Minmetals Land's 34-year listing journey comes to an end, a strategic retreat born from integration

Our reporter Zhang Bei Huang Zhinan Shenzhen report

The 34-year journey in the capital markets has come to an end, and Minmetals Land’s delisting seems more like a turning point of an era.

On March 3rd, Minmetals Land (00230.HK) officially bid farewell to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange through privatization, ending its 34-year listing history. This state-owned real estate platform backed by a mining giant, which started with a crossover from China Nonferrous Metals, expanded through Minmetals Construction, and finally closed at HKD 1 per share.

Its exit is not just a single company’s capital decision, but a mark of a major real estate era turning.

34 Years of Listing

The story’s starting point was not real estate.

Minmetals Land’s earliest listing vehicle traces back to Orient Nonferrous Metals, which listed on the HKEX in 1991. At that time, its main business was aluminum production and metal trading. In 2003, approved by the State Council, China Minmetals completed its acquisition of Orient Nonferrous.

2007 marked a key turning point, when the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) officially added real estate development and management as a core business of China Minmetals. The listed company was renamed Minmetals Construction, completing the shift from metal trading to real estate development, and a new player in the state-owned enterprise (SOE) real estate track officially entered the stage.

In 2016, Minmetals Construction was renamed Minmetals Land, becoming the only listed platform for China Minmetals’ real estate business, finalizing its brand and capital positioning.

Relying on the credit backing of a SOE and group industry resources, Minmetals Land experienced a period of explosive growth during the upward cycle of the real estate industry. In 2019, its net profit attributable to the parent reached a peak of HKD 943 million, with gross profit margins stable above 30%. In 2020, contracted sales surged 124% year-on-year to HKD 19.36 billion, further rising to a record HKD 26 billion in 2021.

During this period, Minmetals Land not only accelerated its scale growth but also achieved breakthroughs in regional deep cultivation and business model innovation. South China became its first region to surpass HKD 1 billion in sales, with innovative projects like TOD complexes and industrial real estate landing in multiple areas. Thanks to steady growth, Minmetals Land established a foothold in the second tier of SOE real estate companies, with the capital market providing stable valuation and liquidity support.

However, beneath the peak, structural hidden dangers had already been brewing.

As early as the end of 2015, China Minmetals completed a strategic restructuring with China Metallurgical Group, forming two major real estate platforms: Minmetals Land and China Molybdenum Real Estate. Market doubts about competition and resource internal competition between the two platforms never ceased.

“Aiming for integration, this dual-platform structure of Minmetals was ultimately a ten-year ‘battle of the left and right hands,’” said a senior analyst in the construction sector to Huaxia Times. Both platforms belong to the same group but fought over land, project layout, and financing channels, with competition and resource consumption intensifying.

During the industry’s upward cycle, sufficient market growth could mask these internal contradictions; but when the real estate market entered a deep adjustment phase, with shrinking demand and narrowing profits, the drawbacks of repeated layouts and dispersed resources were magnified infinitely.

The industry cycle shift directly undermined Minmetals Land’s growth foundation, leading to a cliff-like decline in performance. Since 2022, Minmetals Land has been in a state of continuous losses. From 2022 to 2024, its net losses attributable to the parent were HKD 1.362 billion, HKD 1.016 billion, and HKD 3.521 billion respectively, with nearly HKD 6 billion in total losses over three years; contracted sales fell from the peak of HKD 26 billion to HKD 7.02 billion in 2024, a drop of over 70%.

The delisting announcement from Minmetals Land bluntly revealed the underlying logic: “The company’s capital-raising ability is limited and has lost the advantages of a listed platform.”

This seemingly plain statement exposes the truth of the platform’s over ten-year functional stagnation. For capital-intensive real estate, the core value of a listed platform is to facilitate equity financing channels and obtain liquidity support from the capital market. Both functions have long been effectively invalid for Minmetals Land.

Public data shows that since the privatization plan was announced, Minmetals Land has not completed any equity financing through the Hong Kong stock market in 16 years since 2009. The public market’s equity fundraising channels have been completely closed.

黄国钧, head of valuation and professional advisory services for China at Knight Frank, told Huaxia Times that the core value of a listed platform was to open diversified financing channels for capital-intensive real estate. This core function has been largely lost in the current market environment. The high costs of maintaining a listing platform and strict disclosure requirements were among the main considerations for privatization.

“Currently, SOE entities can obtain low-cost financing domestically, and the financing advantage of overseas listing platforms has greatly weakened. Moreover, privatization can further avoid the contagion of real estate business fluctuations on the credit of the Minmetals group. Delisting is not an exit from the real estate track,” Huang said.

During the upward industry cycle, maintaining a listing platform’s costs could be covered by scale and profit margins; but in a downward cycle with continuous losses and cash flow pressures, these ongoing rigid expenses become unnecessary costs to be shed.

Huang further explained that the proactive privatization by SOEs is not a strategic retreat but a capital restructuring under deep valuation inversion. It is essentially a buyback of core assets undervalued by the capital market at a reasonable discount.

