Shanxi Meijin Energy Co., Ltd. (Meijin Energy) is expected to incur a net loss of 850 to 1,250 million yuan in 2025. Over the past two years, the company’s losses have reached 2 billion yuan, leading to a change in ownership of the former wealthiest individual in Shanxi.
According to the performance forecast for 2025 released by Meijin Energy on January 15, the company expects a net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies to be between a loss of 850 million and 1,250 million yuan. The company attributed the loss to the impact of market conditions, with coal and coke prices showing a downward trend throughout the year, resulting in continued pressure on the gross profit margin of the company’s main products.
Meijin Energy, established on January 8, 1997, in Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province, primarily engages in the production and sale of new energy vehicles such as coal, coke, natural gas, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. It is one of China’s larger independent producers of commodity coke and coking coal with abundant coal and coalbed methane resources.
The continuous decline in coal prices in China in recent years has also affected Meijin Energy. Data from Huaxia Times on January 17 showed that in 2021, Meijin Energy achieved a historical peak of 2.541 billion yuan in net profit, allowing the controlling Yao Junliang family to hold the position of the richest individual in Shanxi. However, due to the continued decline in coal and coke prices, the company’s profits have been decreasing year by year, with profits falling to 2.209 billion yuan in 2022, only 289 million yuan in 2023, and incurring a net loss of 1.143 billion yuan in 2024. With the additional loss in 2025, the company has accumulated nearly 2 billion yuan in losses over two years.
At the same time, the Yao Junliang family lost the title of the richest individual in Shanxi, which they had held for seven years from 2017 to 2023.
In response to these developments, Yang Ting, a coke analyst at the Shanghai Steel Union’s Coke Division, told the media that in 2025, the overall profit of coke companies remained at a low level throughout the year and has not fully recovered from the pressure of losses. In 2025, the average price of coke fell by about 20%, setting a tone of overall low profits for the year, with prices continuing to decline.