The dividends and share repurchase of China's listed companies hit record high last year, with their performance remaining stable, according to the recently released annual reports.
As of Wednesday, over 5,365 companies listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE), Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE), and Beijing Stock Exchange (BSE) have released their annual reports.
The released reports showed that in 2024, the companies listed on the SSE and SZSE collectively achieved 71.8 trillion yuan (about 10 trillion U.S. dollars) in operating revenue and 5.2 trillion yuan (about 700 billion U.S. dollars) in net profit. The companies listed on the BSE reported a total operating revenue of 180.845 billion yuan (about 25 billion U.S. dollars) and a net profit of 11.03 billion yuan (over 1.5 billion U.S. dollars).
Additionally, 74 percent of the listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges reported gaining profits in 2024, while about 85 percent of the listed companies on the Beijing Stock Exchange said they made profit.
Besides, last year, the total dividend payout of listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges reached 2.39 trillion yuan (about 330 billion U.S. dollars), representing a year-on-year increase of 7.2 percent.
Specifically, the listed companies in the home appliance and the automobile industries said their net profit grew by 7.1 percent and 11.1 percent year on year, respectively, in 2024, marking increases to varying degrees compared with the third quarter.
The net profit growth was partially driven by policies like consumer goods trade-in programs, which stimulated residents' demand for certain durable products.
Besides, the transportation sector also reported an 11.5-percent year-on-year growth in net profit, with the airport and airline companies posting sustained performance improvements, saying their year-on-year net profits increased by 75.6 percent and 69.3 percent, respectively.
"For the listed companies in the consumer discretionary sectors, including home appliance, automobile, and tourism, their prosperity index grew noticeably. The profit growth in this sector was driven by two factors. On the one hand, there is great potential in the domestic demand, and on the other hand, the policies rolled out to stabilize economic growth have been gradually yielding results over the past year," said Fan Jituo, chief strategy analyst at Cinda Securities Company Limited.
The released annual reports also showed that the listed companies have been investing heavily in research and development. Last year, the listed firms operating in the real economy spent 1.6 trillion yuan (about 220 billion U.S. dollars) on research and development, increasing by 3.1 percent year on year.
Notably, the research and development investments of listed companies now account for over half of the total national corporate expenditure in this regard.
"The technology industry has been investing heavily in research and development. Their research and development investment reached about 500 billion yuan (about 69 billion U.S. dollars) last year, which is huge. In fact, the entire TMT (technology, media, and telecommunications) industry's revenue was only 7.8 trillion yuan (about 107 billion U.S. dollars), indicating that their research and development expenditure accounted for a significantly high proportion of the revenue," said Yan Guicheng, chief analyst of communications industry at China Securities Company Limited.
China's listed companies report record-high dividends, share repurchase
