Holdings is also short of money?

"the martial arts all over the world, but fast but not broken." Country Garden Holdings runs really fast.

In 2013, Country Garden Holdings became a new member of the real estate club; in 2016, Country Garden Holdings broke through 300 billion yuan for the first time to enter the top three of real estate enterprises; in 2017, Country Garden Holdings topped the list of real estate sales with a stunning 500 billion yuan; and in 2019, according to the latest announcement, Country Garden Holdings's equity sales will reach a new high of 552.2 billion yuan on the basis of 501.88 billion yuan in 2018.

As we all know, as a capital-intensive industry, housing enterprises rely very deeply on debt, financing to borrow money, and then take land to build houses, and then use profits to repay loans, debt is almost the source of the development of real estate enterprises. With the expansion of the scale of housing enterprises, debt is naturally on the rise.

As of June 30, 2019, Country Garden Holdings's total debt reached 1.56 trillion, of which current liabilities totaled 1.31 trillion and non-current liabilities totaled 248 billion.

What kind of concept is this? The GDP of Guizhou Province in 2018 is only 1.48 trillion. Country Garden Holdings's leverage is really not so high.

Like other real estate companies, bank loans and bond issuance are also Country Garden Holdings's main financing methods. As of June 30, 2019, Country Garden Holdings Bank and other loans, priority notes, corporate bonds and convertible bonds were 221.865 billion yuan, 57.465 billion yuan, 47.336 billion yuan and 5.223 billion yuan respectively.

In this regard, Country Garden Holdings pointed out in the financial report, "in the face of the challenges and opportunities brought by the fierce competition and continuous integration of the real estate industry and the further differentiation of the market, the company will adhere to sound financial policies and risk control measures." "

However, from the relevant financial indicators, risk control measures need to be strengthened. As of June 30, 2019, Country Garden Holdings's asset-liability ratio was 89.33%. Compared with Sunac, Vanke and Evergrande listed in Hong Kong, Country Garden Holdings's debt ratio was second only to Sunac, nearly 6 percentage points higher than Hengdu, and the net loan ratio was 58.5%. Up 8.9% from 49.6% at the end of 2018.

On January 8, 2020, Country Garden Holdings announced that he planned to issue US $5.125% January 2027 bills and US $5.625% January 2030 bills, and the net proceeds would be used to refinance existing medium-and long-term foreign debt due within one year.

Looking back slightly, around December last year, Country Garden Holdings just completed four ABS financing projects, with a total amount of 2.665 billion yuan.

In the face of the crisis, the speed of bond issuance by major real estate companies has accelerated significantly, with the number of bond issuance in February alone reaching half of the annual issuance in 2019.

In addition to issuing bonds, how does Country Garden Holdings break it? In fact, from Yu Liang put forward the "Silver Age" trend judgment-the most golden years of the real estate industry has passed, to the industry policy tightening step by step, Country Garden Holdings is also seeking transformation.

According to Yang Guoqiang's blueprint for Country Garden Holdings's future, Country Garden Holdings should be a high-tech enterprise, with robots moving bricks, building houses and making hamburgers. Now, nearly 2 years have passed, and Yang Guoqiang has placed high hopes on what happened to the robot industry, which has invested a lot of money.

03 、Yang Guoqiang and his dream of "robot"

Xu Jiayin has a dream of building a car, Wang Jianlin has a dream of Hollywood, and Song Weiping has a dream of football. Like most real estate bosses, Yang Guoqiang cherishes a dream of building robots.

Country Garden Holdings's robot industry began to kick off in June 2018. In June, Shenzhen Robot Industrial Park was unveiled; in July, Guangdong Bozhilin Robotics Co., Ltd. was established, with Shen Gang, once the head of the Robotics Department of Fanuke Robotics Research Institute in Japan, as president; in September, it announced that it would invest 80 billion yuan in five years to build Shunde Robot Valley; in May 2019, it announced that it would invest 50 billion yuan to build Changsha Xiangjiang Zhigu project in Changsha.

As of December 2019, Bo Zhilin had a R & D talent team of more than 3000 people, of which PhDs and masters accounted for more than 31 per cent.

Country Garden Holdings's speed and arrogance are indeed extraordinary.

As for the effect, we can see from the 2020 message from Mo Bin, president of Country Garden Holdings Group, that at present, Bo Zhilin has developed 29 prototypes of construction robots for site testing, submitted more than 1500 patent applications, and 59 construction robot projects under development, of which 29 have entered the site testing phase.

However, according to the self-media Gao Gong Robot report, Country Garden Holdings's internal employees revealed: "in the second half of last year, after going to the construction site, all the construction robots were withdrawn, and in the end, two products were left behind, but there were problems with all of them. Either hit the wall or get down to the nest. "

In addition, it is constantly criticized for management confusion and frequent changes in the organizational structure.

Shen Gang, once regarded as the core figure in Country Garden Holdings's development of the robot industry, left in May 2019, and Zhang Zhiyuan and Zhu Jianmin became executive president and vice president of Bozhilin Robotics Co., Ltd., all of whom were engaged in real estate business.

Zhihu Inc. and Weibo Corp, search for Bozhilin Robotics Company, all kinds of bad posts. "like managing migrant workers,"the main daily task of these highly paid and highly educated doctorates is to write PPT." in the more than a year since the establishment of Bo Zhilin, no product can be put on the production line, in other words, it has not produced any benefits. "

Only Country Garden Holdings knows whether the gimmick is more practical than practical. But crossing the border is really not that easy. Intelligent manufacturing is no better than building houses, involves many science and engineering disciplines, requires complex and systematic wisdom and patience, and is a long-term project.

In short, there is a long way to go to achieve "letting robots produce houses on construction sites like cars," and it is too early for Country Garden Holdings to truly become a "high-tech integrated enterprise that creates better life products for the world." Country Garden Holdings's imprint is still a real estate developer.

It is worth noting that in 2020, real estate is not only a bad start, but also a peak year of debt repayment. Regulation still sets the tone to maintain the continuity, consistency and stability of real estate financial policies. According to the Kerry research report, the maturing debt of 95 typical real estate enterprises reached 500 billion yuan this year, up 45 percent from 2019. March was the first peak of debt repayment this year, with a total outstanding amount of 33 billion yuan.

This is no small challenge for some housing enterprises that are accustomed to the "high leverage, high turnover" mode.