Sun Hongbin "Returns to the Game": After Cutting Losses of Over 10 Billion, Can He Turn the Tide Against the Wind?

Ask AI · After Sun Hongbin’s return, how can Country Garden—sorry, Rongchuang—rebuild market confidence?

Recently, Rongchuang China released its first financial report after successfully resolving its debt issues.

The financial report data shows that in 2025, Rongchuang China’s net loss attributable to the parent company was RMB 123.3 billion, sharply narrowing from the RMB 25.7 billion loss in 2024, representing a year-over-year reduction in losses of 52%; its interest-bearing liabilities were RMB 188.26 billion, decreasing by RMB 71.41 billion year over year.

The major reduction in losses is mainly due to gains generated from debt restructuring. The financial report shows that Rongchuang China, after audit, confirmed debt restructuring gains of RMB 32.97 billion.

After getting through the process in a dignified way through debt restructuring, Rongchuang China’s losses still amount to over a hundred billion. This time, as the person at the helm, can Sun Hongbin pull off a comeback against the odds?

“Back to the table”

In 2025, Rongchuang completed a comprehensive domestic and overseas debt restructuring that took more than two years, becoming the first private property developer in the industry to complete the full process of restructuring publicly issued domestic and overseas debts, fully escaping the life-or-death crisis of default and liquidation.

Last mid-year, Sun Hongbin—who had long been absent from public view—returned to the public eye, and was also widely seen as a signal that Rongchuang was “back to the table.”

In 2025, through debt resolution, Rongchuang reduced its interest-bearing liabilities by RMB 71.41 billion to RMB 188.26 billion, which was RMB 133.45 billion lower than the overall liability level at the end of 2021. With the implementation of debt restructuring, Rongchuang will basically clear the company-level debt at the listed company level, cleverly turning creditors into shareholders, thereby achieving “alignment of interests.”

This round of debt restructuring used “time to buy space,” not only enabling Rongchuang to “get afloat,” but more importantly adding bricks to last year’s performance. As the confirmation of a one-time gain of about RMB 32.97 billion from overseas debt restructuring took place, Rongchuang achieved a significant reduction in losses.

However, if that factor is excluded, in 2025 Rongchuang China still recorded a gross loss of RMB 640 million at the operating level, down about RMB 12.21 billion from the prior year’s gross profit of RMB 2.89 billion.

Regarding the decrease in gross profit and the decline in gross margin, Rongchuang China stated that this was mainly due to a reduction in property sales revenue, a lower proportion of high-gross-profit projects than in the prior year, and an increase in provisioned property impairment allowances year over year. If the impact of appraisal appreciation adjustments and property impairment allowances is excluded, Rongchuang’s 2025 gross profit was RMB 2.41 billion, corresponding to a gross margin of 5.3%.

From the revenue side, for all of 2025, Rongchuang China achieved revenue of about RMB 45.12 billion, down about 39% year over year. The revenue decline mainly came from the downturn in sales. In 2025, Rongchuang achieved contracted sales value of RMB 36.84 billion, down 21.8% year over year, ranking among the industry TOP20 and fourth among private property developers. That means, in the future, Rongchuang’s operations will still need to continue “stopping the bleeding.”

Rongchuang’s operating performance data. Photo/annual report screenshot

Over the past 3 years, besides advancing debt restructuring, Rongchuang’s main operating tasks were to ensure delivery of properties. Data shows that from 2022 to 2025, Rongchuang delivered 186,000 units, 312,000 units, 170,000 units, and 54,000 units respectively, for a cumulative total of over 722,000 units.

Rongchuang China believes that after three years of hard-fought efforts, the work of ensuring delivery has basically been concluded. The company has shifted from the “campaign mode” of ensuring delivery back to the normal operating model of “sales – delivery,” bringing the company’s operations back onto a healthy track.

At the same time, the annual report also disclosed another positive progress. In 2025, Rongchuang revitalized real estate projects in 12 core cities. It is expected to obtain about RMB 11.2 billion of funds from this, to address existing debt problems of projects and to start development and construction.

“Shift between heavy and light”

With development business under pressure, Rongchuang urgently needs to build a new engine for profitable growth.

In the early years, Rongchuang successively expanded into cultural-tourism real estate, the project management and construction (Jianzhai) sector, property management, and more. Now, with the successful completion of debt restructuring, Rongchuang is also willing to pick up these business segments again, gradually transitioning from “heavy-asset” to “light-asset.”

For example, last year, within the Rongchuang Property segment, Rongchuang Services turned losses into profits. Its net profit attributable to shareholders reached RMB 200 million, revenue was RMB 6.82 billion, the managed area was 260 million square meters. Through asset reshuffling and obtaining expansion signals through new projects, it has continued to transmit growth momentum.

Meanwhile, in the project management and construction (daijian) track, after Rongchuang’s construction management platform changed its name to “Erjin Management” at the end of 2024, leveraging Rongchuang China’s experience in revitalizing distressed assets, in 2025 it also took on the 10-year-delayed unfinished residential project Mingweilongjun International in Nanchang and promoted its restart.

In addition, cultural-tourism has always been a business that Sun Hongbin has long been eager to build, including theme parks, commercial operations, and ice-and-snow formats. For example, in the ice-and-snow formats, in 2025 Rongchuang increased its number of indoor/covered snow parks to 11, and newly signed projects such as in Wenzhou and Hangzhou. Full-year cultural-tourism park construction and operations revenue was RMB 4.73 billion. At the end of 2025, Rongchuang also exercised its repurchase right for the Shenzhen Huafa Qianhai Ice and Snow World project.

For future development, Rongchuang China also said in its annual report that it will work to enhance the competitiveness of light-asset management businesses such as property services, commercial management, ice-and-snow operations, and cultural tourism; at the same time, it will closely monitor policy developments related to REITs and actively explore the feasibility of building a REITs platform.

Whether it is “distressed assets +,” or returning to the ice-and-snow track to fight again, Rongchuang’s various moves have a strong sense of “reorganizing and regrouping.”

However, with development business still difficult to generate profits, Rongchuang urgently needs to make operating businesses effective and form a second supporting pillar for profitability, so as to improve the situation of continued losses and to continuously transmit confidence to the market and capital.

Rongchuang once truly shone brightly. Whether this return can help it reclaim its peak still needs to be tested by the market.

Beijing News Shell Finance reporter Xu Qian

Editor Yang Juanjuan

Proofreader Liu Baoqing