Withdrawn! After 34 years of listing, China Minmetals Land bids farewell to Hong Kong stocks. How will this trillion-yuan "real estate carrier" set sail again?

On March 2nd, Minmetals Land Limited and June Glory International Limited issued a joint announcement, stating that the company’s shares will be delisted starting at 4:00 PM on March 3rd.

This also means that this state-owned real estate company, bearing the “Minmetals” brand, is about to end its 34-year listing history on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

“The privatization and delisting of Minmetals Land reflect the profound adjustments currently underway in the real estate industry. Even real estate companies backed by central state-owned enterprises find it difficult to remain unaffected during the downturn cycle,” said Yu Fenghui, a invited researcher at China Financial Think Tank, in an analysis to the Daily Economic News. After privatization and delisting, Minmetals Land can address its high debt issues through measures such as debt restructuring, asset disposal, and introducing strategic investors.

A Pre-ordained “Breakup”

In fact, this “breakup” was foreshadowed long ago.

On October 23, 2025, Minmetals Land suddenly suspended trading, followed by an announcement that its controlling shareholder, China Minmetals, proposed a privatization offer at HKD 1 per share, totaling approximately HKD 1.276 billion.

Why privatize? In previous disclosures, Minmetals Land admitted that its equity financing capacity was limited and it had lost the advantages of being listed.

Public records show that since 2009, Minmetals Land has not raised equity through capital markets. As of the suspension in October 2025, its average daily trading volume over the past 12 months was only about 440,000 shares, representing roughly 0.03% of its non-interested shareholder shares, with liquidity nearly exhausted.

Before suspension, its stock price had fallen more than 90% from its peak, turning it into a penny stock.

More critically, Minmetals Land has indeed been struggling.

According to financial reports, from 2022 to 2024, the company suffered losses for three consecutive years, with net losses attributable to shareholders totaling about HKD 5.899 billion (losses of HKD 1.362 billion, HKD 1.016 billion, and HKD 3.521 billion in 2022, 2023, and 2024 respectively). By mid-2025, its net debt ratio had risen to 215.4%, indicating significant financial pressure.

As one of the first 16 central enterprises primarily engaged in real estate under the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), Minmetals Land once had a glorious period. In 2021, its contracted sales reached a peak of HKD 26 billion, making it quite influential among central enterprise real estate companies.

However, as the real estate market entered a deep adjustment phase, Minmetals Land’s performance plummeted.

In 2024, then-Board Chairman He Jianbo openly stated in the annual report that the company’s primary goal was to “stay alive,” prioritizing destocking and risk prevention.

In the first half of 2025, Minmetals Land’s decline persisted. The company’s interim report showed total revenue of HKD 1.976 billion, a 60.7% decrease year-over-year, with a net loss attributable to shareholders of about HKD 585 million.

Interestingly, despite losses, the gross profit margin increased. In the first half of 2025, the gross margin rebounded to 11.32%, up 3.85 percentage points year-over-year.

According to Yu Fenghui, after privatization and delisting, Minmetals Land can help the company shed the pressures of the public market, focus on internal restructuring and strategic transformation, and aim to regain competitiveness in the future. It also helps avoid financing difficulties and potential delisting risks caused by continuous stock price declines.

A Decade-Delayed Big Strategy

Minmetals Land’s privatization is more than just a delisting; it is a key move in a larger strategic game within China Minmetals Group.

This all traces back to 2015. At that time, two major central enterprises, China Minmetals and MCC Group, underwent strategic restructuring. However, for nearly ten years after the restructuring, their respective real estate platforms—Minmetals Land and MCC Property—continued to operate independently, forming a “dual-platform” structure.

This “brotherly competition” was not problematic during industry upcycles, but in downturns, it led to resource waste and internal friction.

On December 8, 2025, this long-anticipated “shoe” finally dropped. China MCC announced the sale of stakes in multiple companies, including MCC Property, to China Minmetals or its designated entities, with a total transaction value of HKD 60.676 billion. MCC Property’s 100% equity and related debts were sold to Minmetals Land Holdings for HKD 31.236 billion.

This marked the official start of the substantial merger of the two real estate platforms.

Post-merger, Minmetals Land is expected to leap to a trillion-yuan asset scale, becoming a true “real estate carrier.”

As of mid-2025, Minmetals Land’s total assets were approximately HKD 35.91 billion, MCC Property’s assets totaled HKD 80.755 billion, and combined assets exceeded HKD 116 billion.

In November 2025, Minmetals Land completed personnel restructuring, with Dai Pengyu appointed as Executive Director and Acting Chairman of the Board. After privatization, he will take full charge of integrating and turning around the combined assets of Minmetals Land and MCC Property.

How will this “young” leader handle the integration of two loss-making assets? Can 1+1 be greater than 2? These are questions Dai Pengyu must answer.

From a business structure perspective, Minmetals Land is attempting a transformation. The 2025 interim report first disclosed property management as a separate business segment, indicating a strategic shift toward light asset operations and urban comprehensive services.

In the first half of 2025, property management and professional construction services saw revenue increases of 11.3% and 111.5%, respectively. However, non-real estate segments contributed only 11.8% of total revenue, insufficient to reverse the decline in property development.

From an industry perspective, Minmetals Land’s privatization is not an isolated case.

According to incomplete Wind data, by mid-October 2025, 45 domestic companies had delisted from the Hong Kong market in that year, including Dalian Wanda Commercial Properties and Beijing Construction, with 11 companies opting for voluntary privatization.

Unlike earlier delistings driven by distress, recent privatizations in Hong Kong are mostly voluntary. Given the low valuation of the domestic real estate sector and weakened financing functions, voluntary delisting is a rational choice to unlock shareholder value, reduce management costs, and improve decision-making efficiency.

Bai Wenxi, Vice Chairman of the China Capital Alliance, analyzed that Minmetals Land’s “HKD 1 privatization” is not the end but a first step in isolating risks from the capital market into the group. Whether it can truly survive depends on whether, after delisting, it can leverage central enterprise resources and market-oriented methods to “clean up” its balance sheet. If successful, it could serve as a model for risk clearing in the current real estate crisis; if it fails, it proves that even a central enterprise cannot withstand the ultimate costs of high leverage in a counter-cyclical manner.