Financial Perspective · In-Depth Annual Report | Breaking through and advancing, resilient growth, New City Holdings delivers an era-defining answer of "private enterprise responsibility"

From “developers” to “commercial operators,” New Town Holdings’ 2025 financial report confirms a substantive breakthrough in its strategic transformation.

In the full-year 2025 performance announcement released on March 27, New Town Holdings achieved operating revenue of RMB 53.012 billion, attributable net profit to shareholders of RMB 680 million, and non-recurring attributable net profit of RMB 614 million. Among them, total commercial operation revenue continued to grow by double digits, its contribution share continued to increase, and it accounted for half of the company’s performance. Beyond profitability, the company has delivered positive operating cash flow for eight consecutive years; its debt structure has continued to be optimized; its business layout has been adjusted steadily; and the effectiveness of the transformation has gradually become visible.

Against the backdrop of industry-wide pressure, as a private enterprise, New Town Holdings, through the strategic choice of “active adjustments and focusing on commercial property management,” has achieved steady growth in performance and ongoing optimization of its structure. Its “residential + commercial” dual-engine model not only gives the company development resilience, but also helps build a moat for it to get through the cycle—providing a reference template for private real estate firms to transform and break through.

Gross margin ratio rises to 63%, with commerce supporting “half of the performance”

Through the financial report data, it is not hard to see that the commercial segment’s weight in New Town Holdings’ performance profile is increasing day by day. During industry adjustment cycles, the “keystone” effect of this segment has become even more prominent.

In 2025, New Town Holdings added five new operating Wuyue Plazas. By the end of the reporting period, the company had established a footprint across 141 cities at national level—major and medium-sized cities—in China, with 207 comprehensive complex projects; the commercial floor area of Wuyue Plaza that opened reached 16.4907 million square meters.

Commercial property management business has already supported half of New Town Holdings’ performance, providing the company with a steady and robust source of returns. During the reporting period, New Town Holdings achieved total commercial operation revenue of RMB 14.09 billion, up about 10% year over year. In the context of an industry downcycle, it demonstrates resilient performance growth, further consolidating Wuyue commercial property management’s industry standing as a benchmark for high-quality development of physical commercial business.

Long before now, industry consensus has formed that the profit space of commercial operations is far greater than that of traditional development business. According to New Town Holdings’ annual report, the gross margin rate for property leasing and management reached 70%.

Benefiting from its long-term planning and deep cultivation in the commercial operations space, New Town Holdings’ 2025 property leasing and management business generated gross profit of RMB 9.095 billion. The share of this gross profit in the company’s overall gross profit also increased further—from 48% in the prior-year period to 63%—with the contribution to profitability continuing to strengthen.

What is worth noting is that, starting in 2021, New Town Holdings’ operating revenue from the commercial segment has been able to fully cover interest expense for the period, and the coverage multiple has risen year by year. In 2025, it reached 3.94x. From the investment period to the harvest period, the company’s “moat” in commercial operations is continuing to widen.

Behind the steady growth in performance is New Town Holdings’ deep thinking and smart solutions for commercial operations across the full chain in the era of stock assets. Over the past year, based on the “Wuyue commercial property management” brand, the company has deeply implemented the “corporate personality and five-sided (five-shape) operating philosophy,” and iterated and refreshed the “Wuyue Five-Step Operating Method,” demonstrating its determination to transform strategically—from “scale leadership” to “quality leadership.” At the same time, the “YueLink Plan” was launched. The company joined forces with high-quality brands and agency partners nationwide to build an open and symbiotic commercial ecosystem, driving commercial operations from “space operations” toward “ecosystem collaboration.”

The value of this methodology ultimately shows in the operating results of Wuyue Plazas one after another. According to the financial report, in 2025, Wuyue Plaza occupancy rates remained stable at a high level of 97.86%, staying above 95% for many consecutive years. Full-year total passenger flow reached 2.001 billion person-times, up 13.31% year over year. Total sales amounted to RMB 97.0 billion (excluding vehicle sales), up 7.18% year over year. Member count reached 54.97 million, up 25.82% year over year.

After 14 years of accumulation, New Town Holdings is using the power of business upgrading to solidify the resilience base for long-term enterprise development.

Financial resilience and credit strength fortify it to win favor from domestic and international capital markets

The “keystone” effect of the commercial segment gives New Town Holdings more room to maneuver during industry adjustment periods. And this hard-won safety cushion enables the company to make more proactive choices on the financial side—reducing the balance sheet, lowering debt, and ensuring project delivery. With concrete actions, it demonstrates the responsibility and commitment of a model private real estate enterprise.

Since 2021, New Town Holdings has taken the proactive step of reducing its balance sheet and placing financial safety at the highest priority. The financial report shows that by the end of the reporting period, the company’s financing balance was RMB 50.974 billion, down year over year by RMB 2.676 billion. Interest-bearing liabilities under joint ventures and associates decreased to RMB 2.385 billion, while the debt structure continued to improve.

On the real estate development front, New Town Holdings proactively stopped land acquisition and shrank the scale of residential development, focusing resources on sales that bring in cash. In 2025, the company achieved cash collection of RMB 21.276 billion, with a cash collection rate as high as 110.41%, providing strong assurance for cash-flow safety.

What is also worth noting is that, in terms of the use of funds, New Town Holdings adheres to the bottom line: funds from bond issuance within mainland China are strictly limited to construction for delivery-guarantee (ensuring the delivery of completed homes) projects and repaying maturing debts, and are never used for land expansion. In 2025, the company delivered more than 38,000 units. Over the past three years, the cumulative delivered volume has exceeded 278,000 units, practicing the responsibility of stabilizing the housing market through real actions.

