The story
Founded by Zhang Jindong in 1996.1
On 26 December 1990, the predecessor of Suning was founded in Nanjing as an air-conditioner retail store. On 15 May 1996, 江苏苏宁交家电有限公司 (literally Suning Domestic Appliance Co., Ltd.) was incorporated. In 2000 the company was renamed into 江苏苏宁交家电(集团)有限公司 (literally Suning Domestic Appliance (Group) Co., Ltd.) and then Suning Appliance Chain Store (Group) Co., Ltd. (Chinese: 苏宁电器连锁集团股份有限公司).
In July 2004, Suning Appliance Chain Store (Group) was listed on SZSE. As of 31 December 2004, founder and chairman Zhang Jindong owned 35.12% stake, followed by Jiangsu Suning Appliance Co., Ltd. (Chinese: 江苏苏宁电器有限公司), which was the parent company of Suning Appliance Chain Store (Group) Co., Ltd., for 18.29% stake. Chen Jinfeng (Chinese: 陈金凤) owned 8.78% stake. Moreover, Liu Xiaomeng, Zhang Jindong, Sun Weimin (CEO of Suning) and Chen Jinfeng owned 42%, 28%, 18% and 12% stake respectively in Jiangsu Suning Appliance, as at 2002.
Suning Appliance Chain Store (Group) was renamed Suning Appliance Co., Ltd. (Chinese: 苏宁电器股份有限公司; lit. 'Suning Appliance', 'Company Limited by Share') in 2005.
In 2009 Suning Appliance purchased Hong Kong based retail chain Citicall (as Citicall Retail Management), which became Hongkong Suning Commerce Co., Ltd., for HK$35 million and not more than HK$180 million for fixed assets.
2011-, Suning's been gradually exploring "online and offline" multi-channel integration.
On 19 February 2013, Suning Appliance announced to change the company name to Suning Commerce Group Co., Ltd. (Chinese: 苏宁云商集团股份有限公司)
On 19 November 2013, the Suning US R&D Center and Silicon Valley Research Institute was inaugurated in the city Palo Alto in California. The president of Suning Holdings Group Zhang Jindong officially announced the launch of the world's first research institute. Suning had clearly released the One-Wing Internet Roadmap, facility search would advance Suning's online to offline (O2O) business model (business strategy that attracts potential customers from online channels to shop in physical stores ) and would strengthen its back office, which include big data, business intelligence, high performance computing, online banking to improve efficiency operating in the retail sector.
In October 2015 PPTV was sold to chairman Zhang Jindong via a subsidiary of Suning Culture Investment Management for US$398.4102 million, making a profit of RMB 1.355 billion. In 2015 financial year the comprehensive income of Suning Commerce Group in consolidated basis was just 1.01168 billion RMB.
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In April 2016 Suning Commerce acquired 4.90% stake in Nubia Technology from chairman Zhang Jindong for 283.7 million RMB, proportional to Zhang's subscription in the capital increase of Nubia in December 2015.
On 3 June 2016 Suning Commerce Group issued about 1.86 billion new shares to Taobao (China) Software Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Alibaba Group, for about 28 billion RMB. During the year the company sold some properties to Zhang, making extraordinary profit for the loss-making company.
In 2018, the listed company was renamed Suning.com Co., Ltd. (Chinese: 苏宁易购集团股份有限公司)
In 2019, Suning.com acquired 80% stake of the Chinese division of Carrefour. Also in 2019, Suning.Com acquired 37 department stores from the Wanda Group for 2.7 billion RMB. Was ranked as the largest omnichannel retailer in China and as the most valuable retail brand in China by the World Brand Lab, with a total brand value of US$39,093 billion and operating income of over US$37 billion.
As reported by the US magazine Fortune in 2019, it had a turnover of US$37 billion, and could count on 130,455 employees.
As of 30 September 2019, the number of registered members of Suning.com's retail platform reached 470 million users.
In February 2021, Shenzhen International and Shenzhen Kunpeng Equity Investment Management (both state-owned enterprises) invested in Suning.com at 6.92 yuan per share, for a total of approximately 14.8 billion yuan (US$2.28 billion), or 8% of the total stake. of their capital company (745 million shares) and 15% (1.397 billion shares), for a total of 23%.
