For Ren Yuanlin, Yangzijiang Financial’s largest shareholder, the surge in interest has been a long time coming. For most of the last two years, the stock was buried in near-obscurity as investors didn’t want anything to do with the firm’s lending business in China, where it holds a vast swath of real estate as collateral for loans dished out to sole proprietors and small and medium businesses, including property developers.
With China’s real estate market deep in the doldrums, that business was seen as a liability. While the company has made significant strides in seeking out investments outside the country and in putting its capital to better use in the more compelling maritime sector, investors still gave it the cold shoulder.
Ren, who’s also Yangzijiang Financial’s executive chairman and CEO, knew he needed more than a charm offensive to win over investors and ditch the conglomerate discount assigned to the stock. A casual meeting in Singapore with a business associate from Monaco in January last year yielded just that.
In that meeting, Ren’s business associate, a senior executive at a large shipping group, floated the idea of an ad hoc side gig: form a joint venture together to build vessels without firm orders and find buyers for them later.
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While Ren is widely credited for turning Yangzijiang Shipbuilding into one of the largest private shipbuilders in China, speculative shipbuilding has never been a notable part of its business. Virtually all its vessels are contract-backed, not built ahead of time while it looks for buyers. Still, he was sold on the idea. A 30:70 partnership between both men was soon formed, with Ren as the larger shareholder.
For the joint venture’s maiden project, Ren engaged Yangzijiang Shipbuilding to build two container ships. Within a year, the vessels were completed and sold, each netting about US$12 million ($15.4 million) in profit. Soon, others came looking for him to do similar deals.
“But I stopped using Yangzijiang Shipbuilding because it was too expensive,” he says. “I got another shipyard that was not as technically competent as Yangzijiang to do the job.”
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To ensure the ships were top-notch, he roped in a bunch of retired Yangzijiang Shipbuilding employees to help with design, engineering and construction. Before long, he ended up building 20 vessels.
Several ship owners in Singapore also approached Ren last year to ask if he would be willing to fund them in buying second-hand vessels to charter out, as banks they had approached said they would finance only purchases of new ships.
His success with the build-now-sell-later business model and with ship financing got him thinking that Yangzijiang Financial’s existing maritime arm can perhaps achieve even more on its own as a standalone investment business, with no encumbrances from China’s ailing real estate market. “That was how the idea for a dedicated maritime investment platform came about,” Ren says.
The idea was quickly put into motion. In April this year, Yangzijiang Financial announced the spin-off of its maritime business as a pure-play maritime fund manager, to be listed on SGX. The announcement came two months after The Edge Singapore first reported that Ren was mulling a carve-out.
Floating the maritime business — officially known as Yangzijiang Maritime Development — is as strategic as it is practical. Besides direct access to capital markets, the new entity will have a clearer growth narrative as its standalone business will be more visible to investors.
An EGM has been scheduled on Sept 4 for Yangzijiang Financial shareholders to vote on the proposed carve-out. Under the plan, for every Yangzijiang Financial share held, shareholders will receive a Yangzijiang Maritime share for free.
If approved and executed, this will be Ren’s second spin-off, after Yangzijiang Shipbuilding hived off its investment arm in 2022 to create Yangzijiang Financial. Ren will step down from Yangzijiang Financial to head the new entity as executive chairman once it lists in November by way of introduction. He will be assisted by Alex Yan, who will be Yangzijiang Maritime’s CEO. Yan is currently head of shipping at Yangzijiang Financial.
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Financial services hub
Yangzijiang Maritime has three business segments. Its maritime investments and services arm operates as a shipping agency and provides ship leasing and broking services. It is also a consultancy for matters including ship design, construction and safety management.
Another business segment offers loans to companies in the shipping industry. The third segment is in the business of distributing merchant ships, shipping equipment, materials and components across markets including Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Europe, the US and China.
Yangzijiang Financial unveiled its first maritime investment fund in 2022 with an initial goal to raise US$250 million. That has since grown to US$600 million as at the end of last year and to over US$1 billion this year. The fund will be parked under the spin-off company.
The maritime segment’s unaudited pre-tax profit last year was about $198 million. That’s more than half of Yangzijiang Financial’s audited 2024 pre-tax profit of $373 million.
Ren sees Yangzijiang Maritime as a one-stop financial services hub bringing together shipyards, shipowners, charterers and capital. Its job includes helping them incubate, match, execute and even exit maritime projects. “We are no match for the banks or the big investment firms out there. Where we stand out is our expertise in the maritime sector.”
While there are some overlaps between Yangzijiang Maritime and Yangzijiang Shipbuilding, they will not end up competing with each other. In essence, Yangzijiang Shipbuilding charters vessels as an owner, provides agency work only for its ships, and trades for its yards.
Yangzijiang Maritime, on the other hand, invests in chartering through partners, provides agency services for third-party vessels, and focuses on supplying goods and services to customers.
Yangzijiang Maritime has 84 vessels in its investment portfolio, including vessels under construction. Most of these ships, 69, are held through equity investments and finance leases.
Another four are deployed for chartering, while 11 are under brokering services. The total investment value of this entire fleet — comprising tankers, gas carriers, bulk carriers, container ships and offshore support vessels — is more than US$1 billion.
The portfolio will be expanded, with clean-energy vessels increasingly on the company’s radar as the UN-backed International Maritime Organisation and the European Union push ship owners to remodel and rely more on technology to reduce emissions.
