Chongqing Hongjiu Fruit Co., Ltd. (Hongjiu Fruit), a Hong Kong-listed company, was delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on the morning of December 30, 2025. Hongjiu Fruit had been listed for only 40 months, but its market value had evaporated by over 95%.
According to an announcement released by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on December 24, regarding the cancellation of the listing status of Chongqing Hongjiu Fruit Co., Ltd., it stated that starting from 9 a.m. on December 30, 2025, the H-share listing status of Chongqing Hongjiu Fruit Co., Ltd. would be canceled in accordance with Rule 6.01A(1) of the Listing Rules.
Reports from “Jiemian News” on December 29 indicated that Hongjiu Fruit was once known as the “number one fruit stock.” In March 2024, due to the delay in publishing the 2023 financial report, Hongjiu Fruit was officially suspended from trading. In April 2024, the company’s auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers, resigned. Despite filing for a review on October 13 this year, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange Listing Review Committee ultimately upheld its original decision. After more than a year and a half of suspension, the company was forced to exit the market with a dismal outcome of a market value devaluation exceeding 95%.
Public records show that Chongqing Hongjiu Fruit Co., Ltd. was established in October 2002, focusing on the operation of the entire industry chain of high-end imported fruits and high-quality domestic fruits, as well as import and export business. It was listed on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on September 5, 2022, at an issue price of HK$40 per share. Its shareholders include well-known investment institutions such as Alibaba, China Agriculture Development, Sunshine Insurance, Sequoia Capital, and Golden Chain Capital.
On April 16 this year, Hongjiu Fruit issued an “Insider Information Announcement,” stating that the Chairman, directors, and board members of the company, including Mr. Deng Hongjiu, Mr. Peng He, Ms. Jiang Zongying, Mr. Yang Junwen, Ms. Tan Bo, and Ms. Yu Lixia, or their relatives, had all been subjected to various criminal enforcement measures related to investigations by the Liangjiang New Area Public Security Bureau of Chongqing regarding alleged loan fraud and/or issuing of false VAT invoices.
As reported on December 24 by Tianyancha, Hongjiu Fruit was involved in 340 judicial cases and had 233 court notices. Currently, both Hongjiu Fruit and individuals such as Deng Hongjiu and Jiang Zongying have been listed as dishonest persons subject to enforcement and included in the list of restricted high-consumption individuals.
Insiders revealed to The Paper that before the suspension, Hongjiu Fruit had already felt significant financial pressure. Externally, it proposed private placements to industry capital and planned to establish an online trading platform specifically for the fruit industry; internally, it launched an employee stock ownership plan under the pretext of planning an A-share listing within the company.
Furthermore, Red Star News pointed out that Hongjiu Fruit implemented an “end-to-end” business model, where to ensure fruit supply, it often made prepayments to suppliers. However, customers on the sales end often failed to make timely payments, which posed a hidden risk to the company’s operations. From 2019 to the first half of 2022, the net cash flow from Hongjiu Fruit’s operating activities remained negative. In the first half of 2022 and 2023, the net trade receivables of Hongjiu Fruit reached 7.667 billion yuan and 8.673 billion yuan, respectively. In the first half of 2023, the accounts receivable turnover days for the company increased from 144.8 days at the end of 2022 to 188.5 days.
On December 25, Lin Yue, Chief Consultant of Lingyan Management Consultancy and an industry analyst for the food and beverage sector, told Red Star News that the core issues of Hongjiu Fruit lay in its aggressive “end-to-end” model, fragile financial chain, lack of internal controls, and financial problems. The inability to timely disclose financial reports and the massive prepayments had a fatal impact.
In response to this, Zhu Danpeng, a Chinese food industry analyst, analyzed for The Paper that the problems exposed by Hongjiu Fruit mainly concentrated on inventory management, store management, and overall operational aspects. The fruit business falls into a typical capital-intensive industry, where the characteristics of the industry dictate a large cash turnover. Against this backdrop, once a company’s operational efficiency is low and its management lags behind the development pace, serious operational risks are likely to arise.
Zhu Danpeng believes that the crisis faced by Hongjiu Fruit demonstrates that “companies should never resort to financial fraud and obtaining financing through deceit for the sake of high-speed development and expansion.” Companies like Hongjiu Fruit, positioned in the middle ground of the fruit industry, may face significant cost pressures and development challenges in the next two to five years.
According to a report by 21st Century Economic Herald, prior to the suspension, Hongjiu Fruit’s stock price was HK$1.74 per share, a decrease of over 95% from the issue price; the company’s market value was 2.8 billion Hong Kong dollars, shrinking by 64.2 billion Hong Kong dollars from its historical peak of 67 billion Hong Kong dollars at the beginning of 2023.