Soon after announcing that the house could be delivered, Gree Electric launched another big move-an employee stock ownership plan.

On the evening of June 20, Gree Electric released the “Phase 1 Employee Stock Ownership Plan (Draft)”. This announcement shows that the total number of employees participating in Gree’s employee stock ownership plan does not exceed 12,000, involving company executives, middle-level cadres and employees in key positions. It is the largest employee stock ownership plan in Gree’s history. According to Gree’s plan , There will be several rounds of shareholding plans in the future.

The source of the shares held by the plan is the shares that have been repurchased in the special repurchase account of Gree, and the size of the shares does not exceed 108,365,800 shares. Moreover, employees participating in the shareholding plan will subscribe for shares at a price of 27.68 yuan per share. If calculated according to Gree Electric’s closing price of 53.68 yuan per share on June 18, the employee’s share price is about 51.56% of the current closing price.

This means that Gree employees participating in this shareholding plan can buy shares at half price. However, with the introduction of this plan, some people have also questioned this. In addition to the ups and downs of Gree during this period, Miss Dong is in What are the calculations?

Gree Electric, keen to give employees “benefits”

A few days ago, Dong Mingzhu announced that the first batch of 3,700 houses in the “Gree Pearl Plaza” in Zhuhai will soon be delivered. For a time, Gree was in the limelight. The news that “Gree wants to divide the house” was reported by major media, and many people believed that Dong Mingzhu did what he said.

In fact, as early as 2018, Dong Mingzhu publicly stated: “Gree will provide 80,000 employees with two bedrooms and one living room. As long as employees work until they retire, they don’t have to worry about housing prices.” At that time, the Zhuhai municipal government encouraged Gree Electric Appliances. , Promised to provide 10,000 sets of housing land.

In February of this year, Dong Mingzhu said in an interview with the media that Gree will be able to put out 3,700 houses immediately, with one set of scientific research personnel. As long as they can work in Gree until they retire, the house belongs to him. However, Dong Mingzhu also talked about Gree’s house allocation in an interview with the media on June 16th: “I originally wanted to retire and this house will belong to you, but many of our young people said that it has been too long. I can’t give the house now or sell it at half the market price. I finally decided to sell it to them at cost.”

Picture from Gree’s official website

Although there are many restrictions, it is normal. After all, there will be no free pies in the sky. Compared with the division of houses, Gree’s employee shareholding plan this time has received a lot of doubts once it was announced. Among them, the most concerned is Dong Mingzhu’s shareholding ratio.

According to the plan in the plan, Gree Electric’s chairman Dong Mingzhu plans to subscribe for 30 million shares, accounting for 27.68% of the shareholding plan, and plans to invest 830 million yuan. Six executives including Zhang Wei and Zhuang Pei will subscribe for 600,000 shares. The employee supervisor Wang Fawen subscribed for 80,000 shares. As for the remaining 74,685,800 shares, 1,1992 middle-level cadres and core employees plan to invest 2.067 billion yuan to subscribe.

To put it simply, Dong Mingzhu invested 830 million yuan and subscribed for 27% of the shares of this shareholding plan. From the stock price point of view, Dong Mingzhu made a “small profit” of 800 million, and most of the remaining shares were among middle-level cadres. The backbone of the enterprise subscribes. In other words, this employee stock ownership plan and the previous employee housing may be Gree Electric’s intention to “stabilize the military” and want to deeply bundle the company’s core talents by “distributing benefits” to employees. After all, Miss Dong once said: “ Talent is Gree’s greatest wealth.”

Gree’s disintegrating “iron triangle”