“This delisting of Minmetals Land is fundamentally different from the passive delisting triggered by private real estate companies facing debt crises and liquidity shortages. It is a proactive capital decision based on asset value, platform function, and overall group strategy,” he emphasized.

From Orient Nonferrous Metals’ listing in 1991 to the privatization, the 34-year capital journey witnessed China’s real estate boom and deep adjustment. It also marked the full cycle of a SOE real estate platform from crossover entry, peak performance, to functional stagnation, and active delisting.

This delisting is not a declaration of exit from the real estate track but a recalibration and strategic choice by SOEs during the industry downturn.

Integration Test

The outcome of Minmetals Land’s delisting was already set in the group’s consolidation strategy.

On October 23, 2025, Minmetals Land’s controlling shareholder launched a HKD 1 per share privatization offer, over 100% premium to the previous closing price. On February 9, 2026, the privatization plan was approved overwhelmingly at the court meeting and special shareholder meeting; on February 10, the company completed its last trading day on HKEX.

But this delisting is not the end of Minmetals’ real estate business; rather, it is a key move in China Minmetals’ strategic integration of its real estate sector, which had long been planned. Alongside the privatization, the group’s previously decided real estate platform integration plan was also underway.

In December 2025, China Molybdenum Real Estate’s 100% equity and related debts were injected into Minmetals Land at a valuation of HKD 31.236 billion, completing the key asset layout of the two core platforms under China Minmetals.

However, the listed platform status of Minmetals Land became the biggest obstacle to this integration. The analysts mentioned earlier pointed out that as a HKEX-listed company, Minmetals Land faces strict disclosure requirements, quarterly performance assessments, and the need to balance the interests of minority shareholders. The fundamental condition of the target assets further complicates the operation of the listing platform.

Our observations show that China Molybdenum Real Estate’s financial situation is already under pressure. In the first seven months of 2025, its net loss reached HKD 25.4 billion.

“If the integration proceeds through the listing platform, the massive losses from the assets injected will directly impact the listed company’s performance, causing sharp stock price fluctuations, and face strict regulatory approval and minority shareholder voting pressures. The process will be time-consuming and operationally difficult,” the analyst said.

In this context, privatization and delisting become the optimal solution for China Minmetals to advance real estate sector consolidation. After delisting, Minmetals Land will be free from short-term performance constraints and disclosure restrictions, allowing it to more flexibly absorb China Molybdenum’s assets and debts, and smoothly carry out business integration without the pressure of performance assessments and stock price volatility.

The delisting from HKEX is not the end of the story but the beginning of a new round of integration challenges, with the key player being Minmetals Land’s new leader, Dai Pengyu.

In November 2025, Minmetals Land completed a major personnel change, appointing Dai Pengyu as Executive Director and Acting Chairman of the Board, becoming the new helmsman. With privatization finalized, he will lead the full integration and turnaround of Minmetals Land and China Molybdenum Real Estate.

According to China Minmetals’ strategic plan, post-delisting Minmetals Land will become the group’s sole real estate operation platform, responsible for integrating China Molybdenum’s existing assets, resolving historical debts, optimizing land reserves, and achieving professionalized operations.

However, many challenges still lie ahead. Financially, after the integration, the new Minmetals Land will inherit the existing losses and debts of both platforms. In the context of the ongoing bottoming cycle in the real estate industry, how to reduce losses and restore positive cash flow remains the primary challenge.

Operationally, the full integration of organizational structures, teams, and project systems of the two platforms will also test the new management team’s coordination and operational capabilities.

From a macro industry perspective, Minmetals Land’s proactive delisting is a typical example of SOE real estate sector’s professionalization and capital market valuation during the deep industry adjustment.

“Long-term, widespread discount-to-NAV in real estate stocks indicates that the capital market’s risk appetite for the sector has hit rock bottom. The financing function of listed platforms has essentially been lost, representing a core change in the sector’s ecosystem. The extreme bifurcation of listing and delisting—active privatizations and forced exits—coexists,” Huang said. He pointed out that current delistings can be divided into two types: one represented by Minmetals Land, which is a proactive privatization supported by strong parent company credit, after judging the platform’s value has become ineffective; and the other involving companies forced to delist due to inability to sustain listing requirements, with fundamentally different reasons.

Huang believes that listing has never been the ultimate goal of a company’s operation but a tool to serve development. The past “listing wave” was essentially about financing and valuation benefits. When these benefits disappear, the underlying logic of listing collapses. But this does not mean that the value of listing platforms is entirely lost, nor that delisting will become the industry norm.

“Listing is a trend in industry development, but delisting never is. For most small and medium state-owned real estate companies, the branding, financing reserves, and governance advantages of a listing platform still exist. They will not blindly follow the trend of privatization,” Huang said.

For real estate companies in the later stage of industry cleanup, whether listed or not is no longer the key measure of development capability. As the capital market’s dividends fade and financing functions weaken, the original allure of being listed becomes a constraint on strategic adjustment and business integration. Active privatization and delisting become rational choices.

For Minmetals Land, which just left HKEX, the capital market’s call has faded. The challenge of this enterprise fate-defining integration has just begun.