In May 2021, Suning.com released its report for the first quarter of 2021. Suning.com achieved operating profit of 54.05 billion yuan (approximately over US$8 billion) and net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies reached 456 million yuan (over US$70 million). The Retail Cloud continued to develop in the first quarter, with 584 new stores opened and the scale of sales increased by 69% year on year (the 247 stores opened in June must be added for a total of 831 new stores opened since the beginning of the year).
Two branches of the Jiangsu Province-based government agency that oversees major state-owned businesses agreed to set up a 20 billion yuan (US$3.1 billion) fund with Suning.com's parent company Suning Holdings Group. The fund would be used to invest in its best performing assets and assets, a move that should give the company more breathing room to deal with its heavy debt load.
In June 2021, Zhang Jindong's company would in fact receive 3.2 billion yuan (US$500.6 million) from a state fund as it struggled to recover from a liquidity crisis. Suning.com said 5.59% of his shares will be transferred to a fund consisting of four state-owned enterprises ultimately controlled by the Jiangsu provincial government. The shares were controlled by an affiliate of Zhang Jindong, president of Suning.com, who currently holds 19.7% of the total shares. The transfer price would be 6.12 yuan per share, 90% of Tuesday's closing price. According to the agreement, Zhang had the obligation to buy back the shares for sale by 1 April 2022, paying a consideration of 3.182 billion yuan, plus interest (equal to about 3.85% on an annual basis).
In mid June 2021, a Beijing court froze 3 billion yuan worth of shares Zhang holds in the group's retail arm Suning.com Co. for three years. With most of Zhang Jindong shares pledged as collateral for loans, that could complicate his ability to raise cash and potentially derail a state-backed rescue. Concerns over Suning's cash flow initially surged to the fore in September, when Zhang waived his right to a 20 billion yuan payment from Evergrande Group.Suning.com had stopped trading in its shares, the stock had fallen by the daily limit of 10%.
In early July 2021, it was announced that the company had reached an agreement with a group of investors, both private and government officials, who intervened on behalf of Suning.com. The transaction in question, which saw its core in the new "New Retail Innovation Fund Phase II" fund worth 8.83 billion yuan (US$1.36 billion), led by the state asset management committee of Nanjing and the government of Jiangsu province, would take over 16.96% of the company. The fund included brands such as Alibaba Group, Haier, Midea Group, TCL and Xiaomi as protagonists. With this intervention, the shares of Zhang Jindong would drop from 20.96% to 17.62%, Suning Holdings Group's stake from 3.98% to 2.73%, Suning Appliance Group from 10.68% to 1.39% and the Tibet Trust's stake fell from 3.07% to zero. After a period of suspension on the stock exchange, from 16 June to 5 July, the company's shares were up by a maximum of 10% after the dealer announced the financial transaction.
On 12 July 2021, Suning.com announced that the company's board of directors would be reorganized and that the resigned founder and chairman Zhang Jindong would take up his new position as honorary chairman of the company's board of directors. The company said Ren Jun, a board member, would perform chairman duties temporarily. Zhang Jindong would continue as legal representative until no replacement was found. For the same role there were a total of four candidates, Huang Mingduan, Xian Handi, Cao Qun and Zhang Kangyang.
Through an official note published on 29 July 2021, Suning.com announced the new composition of the company's board of directors. The new Chairman of the board was Huang Mingduan, former CEO of "Sun Art Retail Group", a supermarket chain owned by Alibaba Group, replacing Suning.com interim chairman Ren Jun. Alibaba is the company led by Jack Ma and which, as part of the "New New Retail Fund", bought shares in the subsidiary Suning in early July. Steven Zhang, president of Suning International, president of Inter, vice president of Suning Holdings Group and son of Suning's number one, Zhang Jindong, was also appointed to the board of directors, together with Huang Mingduan, Xian Handi and Cao Qun, as a non-independent director of the company's seventh board of directors. On 30 July results for the first half of 2021 was released. Total operating revenue for the half-year period was about CN¥93.657 billion.Net income attributable to shareholders of the listed company stood at about CN¥−3.19 billion.
The company was in financial trouble due to over expansion and slowdown of China's economy. According to Nikkei, the embattled Chinese retail giant Suning.com is getting a 5 billion yuan (US$685 million) lifeline from state-backed Citic Trust and China Huarong Asset Management in October 2023.
From Wikipedia’s article on Suning.com, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4