Camel in the desert: Water storage and resource seeking in the 2025 financial report of New City Holdings

Asking AI · In the industry’s countercyclical phase, how does Xincheng Holdings maintain financial stability and break through financing barriers?

This article source: Times Finance Author: Zhong Cai

Finding a water source in a sea of sand is the camel’s most important survival skill.

By 2025, the real estate industry remains intertwined with the pain of transformation and opportunities for restructuring. Most property developers are busy finding the right course, with some shrinking their development activities and others focusing on operational businesses. Jiangsu private property developer Xincheng Holdings is gradually completing its identity shift — no longer solely relying on selling houses to survive, but transforming into an operational platform with commercial cash flow as its moat.

Image source: Visual China

On March 27, Xincheng Holdings released its 2025 annual report, showing the company achieved operating revenue of 53.01B yuan and a net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies of 680 million yuan, making it one of the few private property companies still profitable.

Profitability does not depend on one-time asset disposals or debt restructuring but stems from endogenous growth in core businesses, especially the commercial sector’s sustained contribution of high gross margins.

In 2025, Xincheng Holdings achieved a total commercial operation revenue of 14.09 billion yuan, a 10.00% increase year-over-year, with its share of total revenue rising to 25%; additionally, gross profit from property leasing and management accounted for 63% of the company’s total gross profit, with a gross margin of 70%, indicating a fundamental improvement in the company’s profit structure.

Cash flow is the lifeline of a business. By the end of 2025, Xincheng Holdings’ operating cash flow had been positive for eight consecutive years, maintaining a record of “zero defaults” in the open market.

On the financing side, Xincheng Holdings is also a rare “financing breaker” among private property developers. Its diverse financing channels—USD bonds, medium-term notes, public REITs, inter-REITs—send a clear signal to the market: this private developer still possesses the ability to generate cash and has creditworthiness.

“Camel” is a metaphor used by Xincheng employees for themselves. Storing water during the boom cycle, holding firm during downturns, and seeking water sources amid every sandstorm exemplify Xincheng Holdings’ “Camel Spirit” of crossing cycles. As the real estate industry has long moved beyond scale anxiety, Xincheng Holdings demonstrates a completely different survival stance—rebuilding its valuation base through commercial operations, progressing step by step toward an oasis at its own pace.

Building a “Cash Flow Moat” Through Commercial Operations

While most property companies’ profits heavily depend on residential development sales, Xincheng Holdings began deploying a “dual-wheel drive” strategy over a decade ago. As a result, during industry downturns, the company can quickly adjust—actively shrinking development activities and focusing on commercial operations.

In 2012, Xincheng Holdings’ first shopping mall, Changzhou Wujin Wuyue Plaza, officially opened. Today, Xincheng Holdings has deployed 207 Wuyue Plazas across 141 cities nationwide, with 178 operational, covering a total area of 16.4907 million square meters, with a leasing rate of 97.86%. The number of shopping malls opened ranks first among listed companies domestically and abroad.

In the past year, domestic consumption recovery momentum weakened. Nationwide, 337 new shopping centers opened, the lowest in nearly 11 years. The commercial real estate industry is shifting from scale expansion to “stock optimization + value deepening,” entering a high-quality development stage.

Image source: Visual China

In this environment, Xincheng Holdings successfully opened five Wuyue Plazas; among the 178 operational malls, 30 are managed and operated by the company, demonstrating strong leasing, operation, and project management capabilities.

Scale is the foundation; operational efficiency is the core competitiveness of commercial real estate. Not only maintaining a high leasing rate of 97.86%, but key operational data of Xincheng’s commercial sector also show an upward trend.

In 2025, Wuyue Plaza’s total foot traffic reached 2B visits, a 13.31% increase; total sales reached 97 billion yuan (excluding vehicle sales), up 7.18%; by the end of 2025, membership numbers totaled 54.97 million, a 25.82% increase from 2024; sales, revenue, foot traffic, and member consumption all increased year-over-year, indicating Wuyue Plaza’s shift from a “traffic field” to a “retention field.”

As the industry shifts from incremental expansion to stock optimization, how to keep long-standing projects vibrant is a key measure of commercial operation capability.

In 2025, Changzhou Wujin Wuyue Plaza completed renovation and upgrade, including façade wall refurbishment and internal layout vertical integration, upgrading 135 brands and expanding the area by over 23k square meters. This renovation made Wujin Wuyue Plaza the “first gold-standard Wuyue” nationwide. Performance data three days after reopening showed a foot traffic of 485k visitors and sales exceeding 42.5 million yuan, setting new records in the history of Wuyue Plazas during their operational period.

“The company’s current commercial rental income growth is stable and sustainable, with quality leading quantity and price. We fully grasp the structural opportunities of the consumer market, relying on the core philosophy of Wuyue’s ‘Five-Step Business Model,’ focusing on asset value enhancement and upgrading the consumer experience,” said Wang Xiaosong, Chairman of Xincheng Holdings.

