Chinese stocks are among some of the best performing financial instruments this year, but in some cases, there’s significant space for improvement in investor relations.
Shenzhen Mindray—a healthtech company that offers patient monitoring solutions, such as life support devices and medical imaging systems, to healthcare facilities in over 190 countries and regions—will be one of the three largest additions to the China A Onshore Indexes compiled by MSCI, a firm that provides indexes and financial analytics. This is typically a boon for the companies that make the cut, as the recognition may lead to share purchases by major funds.
However, on Monday, when Mindray hosted a shareholders meeting attended by 30 investors, things quickly went south. The company’s chairman, president, and financial executives were all absent. Independent directors outside the company—Wu Qiyao, Xi Hao, and Yao Hui—who were due to present their work reports, also skipped the event, according to Gong Zihou, the author of a book titled Touzidebenyuan (“Origins of Investment”), who was present and later recorded the incident on Chinese finance blogger community Snowball.
Gong wrote that Mindray’s board secretary, Li Shumei, was unable to adequately answer questions about cash incentive proposals, and halted communications between shareholders and one of the company’s vice general managers—the only high-level executive who was in attendance. Li also questioned the presence of “small individual investors” by saying, “Today, many shareholders with only 100 shares showed up at the shareholders meeting. I do not know what your motives are.”
Gong’s post drew heated discussions, ushering in comments from more than 1,700 Snowball users within 15 hours. It was reposted on online news portal Sina, and became one of the site’s top searches.
Li Shumei said on Tuesday that she had issued a letter to apologize to Mindray’s investors, according to Chinese outlet Securities Times.
Mindray went public in the United States in 2006, then delisted a decade later in a USD 1.9 billion privatization deal. It was then listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange’s ChiNext board in 2018. Since the move, Mindray’s s market capitalization has gone from USD 3.3 billion in 2016 to its current RMB 170 billion (USD 24.7 billion), according to Gong.
Mindray’s stock price closed at RMB 143.60 (USD 20.90) in the morning session on Tuesday, down 2.72% from Monday’s close.
Contact the writer at jingli@kr-asia.com