This decarbonisation drive is fuelling demand for alternative sources of funding required by ship owners to upgrade their existing fleets and build green vessels. That’s the sweet spot Ren wants Yangzijiang Maritime, as a financier, to sink its teeth deeper into.
Muscling up financially
To help fund its expansion, Yangzijiang Maritime plans to raise up to $250 million through a placement of new shares to accredited and institutional investors. Details, such as the number of shares to be placed out and at what price, will be known closer to the date of its trading debut.
As the spin-off company is listing by way of introduction rather than through an IPO, the only way for anyone to get hold of its shares is to first become a shareholder of Yangzijiang Financial. As such, shares of Yangzijiang Financial, which have gained more than 150% so far this year, may head even higher in the lead-up to Yangzijiang Maritime’s listing, according to Ren.
The way he sees it, Yangzijiang Financial could trade up to its net asset value of nearly $1.20 per share as of Dec 31 last year. Assuming that pans out and based on the planned one-for-one distribution where shareholders get one Yangzijiang Maritime share for every Yangzijiang Financial share they own, he figures that both stocks should theoretically adjust to around 60 cents at the time of the spin-off’s listing.
With the more lucrative maritime business no longer under its wings after the spin-off, Yangzijiang Financial is likely to see a sell-down on its stock once Yangzijiang Maritime is listed, according to Ren. To appease Yangzijiang Financial’s shareholders, who effectively are also shareholders of Yangzijiang Maritime, he says the newly listed entity plans to offer new shares through a rights issue that will be priced to sell.
“The market may think a rights issue is not beneficial as it is dilutive, but the Yangzijiang Maritime rights shares will be priced attractively to benefit shareholders,” he says. “We want to make sure shareholders of Yangzijiang Financial are taken care of when its share price pulls back after the spin-off.”
Ren is hopeful shareholders will welcome the rights issue, which he says he will underwrite. “Yangzijiang Maritime’s profitability will increase because the shipbuilding orders that we placed in recent years are due for delivery soon. This means we can start selling them or chartering them out for income.”
Similar to Yangzijiang Shipbuilding and Yangzijiang Financial, Yangzijiang Maritime will pay out up to 40% of its annual earnings as dividends, he lets on. “I want all shareholders of our Yangzijiang group of companies to get more from us in dividends every year than what they get in interest from leaving their money in the bank.”
The rights issue is likely to take place not long after Yangzijiang Maritime’s listing. Together with the placement of up to $250 million worth of new shares to accredited and institutional investors, Yangzijiang Maritime is looking to raise about $400 million in total from the two cash calls.
What’s next for Yangzijiang Financial?
After the spin-off, Yangzijiang Financial will be left with its China-focused investment management business, which has substantial exposure to the country’s property market. It will also continue running its Singapore-centric fund management business, which handles capital from family offices and third-party funds.
The company has RMB3.8 billion ($680 million) in real estate debt projects in China that it intends to dispose of through judicial auctions. Proceeds from the sales will be used to finance urbanisation and infrastructure development projects in Southeast Asia and invest in both private and public equities in China.
Monetising the real estate debt projects in China won’t be straightforward, though. “It’s going to be hard. We have to wait for China’s economy and real estate market to recover,” Ren concedes.
While he doesn’t expect the property market in China to turn around any time soon, he says it is unlikely to get worse as housing is still needed for a country with a population of 1.4 billion people.
“What’s more, the Chinese in general are very hardworking. Even at their age, many young people already think about their next generation,” he adds. “There’s this mindset of wanting to pass on something to the next generation, and property is usually what they will pass down.”
Here in Singapore, Yangzijiang Financial recently announced it would be the anchor investor in a $100 million fund launched by ICH Asset Management. The fund will target promising Singapore small and medium enterprises, supporting them from the pre-IPO stage all the way to subsequent rounds of fundraising after listing. The fund will begin investing in September, zeroing in on companies in the technology, healthcare, consumer services, and sustainability sectors.
While he will relinquish his chairman and CEO roles at Yangzijiang Financial to focus on Yangzijiang Maritime, Ren says he is not washing his hands of the company. “I am still the largest shareholder in Yangzijiang Financial. I will not abandon it. I’m open to working with the right partners to get the best opportunities for the company.”
Liu Hua, currently deputy CEO and CFO at Yangzijiang Financial, will become its executive chairman after the spin-off. Peng Xingkui, an investment adviser to Yangzijiang Financial, will be the new CEO.
Betting on clarity
Carving out its financial investment arm to float it as Yangzijiang Financial sent Yangzijiang Shipbuilding back into the good books of investors three years ago. Before that, many were concerned that the shipbuilder would be bogged down by bad loans from its lending business in China.
Now, Ren is repeating the same trick, betting that a cleaner, standalone maritime entity will once again unlock value. To him, the spin-off is a gamble on clarity. The new entity offers a straightforward growth story in maritime investing, while Yangzijiang Financial will be left carrying the baggage of China’s troubled property market. Whether two narrower businesses generate greater investor confidence than one discounted conglomerate remains to be seen.
For all the talk of fresh narratives, execution will determine whether the market keeps faith. The upcoming carve-out vote and Yangzijiang Maritime’s trading debut will test whether Ren the dealmaker can once again beat the odds. Anything less will only serve as a reminder that spin-offs don’t always spin fortunes.