The impressive performance of the commercial sector provides a safety cushion for the company’s development. In the real estate development segment, Xincheng Holdings has also chosen to actively shrink, focusing on receivables and ensuring delivery, safeguarding the company’s cash flow safety. In 2025, Xincheng delivered over 38k units, with a total of more than 278k units delivered over the past three years; the year’s receivables amounted to 23k yuan, with a collection rate of 110.41%.

Financial stability builds a safety cushion, maintaining a “zero default” record in the open market

In 2025, the financing environment for private property developers remained frozen, but in such a challenging environment, Xincheng Holdings achieved multiple breakthroughs in various forms of financing, becoming an industry “breaker.”

Last June, Xincheng Development, the parent company of Xincheng Holdings, successfully issued a 3-year, $300 million senior unsecured bond, the first private developer offshore bond in nearly three years. In November 2025 and February 2026, the company issued two more offshore USD bonds, totaling about 5.6 billion yuan.

Throughout 2025, Xincheng Holdings also successfully issued three medium-term notes totaling 3.65 billion yuan, all fully guaranteed by China Bond Credit Enhancement Investment Co., Ltd., with the lowest issuance rate at 2.68%, a record low, and extending debt maturities to five years.

In November last year, the China Securities Regulatory Commission issued the “Notice on Launching the Pilot Program for Commercial Real Estate Investment Trust Funds (Consultation Draft),” officially including commercial real estate into the scope of public REITs pilot programs, providing a key financial tool for the industry’s transition toward asset operation.

Also in November last year, Xincheng Holdings successfully listed the first consumer-oriented inter-REITs based on Shanghai Qingpu Wuyue Plaza, effectively revitalizing commercial assets and completing the full “investment, financing, fundraising, construction, management, and exit” cycle, offering a replicable industry model. On March 16, the first expansion of the Guojin Asset Management-Wuyue Plaza Inter-REITs in 2026 was approved by the Shanghai Stock Exchange, with an expected fundraising of 485k yuan.

Leveraging policy support, Xincheng Holdings optimized its total financing volume and structure, while continuously lowering financing costs, ensuring full repayment of debt maturities in the open market.

Financial data shows that in 2025, net cash flow from operating activities was 38k yuan, positive for eight consecutive years, and every public debt was repaid early or on time, maintaining a “zero default” record.

By the end of 2025, Xincheng Holdings’ total credit line from major banks was 62.9 billion yuan, with 24.1 billion yuan used; the company’s net debt ratio was 56.97%, remaining low in the industry; the overall average financing cost was 5.44%, down 0.48 percentage points from the end of 2024.

Xincheng Holdings’ CFO, Guan Youdong, revealed that the company will continue exploring multiple financing tools such as multi-tiered REITs, corporate bonds, medium-term notes, and operational property loans to broaden financing channels, extend maturities, and reduce costs.

As the industry shifts from incremental to stock-based, Xincheng Holdings relies on its operational capabilities and strict financial discipline to build a ballast stone against turbulence; during boom cycles, it is a profit growth pole; during downturns, it is a supply line through the sandstorm.

From developer to operator, valuation begins to recover

With the commercial sector contributing over 60%, Xincheng Holdings’ valuation logic is undergoing a fundamental change. The market no longer simply classifies it as a residential developer but begins to reassess it within the framework of a commercial operator.

Meanwhile, a series of financing breakthroughs and credit performances in 2025 are gradually repairing the market’s valuation expectations for the company.

At the end of last year, Morgan Stanley upgraded Xincheng Holdings’ rating to “Overweight,” noting that the company achieved unexpected rent growth through increased market share and remains optimistic about its asset securitization prospects. Recently, several domestic brokerages also issued “Buy” ratings for Xincheng Holdings.

Beyond its increasingly mature commercial sector, Xincheng Holdings is transforming its accumulated management capabilities in commercial and residential development into light-asset service products that can be externally provided.

In 2025, Xincheng Construction and Management signed an additional 10.61 million square meters of contracts. By the end of 2025, it managed 155 projects, with a total managed area exceeding 26 million square meters, covering government residential proxy construction, commercial project proxy construction, and expanding into new service tracks.

Image source: Visual China

It is reported that in November 2025, Xincheng Holdings split its construction and management business into two entities: Xincheng Wanjia Construction & Management and Xincheng Hongtu Construction & Management, led by two veteran executives, marking a strategic upgrade of the construction and management business from a sideline to a core growth driver.

Currently, Xincheng Construction & Management has basically completed its nationwide layout, with business growth far exceeding the industry’s top 20 average growth rate, demonstrating strong growth potential.

Walking through the desert, a camel relies not on explosive power but on water storage and endurance. During deep industry adjustments, Xincheng Holdings, with its long-term accumulated commercial operation energy, has become one of the few private property companies still profitable, using a pragmatic narrative of “surviving to have a future” to hedge against “falling behind,” and taking solid steps as an endurance runner.