I really want to say goodbye. On the evening of the 20th, Storm Group announced that starting September 21, the company's stock transactions will enter the delisting period, and the company's shares will be delisted after 30 trading days during the delisting period.
Storm Group: The company's stock trading has entered the delisting period
On September 19, Storm Group issued an announcement stating that the company received the “Decision on the Termination of the Listing of Storm Group Co., Ltd. Shares” from the Shenzhen Stock Exchange on August 28, 2020. Starting September 21, the company's stock transactions will enter a delisting period, and the company's shares will be delisted after 30 trading days during the delisting period.
According to the announcement, during the delisting period for the company's shares to be traded, the company will not plan or carry out major asset restructuring matters.
According to the “Notice on GEM Risk Warning Stocks and Stock Trading System Arrangements During the Delisting Period”, the price increase or decrease ratio of company stocks during the delisting period is limited to 20%.
According to the relevant provisions of Article 2 of the “Implementation Measures for the Re-listing of Companies Delisted from the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (2018 Revision)”, the GEM of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange does not accept applications for re-listing of company shares, so after the company's stock is delisted, it will not be able to be re-listed on the GEM.
According to the latest data, Storm Group still has 60,000 shareholders behind it.
Farewell, Storm Group!
When it comes to Storm Group, no one knows, no one knows.
Pushing back the time point to 5 years ago, Storm Group was once dubbed the “king of monster stocks” by shareholders. This is because after its listing on March 24, 2015, it actually broke the rise and stop record of the A-share market with 37 consecutive rises and stops in just 40 days. At that time, Storm's stock price soared from 7.14 yuan/share to 327 yuan/share, and its market value was even higher than 40 billion yuan. Today, the founder has been arrested, all executives have left their jobs, and the stock listing has been suspended, falling to less than 500 million yuan, which is astonishing.
Many people attribute the collapse of Storm Group to the fact that on July 28, 2019, Feng Xin, the actual controller of Storm Group, was forced to take coercive measures by the public security authorities on suspicion of committing a crime. In fact, after its listing in 2015, Storm Group's annual revenue has not been as good as expected since 2016, and has been losing money almost year after year.
In May 2019, Everbright Capital's subsidiary Everbright Capital, which established a joint venture with Storm Group to establish an industrial merger and acquisition fund, sued Storm Group in court due to continued losses due to the acquisition project company MPS and the failure of Storm Group and Feng Xin to fulfill the repurchase agreement, claiming compensation amounting to 750 million yuan.
After investigating the assets of the Storm Group, the People's Court of Haidian District of Beijing found no assets that could be executed. Afterwards, Storm Group was included in the list of untrustworthy executees, and Feng Xin was also subject to coercive measures by the public security authorities.
In September 2019, Feng Xin was arrested on suspicion of bribing non-state workers and embezzlement of duties. With the loss of Feng Xin, the storm fell into turmoil. Executives began to seek new heights, and employees voluntarily left their jobs or were fired one after another.
On the evening of June 3, Storm Group once again issued the “Reminder Notice Concerning the Risk of Shares Being Suspended from Listing”. In the nine months from August 30, 2019, a full 40 indicative announcements on the same subject were issued, an average of one per week!
The last straw that crushed Feng Xin
What brought Feng Xin to jail was a multinational merger and acquisition that shocked the capital industry and the sports world at the time.
The diversified businesses that Feng Xin envisioned back then all came to an end within two years. Feng Xin began to embark on his dream again and completed his transformation through the influence of sports.
In 2016, Storm Group and Everbright Capital were directly involved in the acquisition of Italian sports copyright brokerage company MP&Silva. At the time, domestic media unanimously advertised that MPS was one of the hegemons of the global sports copyright market at the time, and Feng Xin once claimed that buying MPS was “the last ticket to storm the sports industry.”
In 2016, Everbright Baptist and Storm Investment jointly launched the Baptist Fund, raising a total of 5.2 billion yuan. The priority funder “China Merchants Department” invested 2.8 billion dollars, Aijian Trust invested 400 million dollars; the middle class, such as Shenzhen Hengxiang, invested a total of 1 billion dollars; and Storm Company and Everbright Capital, the controlling shareholder of Everbright, invested a total of 1 billion dollars as subordinate investors.
In May 2016, the fund completed the acquisition of 65% of MPS's shares. The deal had just been completed, but MPS had a thunderstorm.
MPS lost the broadcasting rights for many Serie A and Ligue 1 sports games in a short period of time, and was subject to a series of claims for default copyright fees. It filed for bankruptcy and liquidation in 2018. The company's assets and revenue were used to repay creditors, and Baptist Fund was unable to exit as originally planned, making the fund face great risks.
Investments were lost, and huge losses triggered a series of claims. China Merchants Wealth sued GP Everbright Capital as LP, while Everbright Capital sued Storm Group, which provided underwriting promises, claiming 751 million yuan.
In fact, since 2016, Storm Video's net profit has been losing money continuously. According to the 2018 report, Storm Group's total assets are 1.2 billion yuan, while total liabilities are as high as 2.1 billion yuan. More than 95% of Feng Xin's personal shares have been pledged.
On July 28, 2019, Storm Group issued an announcement stating that Feng Xin was coerced by the public security authorities on suspicion of committing a crime. In September of the same year, the Jing'an District Procuratorate approved the arrest of Feng Xin on suspicion of bribing non-state workers and embezzlement of office.
In a deal worth 5.2 billion yuan, no competition agreement was signed with the other party's executives, and it is unclear how long the copyright of the other company's agent is still valid. As a result, after the other party took the money, they resigned and started a new path, creating a lot of competition in the industry. It's been less than two years since the purchase, and a large number of copyrights have expired. MPS is unsustainable; it can only go bankrupt.
During this period, in order to facilitate the deal, Feng Xin pledged his shares to pay bribes. Among them, he was also defrauded of 100 million yuan by the subordinate who operated the incident, but he was completely unaware. I didn't find out until I was taken into custody and charged.
The stock price has plummeted 99%
The former video and video monarchy has been delisted, and the end of Storm Group is staggering.
In 2005, Feng Xin founded Beijing Hot Technology Co., Ltd. Two years later, Feng Xin bought Storm Video, and Storm Technology began to surpass the Internet market. Storm Technology is the predecessor of Storm Group.
In the era where Tencent, iQiyi, and Youku did not rise, you had to rely on a player to watch videos. Storm Video is loved by most users for its versatile playback, online HD, and simple and clear interface. Statistics show that in 2009, the total number of Storm Video users grew to 280 million, with more than 25 million daily active users, second only to QQ and Xunlei at the time.
Looking back after the incident, it was 2015 that became a turning point in the storm's transition from prosperity to decline.
After listing, Storm Technology began aggressive diversification and expansion. It invested everywhere to comprehensively expand its business into eight major fields: video, VR, shows, TV, culture, film and television, games, and overseas. The bad news is that these investments did not yield the desired return, but they brought a storm into a maze of tight cash flows. At the same time, the stock price spree of the storm did not last long. As the Securities Regulatory Commission began to focus on cracking down on market manipulation, the storm's stock price instead entered a downward channel.
On July 1, 2020, Storm Group was suspended from listing on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange because it was impossible to disclose its 2019 annual report.
Storm Group's total market capitalization was only 488 million yuan left. According to the highest market capitalization of 40.8 billion yuan, it fell 99%.