Sunshine City Group Co., Ltd. (Sunshine City) recently sold its headquarters building in Shanghai at a discount of 40%, as the group has incurred losses of 40 billion yuan over the past three years. The sale of the headquarters building is mainly to repay debts.
According to information from the Alibaba Asset Auction Platform, the No. 1 building of Binhai International Plaza, the former headquarters of Sunshine City Group, was recently sold at an auction for a final price of 1.31 billion yuan. Public information indicates that the Binhai International Plaza No. 1 building was originally the headquarters of the Fujian-based real estate company Sunshine City Group and was moved into and renamed Sunshine Holdings Building in 2017.
Compared to the initial auction price, the final transaction price of the Binhai International Plaza No. 1 building was only 60% of the original price, as reported by the Daily Economic News on October 7th. Additionally, the Binhai International Plaza No. 1 building had previously been put up for auction four times but failed to attract any bidders. The reason for this auction was that the building was mortgaged by Sunshine City Group, and due to the group’s inability to repay debts, the creditor China Construction Trust Co., Ltd. auctioned off the building.
Like other mainland real estate companies, Sunshine City started expanding in 2010 and achieved sales of 211.03 billion yuan in 2019, ranking among the Top 15 in Chinese real estate sales for the year.
However, the rapid expansion brought about substantial debts for Sunshine City. In 2018, the company’s total debt exceeded 200 billion yuan, reaching 274.6 billion yuan by the end of 2022. By the end of 2024, Sunshine City’s asset-liability ratio was 109.01%; as of the end of June this year, it had increased to 111.68%.
As per the Sunshine City announcement, as of September 25 this year, the company had outstanding unpaid debts (including bank loans and amounts owed to partners) totaling 65.734 billion yuan; in the public market, overseas public market bonds had accumulated unpaid principal of 2.244 billion U.S. dollars, and domestic public market bonds had unpaid principal totaling 16.463 billion yuan.
While grappling with high debts, Sunshine City has been facing massive losses since 2022. The company reported net profits of -12.55 billion yuan, -8.069 billion yuan, and -19.56 billion yuan in 2022, 2023, and 2024 respectively. Concurrently, the stock price of Sunshine City has been persistently sluggish. Moreover, Sunshine City’s stock price remained below 1 yuan per share for 20 consecutive trading days from May 15, 2023, to June 9, triggering the delisting process due to falling below the minimum trading requirement. On August 16, Sunshine City was delisted and officially exited the stock market, with its shares currently trading on the New Third Board.