From a market perspective, the subscription price of Gree’s employee stock ownership plan is very low. The employee subscription price is only half of the market price, which is obviously unacceptable for investors who buy stocks from the secondary market. . After the announcement, Gree Electric’s share price fell 4.79% at the close of trading on June 21. At the risk of being attacked by the market, Gree Electric will also implement this plan, naturally because of the problem of brain drain. Perhaps the most famous of these is the disintegration of Gree’s “Iron Triangle”. On the evening of February 21, Gree Electric issued an announcement stating that it had received a written resignation report from Director and CEO Huang Hui and resigned from Gree Electric’s director and CEO positions. After Huang Hui resigned, he no longer held any position in Gree. In the three and a half years as the CEO, Huang Hui has been Gree’s second-in-command. Together with Chairman Dong Mingzhu and Chief Financial Officer Wang Jingdong, he was known as the “iron triangle” of Gree Electric. Before Huang Hui, Gree Electric’s director, vice president and secretary of the board Wang Jingdong also resigned from all positions in Gree in August last year due to personal reasons. Regarding the resignation of the two, some people in the industry believe: “The two of them have been in Gree for so many years and have been very loyal to Gree, but now they have left. This means that both Wang and Huang are in agreement with Dong Dong’s current development ideas for Gree. Mingzhu has a disagreement.” Moreover, Huang Hui joined Gree Electric in 1992 and is a senior executive of Gree Electric. The outside world once believed that Huang Hui was expected to succeed Dong Mingzhu as the next head of Gree Electric. In addition to the departure of the two core executives, according to media reports, Gree Electric’s personnel flow is also very large. Gree Electric, where the executives left, is in an eventful period. In the past 2020, due to the impact of the new crown epidemic, the financial report of Gree, which mainly attacked offline channels, was not very good, and it was precisely because of the impact of the epidemic on offline channels that Gree’s “air-conditioning king” throne was once taken away by Midea. The financial report shows that Gree Electric’s 2020 revenue fell by 14.97% to 170.497 billion yuan, achieving a net profit of 22.175 billion yuan attributable to the parent, a year-on-year decrease of 10.21%. From the perspective of revenue, Gree’s 2020 results are obviously not good. Although Gree has been carrying out transformation and reforms in recent years, many people’s first impression of Gree is still “selling air conditioners.” In a sense, it is true. Gree’s transformation and reform did not help Gree cultivate a high-quality business like air conditioners. According to Gree’s 2020 mid-year report, Gree accounted for the bulk of the air-conditioning business, accounting for nearly 60% of its revenue, and household appliances and smart equipment accounting for 3% and 0.3%, respectively. In the same period, Midea’s air-conditioning revenue accounted for 46%, and consumer appliances accounted for 38%.

Is it good to rely on stocks to win people’s hearts?

The dilemma of Gree Electric Appliances made Dong Mingzhu begin to seek change, and began to reform the sales channels that have not been lost. From the previous offline model, to the new Gree retail model of “simultaneous online and offline sales and integrated service”. Even if the provincial agency dealers are unwilling, the channel transformation has become an irresistible trend. Dong Mingzhu even went into battle himself and held more than a dozen live broadcasts to bring the goods. However, the low revenue performance in 2020 has also made the requirements of this equity incentive plan aroused by investors. Many investors believe that the incentive conditions this time are too simple, almost equivalent to nothing. Gree has requirements for company-level and personal-level performance in this employee stock ownership plan. As for employees, the individual performance appraisal results are required to reach level B or above in order to get all the shares. The level C can only get 80%, and the shares below the C level cannot get the shares. Gree will also return the corresponding original funds. At the company level, if the company’s performance evaluation fails to meet the standards after the expiration of the second evaluation vesting period, the management committee will make a decision to dispose of it, including canceling or selling stocks at an opportunity. The amount will be limited to the amount of disposal, and the corresponding holders will be refunded. The original capital contribution and the remaining income (if any) are returned to the company. Picture from Canva, ready made It should be noted that Gree’s assessment indicators for this plan are based on 2020 performance as a reference, but according to the financial report, Gree’s revenue in the first quarter of this year was 33.189 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 62.73%. Net profit was 3.443 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 120.98%. If this level can be maintained, the implementation of Gree’s shareholding plan will obviously not be particularly difficult compared to the results of 2020. However, similar to employee housing, Gree employees’ stocks can only be sold after retirement, and they can only enjoy dividends before retirement. For employees, this regulation largely restricts the behavior of employees selling stocks. For investors in the secondary market, it is obviously unacceptable for investors in the secondary market to spend real money to buy stocks in full, and now others only need to spend half of it to buy, and there is almost no risk. The selling restrictions may also be to cater for the emotions of investors. For Gree Electric, this approach of pulling in the backbone of the company may be compelling, but for Gree employees, this subscription is too far away from the perspective of time when the ban is lifted after retirement