As of April 23, a total of 1311 Shanghai and Shenzhen listed companies have released their annual report in 2008.  It counts for 80% of the total number of listed companies. Overall, the Annual Report disclosed net profit of 732.837 billion yuan, down 16.70 percent year-on-year.  

Statistics shows that the 1311 listed companies achieved total revenues of 9.661224 trillion yuan, rising 17.04% year-on-year;  net profit attributable to the parent company was 732.837 billion yuan in total, down 16.70 percent year-on-year, compared with 879.718 billion yuan in 2007; weighted average earnings per share was 0.3477 yuan, down 21.27 percent year-on-year,  a larger drop compared with 0.4417 yuan in 2007.

1155 of the 1311 companies were profitable last year, accounting for 88.1%; the rest 156 companies, 11.9 percent of the total, were in red. Among the profitable companies, 614 realized year-on-year growth. Of these, 11 companies realized more than 10 billion yuan net profit.  These 11 companies include listed banks, as well as Sinopec. 12 companies suffered loss of more than one billion yuan each, and airlines accounted for four. The performance of listed companies fell with the decline in investment income as well as increased operational costs. On investment income, the 1311 companies realized total investment gains of 192.815 billion yuan last year, as compared with 282.031 billion yuan in 2007, a significant 31.63 percent decline. Non-financial enterprises realized investment income 51.282 billion yuan, a 33.14 percent decline. On operational costs, last year the 1311 companies’ total cost was 6.575125 trillion yuan, up 23.10 percent from 2007. Of these, only 395 companies had year-on-year cost decline; at the same time, 138 companies had cost increase of more than 50%. Cost increase lead to a natural decline in gross margin.  Statistics show that non-financial companies gross margin was 18.65% last year, 3.65 percent lower than in 2007.

It is worth mentioning that the listed companies’ overall cash flow situation has improved. The 1311 companies’ net cash flow totaled 2.330911 trillion yuan last year, up 51.88 percent from 2007. Of course, this is mainly a result of better and better cash flow from financial companies, whereas non-financial companies showed decline in the total amount of the cash flow, the rate fell 6.05 percent.  Given the globl economic environment, the good performance of banks and insurance companies is a bright spot .

Translated and  edited based upon an article from Shanghai Security News