Wang Xin: Don't disconnect from the industry context and arbitrarily blame Lantu's IPO failure!

Ask AI · How can state-owned enterprise mixed-ownership reform make the listing of Lingtu an inevitable choice?

· Auto Thirteen Lines ID: wzhauto2023 ·

Today, an analysis video about Lingtu’s IPO has gone viral. The reason it’s popular is that this so-called management consulting firm’s sensational explanation of why Lingtu’s first trading day saw a 60% drop—using all kinds of theories and seemingly professional methods to shape public perception about Lingtu’s landing on the Hong Kong stock exchange as speculation, fraud, and excessive hype. In my view, slapping the “stock drop on the HK IPO” label on Lingtu under the banner of “professional” capital analysis is not necessary, and the firm clearly doesn’t understand the industrial purpose behind this state-owned enterprise IPO.

First, Lingtu’s listing is not about raising money for the sake of raising money. The core goal is to complete the final step of mixed-ownership reform of state-owned enterprises. As everyone knows, the key to mixed-ownership reform is to end the “big pot of rice” situation by giving employees equity and tying incentives to align interests. To be fair, over the past few years, this path has not gone smoothly. In fact, many mixed-ownership enterprises have changed their plans multiple times in the middle, and they are no longer purely market-oriented operations.

Why does Lingtu have to go public? It’s simple: it needs to give a clear explanation to the employees holding shares and other stakeholders. Lingtu’s employee shareholding plan can only truly be implemented and monetized through listing, which is a hard requirement to close the mixed-ownership reform loop. Moreover, as a central state-owned enterprise under Dongfeng, Lingtu also has to shoulder social responsibilities—stabilizing team confidence and preserving investment in building the system—which are more important than short-term IPO stock prices.

Let’s take a real example. When Zeekr went public on the U.S. market via a backdoor listing, it was to complete the entire investment closed loop. Now, exiting the U.S. market is also because the global capital tide has changed; there’s no need to affect real business for a virtual market. GAC Aion’s valuation at the time was even higher than Lingtu’s, yet for various reasons it didn’t reach the step of going public. This has led to ongoing adjustments in how internal work is handled going forward, and it has also affected the stable development of the company. As the only state-owned automaker to actually complete the mixed-ownership reform closed loop, Lingtu’s listing is the inevitable result of mixed-ownership reform—not just a simple IPO. If you only look at the stock price falling and claim it went public just to raise money, then you’re really misunderstanding the underlying logic of mixed-ownership reform for state-owned enterprises.

Second, Lingtu’s 60% share drop on the IPO does not stem from Lingtu itself. The entire Hong Kong stock market has been in a steady slump. From last year to now, just look at how dire the Hong Kong IPO market is. In 2025, more than 90% of new listings in Hong Kong saw their shares fall on the first trading day. Even leading companies like Nongfu Spring experienced a period of falling prices early after listing. Lingtu caught this worst possible window. The first-day decline is caused by market conditions, not because its operations are in trouble.

What’s more, Lingtu already had contingencies and deliberately avoided market risk. It didn’t blindly price the offering too high; instead, it adjusted the size of the fundraising based on market sentiment, prioritizing the company’s long-term development—not seeking to raise money for the short term. In capital markets, short-term rises and falls can never represent a company’s real value. Just like NIO, its stock price once fell below 10 yuan in 2023, but now it has returned to growth thanks to product strength—no one is still using the stock price back then to make accusations. Lingtu’s current stock price is only a temporary reflection of market sentiment; it cannot negate its development potential.

Finally, this institution criticized Lingtu for relying on government subsidies and support from Dongfeng Group to help bear the costs of heavy assets. I think that argument doesn’t hold water at all. It’s impossible for a startup to develop without subsidies. Remember when BYD’s new-energy vehicle business started out—it relied on local governments’ 100-billion-yuan subsidies to get through the loss-making period. At that time, it was also criticized as “living off subsidies.” Now, who can still say BYD’s new-energy vehicle business is not good?

As a state-owned enterprise, Lingtu’s investment in R&D and building plants is naturally larger than that of private companies. Dongfeng helps share the burden of heavy assets—that’s a normal form of support from a central state-owned enterprise for the new-energy sector. It’s likely this institution doesn’t understand that Lingtu’s manufacturing plant takes on the Dongfeng Renault plant, whose joint-venture mission has already ended. The plant’s costs have already been cleared out during the joint-venture era liquidation in the past. Shouldn’t those Dongfeng fixed assets be used by Lingtu? And Lingtu’s products have been iterating all along—from the Dreamer MPV to the Taishan series SUVs—each has echoed in the new-energy vehicle market. To be factual, Lingtu is among the state-owned new-energy vehicle companies with relatively strong development vitality right now. With the help of resources from the Dongfeng Motor Group, Lingtu is essentially industrial coordination, not taking shortcuts for opportunistic gain. If you don’t look at performance and just dismiss Lingtu with a single stroke, then chances are no state-owned new-energy automotive brand could ever catch the eye of this institution’s platform.

Now, as the economy needs to boost confidence, new-energy vehicles are a national strategic industry. It’s inherently difficult for state-owned enterprises to innovate. You also have to balance profit and responsibility, and respond to market competition. Those institutions that don’t understand the auto industry and only talk in terms of capital rules constantly slap Lingtu with the label of “raising money and speculation.” In reality, they’re misunderstanding how state-owned enterprises divide their market roles and social responsibilities.

Of course, like other companies, Lingtu has all kinds of problems. But we absolutely cannot maliciously speculate about a company’s development motives from the perspective of capital. In this new-energy vehicle track, all state-owned enterprises are still in the startup stage. In an early-stage commercial arena, you can’t casually analyze static outcomes based on dynamic processes, and you can’t simply use short-term fluctuations in the stock price to deny its efforts and value by combining analysis that seems “professional” yet is detached from the industrial background. Instead of blindly complaining, it’s better to look at the future products and performance of state-owned automakers like Lingtu. That is the most objective way to evaluate a company. In an era of constant change, no enterprise can keep following the routine step by step. We need to give companies time—and we also need to understand the development process of an industry. You can’t judge success or failure by capital alone, and you can’t casually use “professional knowledge” to put labels on companies!

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