English English

By Yin Lei

Companies listed at the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) saw their revenues and profits increase by 11 percent and 14 percent to 15.4 trillion yuan and 1.6 trillion yuan respectively in the first half of 2018, an SSE press release showed on Sunday.

Of the 1,439 SSE companies, those in the real economy made up the bulk of the total revenues, raking in 12.1 trillion yuan, up by 13 percent. The financial sector received a total of 3.4 trillion yuan in revenue, an increase of 7 percent.

In terms of profits, financial firms earned 900 billion yuan accumulatively, up by 7 percent, while their real economy counterparts pocketed 600 billion yuan, up by 25 percent.

The heavyweights remained the largest money makers. Behemoths covered by the SSE 50 Index netted a total of 900 billion yuan in profits, up by 14 percent, and those under the SSE 180 Index gained 1.3 trillion yuan, up by 13 percent.

Sector-wise, the up and mid-stream sectors mostly witnessed strong profits from January to June, with a rise of 75 percent, 75 percent, 63 percent and 134 percent respectively in the petroleum, non-ferrous, petrochemical and steel industries.

Those at the downstream staged mixed performances. Net profits in the pharmaceutical and automobile industries increased by 22 percent and 16 percent respectively, while the wholesale and retail industry saw a slow growth of 4 percent.

Remarkable earnings were seen in the field of advanced manufacturing, innovative technologies, new services, and consumption. Net profits surged by 58 percent to 9.5 billion yuan for special equipment manufacturing and climbed by 36 percent to 8.3 billion yuan for rental and commercial services.

Endogenous growth was prioritized in the real economy sectors, in which a total of 706.6 billion yuan went to long-term assets, up by 11 percent, and 130 billion yuan to R&D efforts, up by 22 percent. Spending on mergers and acquisitions, on the other hand, shrank by 21 percent to 74.5 billion yuan.

Regarding financing, real economy players raised a total of 4.5 trillion yuan, up by 9 percent, of which 528.2 billion yuan originated from direct financing, up by 12 percent. Stocks and bonds each contributed 259.7 billion yuan and 268.5 billion yuan. Their overall debt-to-asset ratio edged up by 0.6 percentage point to 61.84 percent.