What happened at the CIMC Group 2025 (02039) Performance Presentation?

On March 27, during a CIMC Group (02039) 2025 performance briefing held on site, in response to investors’ question about geopolitical conflicts, Chairman Mai Boliang delivered a forceful reply: “In complex supply-chain situations, CIMC responds the fastest and has the strongest capabilities, providing resilient solutions to the world.”

That sense of confidence comes from CIMC Group’s 2025 results, and the deepest underlying foundation is not simply profit figures, but its strong ability to generate cash.

The annual report shows that in 2025, the group’s revenue remained at a steady scale of RMB 150 billion. Although some segments’ net profits fluctuated due to industry cycle effects, operating cash flow more than doubled, reaching RMB 18.5 billion, the second-highest level in history, and significantly higher than net profit for the second consecutive year.

“We advocate for profits from revenue, but even more for profits with cash flow.” At the meeting, the CFO Zeng Han emphasized that this performance-oriented focus keeps CIMC holding onto substantial capital even through the industry’s winter. Ample cash flow not only brought the company’s asset-liability ratio down to a healthy level of 60%, but also supported up to RMB 1.852 billion in share repurchases and continued cash dividends.

At the performance briefing, discussions about the container business were full of dialectical perspective. In 2025, affected by the high base in 2024 and exchange-rate factors, the container business revenue declined somewhat. However, management did not become pessimistic because of this; instead, it saw unique opportunities for business amid the complexity of the environment.

Mai Boliang pointed out at the meeting that although it is impossible to predict when the next geopolitical conflict will occur, as long as world trade continues to operate, containers are an irreplaceable tool.

Behind this logic is CIMC Group’s profound insight into global supply-chain resilience. When a single logic of efficiency being supreme is disrupted, networked transportation demand is driving new changes. CIMC did not try to predict uncontrollable external shocks; instead, it chose to further consolidate its absolute dominance in the global market through technology upgrades and a shift toward special-purpose container layouts.

If containers are CIMC’s “cash cows,” then the energy and chemical as well as offshore engineering businesses are its “new engines” for growth.

This performance briefing sends a strong signal: CIMC is accelerating its embrace of the wave of energy transition. In the energy, chemicals, and liquid food segments, 2025 revenue increased by 6.53%, while profits surged by 42%. This not only benefited from favorable conditions in traditional oil and gas markets, but also stemmed from its forward-looking layout in the green-energy sector.

Most noteworthy is the first phase project of green methanol located in Zhanjiang. It began operations in December 2025 and achieved steady production during the Spring Festival period. This is not only the first green methanol demonstration project in South China to achieve continuous mass production, but also marks CIMC’s cross-industry shift from purely equipment manufacturing to operating in energy and chemical businesses.

The highlight of the performance briefing belongs to CIMC’s depiction of the “future.” This 2025 results release, at its core, is a phased answer to CIMC Group’s strategic transformation.

Over the past decade, CIMC has successfully incubated offshore engineering into a business with net profits exceeding RMB 1 billion. In the next five years, while consolidating the global leading position of traditional businesses, emerging businesses such as data centers, energy storage, natural gas, and cold-chain logistics will shoulder the responsibility of the “second growth curve.”

“The core of our approach is people-centered, together as one enterprise.” Mai Boliang put forward this core mechanism supporting the industry—closely linking employees’ achievements with the company’s development, and building an ecosystem in which the central government, industries, shareholders, local governments, and employees all win together. It is precisely this mechanism that, in the past, successfully incubated key businesses such as offshore engineering and A&Rico. Now, it is again “breaking soil and sprouting” in new areas such as data centers, energy storage, cold chain, and intelligent driving.

This mechanism is bearing fruit in the data-center business. As one of the very few domestic module data center suppliers with global delivery capabilities, CIMC’s data center business is providing technical and manufacturing delivery services for prefabricated data centers simultaneously for AI and Cloud computing customers totaling more than 300MW, and negotiations for orders are also plentiful. With its technology advantages—cutting the prefabricated factory-built construction cycle by 50% and keeping PUE below 1.3—CIMC is seizing the historic opportunity brought by the explosive growth in AI compute capacity.

Meanwhile, a revolution in transportation energy is also quietly underway. At the meeting, Mai Boliang for the first time clearly disclosed that CIMC’s “electric unmanned driving head and trailer chain” (a combination of an electric unmanned driving truck and a trailer) is planned to achieve commercialization by the end of 2026.

This is not merely a technology iteration, but a disruption of logistics and transportation models. Based on the growth of semi-trailer sales by 15% in the North American market and a 20% increase in sales in global southern markets, together with the wave of electrification and intelligence, CIMC’s road transportation vehicle business is moving from traditional “manufacturing” to “smart logistics solution providers.”

As the performance briefing nears its end, when asked about its views on market capitalization management for A-shares and H-shares, CIMC Group’s secretary of the board, Wu Sanqiang, candidly said that the current market capitalization has not yet fully reflected the equity value of multiple listed companies under the group and the growth potential of emerging businesses. In the future, the market will come to understand more deeply CIMC’s profound transformation—from a manufacturing company with a distinct cyclical nature to an industrial group with strong cash flow and multiple high-tech growth businesses.

Around 5 p.m., dozens of investors and analysts attending the performance briefing, whether gathering around CIMC’s executives or walking out of the venue, were no longer focusing solely on container shipment volumes or the rental of offshore engineering platforms, but on module data center PUE values, the ramp-up capacity of green methanol, and the commercialization timeline for unmanned heavy-duty trucks.

This may be CIMC Group’s new signal to the outside world through this performance briefing.

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