Conglomerate to focus on engineering, tech, finance to broaden its prospects

China Poly Group Corp Ltd, or Poly Group, the Beijing-headquartered, centrally administered State-owned enterprise, will deploy more resources in technology, engineering projects and finance to further diversify its growth pattern during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), said its senior executives.

The diversified conglomerate has three pillar businesses－trade, real estate and management of culture-and art-related ventures. Its new moves will enhance the company's competitiveness, and strengthen its role as one of China's State-owned capital investment companies, said Liu Hualong, the group's chairman.

The larger goal is to cultivate new businesses with promising growth potential in the coming years, he said.

Poly Group's sales revenue and profit in 2020 reached 400 billion yuan ($61.12 billion) and 60 billion yuan, respectively. Backed by total assets worth 1.5 trillion yuan, the group plans to raise the figures to 600 billion yuan and 70 billion yuan, respectively, by 2025.

Poly Group is committed to improving its work efficiency via mixed-ownership reform, Liu said. The conglomerate has attracted 400 billion yuan in capital from private companies and took part in 500 projects over the past three years.

Besides international trade and real estate, Poly Group has a presence in light manufacturing, raw material production, civilian explosive production, information and communication technology development, silk-related industries, financial services and other segments.

To respond to the government's call to optimize the structure of State assets, Poly Group restructured its Sinolight Corp, China National Arts and Crafts Group, China Silk Corp and China Huaxin Post and Telecom Technology Co Ltd over the past five years.

It also acquired the real estate business of Aviation Industry Corp of China during China's 13th Five-year Plan period (2016-20).

Through restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, Poly Group diversified its business lines, strengthened coordination between various sectors, and improved management and asset quality, said Zhang Zhengao, the group's president.

"Through professional integration, management improvement, capital injection, collaborative innovation and asset clearing, the group will further highlight and strengthen the main business of these companies, and continuously improve their core competitiveness during the 14th Five-Year Plan period," Zhang said.

The group will combine its actual need of main businesses to promote orderly and effective reorganizations, mergers and acquisitions to serve the national strategy and help meet the needs of the dual-circulation development paradigm, the market and people's livelihoods, he said.

To facilitate the 2020-22 action plan for State-owned enterprises reforms, the government will vigorously promote professional integration between central SOEs, especially those with homogenized businesses and overcapacity, said Li Jin, chief researcher at the China Enterprise Research Institute in Beijing.

The three-year action plan called for renewed efforts to optimize the structure of the State-owned economy to make it more competitive, innovative, influential and risk-resilient.

The government has already made plans to accelerate the pace of professional integration in the power, nonferrous, steel, offshore engineering equipment and environmental protection industries, in order to continuously restore the earning strength of central SOEs, information from the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council showed.

Sinochem and ChemChina, two central chemical SOEs, are being restructured and merged to form a behemoth, SASAC announced last week.