In debt management, New Town Holdings has continued to maintain a safe and steady debt structure. In 2025, it repaid domestic and overseas public market bonds of RMB 5.855 billion as scheduled, always maintaining a “zero default” record.

Having bid farewell to size worship, New Town Holdings has shifted the strategic focus to “proactively contracting while focusing on safety.” Behind this shift is the company’s clear judgment on industry cycles: rather than expanding blindly, it is better to hold the safety bottom line. Cash-flow safety, financial safety, and company safety have been established as the highest operating standards.

The 2025 performance shows that the effectiveness of this transformation is now being realized. During the period, the company recorded operating revenue of RMB 53.012 billion, attributable net profit of RMB 680 million, and an overall gross margin of 27.42%, up 7.62 percentage points year over year, with profitability steadily recovering. Even more noteworthy, net operating cash flow amounted to RMB 1.425 billion, staying positive for eight consecutive years; cash balance was RMB 6.8 billion; the net gearing ratio was 56.97%, far below the industry warning line, with a solid and stable financial base.

With standout commercial performance and steady results, New Town Holdings has earned unanimous recognition from capital markets at home and abroad. Morgan Stanley, a well-known international investment bank, announced an upgrade of New Town Holdings’ rating to “overweight,” increasing the target price by 25% to RMB 19.70. It also pointed out that the drag from New Town Holdings’ real estate development business on the company’s overall performance is continuing to weaken; in the future, it may cause the company’s profits to rebound significantly, with core profits expected to recover to RMB 2.6 billion in 2027.

Not only that, New Town Holdings has also won collective support and active recommendations from more than 20 brokerages, including Guotou Securities, Huatai Securities, Shenwan Hongyuan, China Construction Bank (CITIC likely), Huachuang Securities, Ping An Securities, Northeast Securities, Guotai Haitong, OpenSource Securities, Southwest Securities, Galaxy Securities, CICC (likely), Xingye Securities, Yangtze Securities, and CCB (likely), among others, with “recommend” or “buy” ratings.

Innovative asset securitization pathway builds a new force in project management

In an environment where financing conditions are generally tightening, New Town Holdings has still maintained diversified and accessible funding channels thanks to its healthy financial position and strong credit system. Industry insiders have dubbed it the “king of private enterprise financing.” In 2025, the company’s average financing cost fell to 5.44%, down 0.48 percentage points year over year.

For offshore financing, in June 2025, New Town Holdings’ parent company, New Town Development, successfully issued a USD 300 million senior unsecured bond, becoming the first private real estate enterprise to restart offshore capital market financing in nearly three years. After that, in November 2025 and February 2026, the company issued offshore USD bonds two more times, with total issuance size of approximately RMB 5.6 billion.

Domestic market activities were also continuous. From August to December 2025, New Town Holdings successfully issued three medium-term notes, raising RMB 3.65 billion in total. It became one of the four private real estate enterprises that issued bonds with credit enhancement via ChinaBond. The three notes not only maintained relatively low coupon rates, but also received double AAA ratings for both the issuer entity and the debt instruments from Chengxin International.

It is worth mentioning that a solid credit foundation enabled New Town Holdings to break the ice first in the asset securitization space. In November 2025, the company successfully issued “Wuyue Plaza inter-institution REITs” with Qingpu Wuyue Plaza as the underlying asset, setting a national industry record for “the first two deals” in the consumption-related inter-institution REITs and A-share private enterprise inter-institution REITs categories. This move effectively activates stock commercial assets, constructing a new full-cycle management paradigm for “invest-finance-manage-exit” in commercial real estate, marking a key step in the company’s deepening transformation toward asset operations.

On March 16, 2026, New Town Holdings achieved another breakthrough in the field of commercial real estate REITs. Jingo Asset Management—Wuyue Plaza inter-institution REITs 2026 first expansion was approved by the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The company is expected to raise RMB 1.625 billion.

Industry insiders say that, holding large-scale high-quality commercial assets, New Town Holdings has a natural advantage when it comes to REITs expansions. Looking ahead, as more private REITs products are steadily rolled out, the overall value of the company’s commercial assets is expected to be fully activated. This process is not only about the company’s own strategic upgrade, but also provides a practical reference for the asset securitization exploration in the commercial real estate industry.

Beyond asset activation, New Town Holdings’ layout in the light-asset space is also noteworthy. Its innovative “365 full-cycle service system” provides systematic support for its project management business. By the end of 2025, New Town Construction Management had cumulatively managed 155 projects, with total managed gross floor area exceeding 26 million square meters. The business covers business formats such as residential, commercial, and super-large-scale integrated complexes. In the list of project management companies released by China Index Academy, New Town Holdings ranked eighth, and the project management track is gradually becoming an important growth engine for the strategy of “focusing on operating businesses.”

“Knowing the direction and fearing no long road,” “carrying heavy responsibility and moving forward steadily,” and “getting down to work to bravely take on the mission”—these are the footnotes of camel spirit that run through New Town Holdings’ entire process from deepening commercial operations to breaking through in the light-asset arena. Today, the company is using its commercial and construction management businesses as levers to reconstruct the survival logic of real estate companies: shifting from scale orientation to capability orientation, so that the camel’s steps lead to a new path for real estate enterprises’ transformation.