Since March, the good news of "Shuimao" has continued:
Founder Zhong Bianyuan has been the richest man in China for a row. On the 21st, he launched a new tea series "steam tea". On the evening of the 28th, the company’s 2021 annual report was released, and its performance has picked up significantly…
As a well-deserved soft drink giant in China, Nongfu Spring has passed last year’s "dark time" (related reading: Nongfu Spring overturned?), and everything seems to be going well.
Is that really the case? ifeng.com’s "eye of the storm" reviewed its annual report and found that, as a giant in the domestic soft drink industry, although Nongfu Spring handed over a good 2021 annual report answer sheet, it was backed by the weakness of the 2020 annual report data.
Further sorting out. In addition to experiencing a low performance, Nongfu Spring has not only suffered a "roller coaster" of stock prices and a sharp decline in market value in the past year and a half since its listing, but also fell into environmental pollution and food safety crises twice – a series of negative events that have wiped out hundreds of billions of Zhong’s net worth.
At the same time, the issue of "inflated valuation", which was widely criticized at the beginning of Nongfu Spring’s listing, has not been solved, which has become a major obstacle to the stability of the stock price.
01
Annual report dismantling: earning over 7 billion, tea beverage performance contribution is better than competing products
According to the 2021 annual report of Nongfu Spring, the total income of Nongfu Spring last year was 29.696 billion yuan, an increase of 29.8% year-on-year; the net profit attributable to the mother was 7.16 billion yuan, an increase of 35.7% year-on-year; the cash flow of operating activities increased by 35.2% year-on-year in 2020 to 11.40 billion yuan. The company’s gross profit margin was 59.5%, which was basically the same as 59% in 2020.
In terms of products, packaged drinking water is still the pillar product of Nongfu Spring. In 2021, the annual revenue was 17.058 billion yuan, an increase of 22.1% over 2020, accounting for more than half of the total revenue and 57.4%. However, this proportion decreased to a certain extent from 61% in 2020.
After packaged drinking water, the annual revenue of tea beverage products in 2021 was 4.576 billion yuan, an increase of 48.3% over 2020, and the proportion of the company’s overall revenue increased from 13.5% in 2020 to 15.4%.
The third and fourth largest functional beverage products and juice beverage products accounted for the same percentage of total revenue as last year. Among them, the annual revenue of functional beverage products in 2021 was 3.695 billion yuan, an increase of 32.3% over 2020; the annual revenue of juice beverage products was 2.614 billion yuan, an increase of 32.2%.
In addition, it is worth noting that the contribution of other products represented by soda drinks, flavored beverages, coffee drinks, plant yogurt, etc. in the total revenue has increased to a certain extent, an increase of 1.4 percentage points over 2020, from 4.6% to 6.0% in 2021, and the annual revenue in 2021 is 1.75 billion yuan, an increase of 66.0% over 2020.

Revenue Composition of Nongfu Spring by Product Category (Source: 2021 Annual Report)
Analysis of the reasons for the recovery of Nongfu Spring’s performance in 2021 shows that it is largely due to the overall recovery of China’s food and beverage industry last year.
In its annual report, Nongfu Spring pointed out that the national beverage production exceeded 183 million tons in 2021, an increase of 12% year-on-year. In 2021, the operating income of China’s beverage manufacturing industry increased by 13.5% year-on-year. Among them, the manufacturing industry of bottled (canned) drinking water increased by 12% year-on-year, the manufacturing industry of tea beverages and other soft drinks increased by 12% year-on-year, the manufacturing industry of fruit and vegetable juice drinks increased by nearly 14% year-on-year, the manufacturing industry of carbonated beverages increased by 19% year-on-year, and the manufacturing industry of milk beverages and vegetable protein beverages increased by nearly 11
It is not difficult to find that the growth of Nongfu Spring’s total revenue and sub-product revenue data outperformed the industry average. Intuitively, it does show a certain recovery ability of the company, but if the time line is extended, it can be found that the reason why the company’s operation improved significantly in 2021 has a lot to do with the decline in performance in 2020.
Data show that the total income of Nongfu Spring in 2020 was 22.877 billion yuan, down 4.8% year-on-year, which is also the first time in the past five years that the company’s revenue has declined year-on-year; the net profit attributable to the mother was 5.277 billion yuan, an increase of 6.65% year-on-year, which is also the company’s new low in the past five years.
Regarding the reasons for the decline in performance in 2020, Nongfu Spring has stated that the COVID-19 pandemic in the first half of 2020 and the floods caused by heavy rains in many provinces in China in July 2020 affected the company’s product transportation and product sales to some retail outlets, and also temporarily closed some retail outlets. At the same time, the epidemic has reduced consumers’ willingness to travel, and the implementation of measures such as wearing masks has also suppressed the sales of ready-to-drink products, which has a certain negative impact on the Group’s operating performance in 2020.
From this perspective, it is not difficult to understand that the company’s performance in 2021 has rebounded significantly after bottoming out.

Nongfu Spring’s recent financial summary (data source: Wind)
In addition to the industry’s recovery drive in 2021, but from the perspective of product composition, Nongfu Spring’s performance boost in 2021 was mainly due to the growth in revenue of key products.
The "eye of the storm" of ifeng.com found that from the main products of Nongfu Spring – packaged drinking water, tea beverages, functional drinks, fruit juices, and other products, the largest increase in revenue during the reporting period was tea beverages, reaching 48.3%, which was significantly higher than that of Master Kong Holdings and Unified Enterprise China, which were also beverage companies. The growth rates of tea beverages in the latter two were 13.78% and 15.2% respectively.
Nongfu Spring’s tea drinks are mainly marked by two beverages, "Tea Pi" and "Oriental Leaf". According to the company’s 2021 annual report, last year marked the 10th anniversary of the launch of "Oriental Leaf". Under the trend of "sugar-free" diet, "Oriental Leaf", which was controversial in the past, has now become the leader of the sugar-free tea drink track. To further open up the market, the company launched two new flavors, "Green Orange Pu’er" and "Black Rice Tea", in the first half of 2021. In addition, in September 2021, Nongfu Spring also launched a "new" milk tea series, and three flavors were launched in one go – black tea milk tea, oolong milk tea and jasmine green; in December of that year, it further launched a new winter-limited flavor of cocoa milk tea.
The successive launch of new products has finally increased the current revenue of Nongfu Spring tea beverage products by nearly 50% compared with 2020, and recorded 4.58 billion yuan in the whole year, accounting for more than 15% of the total revenue.
In this regard, the CICC research report said that the outstanding performance of Nongfu Spring tea beverages was mainly due to the good performance of Oriental leaves, tea π and other classic product flavors and new flavors under marketing activation. The company seized the opportunity to take advantage of seasonal new osmanthus and oolong flavors to help the growth rate of Oriental leaves further increase, and the tea Spring Festival stocking also performed well.
02
After a year and a half of listing, the stock price roller coaster has evaporated
Nongfu Spring was founded in 1996, but only listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in September 2020. The belated IPO bell has also drawn special attention to the beverage giant’s road to capital markets.
Since its listing, Nongfu Spring has indeed achieved a leap forward in its share price under the attention of many people. The share price on the first day of listing skyrocketed by more than 80%, from the initial issue price of HK $21.5/share to the intraday peak of HK $68.75/share on January 8, 2021. The share price has more than doubled in less than five months, and the total market value once exceeded HK $770 billion.
But then, the company’s share price took a nosedive and began to decline, giving back 25% of its gains in less than two months.

Since the listing of Nongfu Spring,