Taking over Ganfeng's energy storage equity stake, this local state-owned enterprise has two institutional REITs accepted within 20 days

According to the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) bond project information platform, on August 17, the Guolian Asset Management - Jiangsu Guokai New Energy Real Estate Asset-Backed Special Plan (Inter-institutional REIT) was officially accepted for review. The plan manager is Guolian Securities Asset Management, and the original equity holders are Suqian Xinkai Tianhai Investment Co., Ltd. and Jiangsu Guosheng Chuangrong New Energy Co., Ltd.

‌This is Suqian's first inter-institutional REITs product and the first new energy securitization project in northern Jiangsu where a local state-owned asset platform directly serves as the original equity holder.

Ten deals in two months: Inter-institutional REITs for new energy are accelerating

This 230 million yuan project doesn't stand out much in the market of the second half of this year—the expansion speed of this category has clearly picked up in recent months.

On June 9, Caitong Asset Management's 451 million yuan storage project for Canadian Solar was listed on the SSE, marking the‌first independent storage inter-institutional REITs in China‌; On June 29, Bicheng Energy's 500 million yuan follow-on offering was approved by the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE), becoming the‌first inter-institutional REITs follow-on offering in the commercial and industrial distributed PV sector‌, just six months after its initial 297 million yuan product was established; On July 3, Cinda Foundation Practice - Zhongguang New Energy's 750 million yuan project was approved by the SSE, with underlying assets being two molten salt energy storage solar thermal power stations in Delingha, Qinghai, marking the‌first inclusion of solar thermal power stations in such pools‌; On July 24, the SSE and SZSE released revised ABS review guidelines, officially naming holding-type real estate ABS as inter-institutional REITs, clarifying core features such as equity attributes, flat-layer structures, and no external credit enhancement.

After the new rules took effect, the pace accelerated. From July 27 to 28, Haier New Energy's 5 billion yuan and Yichu Digital Intelligence's 675 million yuan projects were successively accepted by the SZSE; On July 29, Hangtai Digital Intelligence's 383 million yuan distributed PV project passed review at the SSE; On August 3, Caitong - Zhengtai Aenergy's 6.662 billion yuan residential PV project was accepted by the SSE,‌setting a new scale record for inter-institutional REITs in the new energy sector‌. On the same day, Huanghe Tianwei, a 304 million yuan storage project backed by Shanxi coal-coking capital, was also accepted; On August 4, Hongzuo New Energy, a 55MW distributed PV project jointly developed by Sequoia China and Hongxin Jianfa, was established at the SSE.

In just over two months, ten projects have made substantial progress. Underlying assets have expanded from commercial and industrial distributed PV and residential PV to independent storage and solar thermal power stations; declared scales range from over 200 million to nearly 6.7 billion yuan; sponsors are diverse—component manufacturers, residential PV leaders, industrial capital, VC-backed enterprises, capital transitioning from coal-coking, to local state-owned asset platforms—all crowding in.

Data publicly disclosed by the SSE shows that as of the end of July, the exchange had cumulatively accepted‌90 inter-institutional REITs applications, with a total declared scale exceeding 170 billion yuan‌, of which 55 have been issued, with a scale nearing 100 billion yuan. New energy is the fastest-growing segment within this pool.

The Zhengtai Aenergy deal is particularly noteworthy. The company's application for spin-off listing was accepted by the SSE in September 2023, initially planning to raise 6 billion yuan. In September 2025, it voluntarily withdrew, terminating the IPO review.‌In less than a year, the tool for revitalizing existing power station assets switched to REITs, with a scale even larger than the original IPO fundraising amount‌. As of the end of 2025, Zhengtai Aenergy held approximately 27GW of installed capacity in residential PV power stations, with cumulative construction exceeding 2 million units, and net profit reached 3.04 billion yuan in 2025. After withdrawing the spin-off, Zhengtai Aenergy remained within the consolidated financial statements of Chint Electric. This 6.662 billion yuan REITs deal has become a path for revitalizing existing assets without relying on an IPO.

Behind the shift from competing for listing shares to 盘活存量资产 (revitalizing existing assets) lies the fact that the industry has reached different stages: the return expectations for newly built power stations are less certain. How to monetize and recycle existing power stations pressed onto balance sheets is more urgent than how many megawatts were installed this year.

Suqian Guokai's New Energy Ledger: Limited Self-Building, Aggressive M&A

Tracing back, the two original equity holders of the Suqian project are anchored within the same local state-owned asset system.

Suqian Xinkai Tianhai is wholly owned by Guokai New Energy Equity Investment Fund (Suqian), positioned as an asset holding platform. Jiangsu Guosheng Chuangrong was established in May 2024 with a registered capital of 100 million yuan. Its equity structure consists of Hainan Yuewen Investment Partnership holding 51%, Nanjing Sixiang New Energy Technology Co., Ltd. holding 29%, and Suqian Guokai Investment Holding Group Construction Engineering Co., Ltd. holding 20%—state-owned capital participates through the latter, while private capital holds control. Nanjing Sixiang, established in 2016, specializes in energy storage system solutions. Its legal representative, Wang Kun, is also the legal representative of Guosheng Chuangrong, with significant overlap in personnel and business between the two companies.

Above these two entities lies the Jiangsu Guokai New Energy Investment Group. Established in February 2024 with a registered capital of 1.5 billion yuan, its shareholders are Suqian Guokai Investment Holding Group (65%) and the Suqian Economic and Technological Development Zone Management Committee (35%), both state-owned. The controlling shareholder, Suqian Guokai Investment Holding, has a registered capital of 2 billion yuan, a main body rating of AA+, and is 100% owned by the Suqian Municipal Government. Its main businesses cover infrastructure construction, municipal engineering, state-owned asset operation, and fund management. New energy is a business segment only recently expanded into in the past two years.

From public information, the layout of the Suqian Guokai system in new energy power stations follows two lines: self-building and M&A. For self-built distributed PV, the only verifiable project found so far is the 1.9MW rooftop distributed PV project south of Fuzhou Road (investment approx. 5 million yuan, under construction in the first half of 2026), and the 0.4MW carport PV project at Qinghuayuan Supercharging Station, which failed twice during procurement. The supplier list solicitation announcement states an annual PV development target of no less than 10MW and wind power of no less than 20MW, indicating a relatively small volume.

More noteworthy is the M&A side. In September 2025, Guokai New Energy Fund first contributed capital to establish Wanxin Green Energy (Suqian) Partnership, initially holding 98.5%. A month later, it introduced Shenzhou Jiutou (Beijing) Energy Co., Ltd. and Suqian Guokai Xinchuang Fund, etc. Currently, Guokai New Energy Fund holds 59.3%, Beijing private enterprise Shenzhou Jiutou holds 32.2%, and Guokai Xinchuang Fund holds 7.5%,‌with Suqian state-owned capital accounting for approximately two-thirds in total‌.

In October of the same year, Ganfeng Lithium announced that‌Wanxin Green Energy intends to acquire a 44.2361% equity stake in Shenzhen Yichu Digital Intelligence Energy Group for 664 million yuan‌, of which 443 million yuan is for acquiring 29.5355% held by Ganfeng Lithium, and the remaining approx. 221 million yuan is for shares held by minority shareholders like Wang Xiaoshen and Shen Haibo. The transaction was completed in December, making Wanxin Green Energy the largest shareholder. Ganfeng Lithium's stake dropped from 69.58% to 40.04%, and Yichu Digital Intelligence was no longer included in Ganfeng's consolidated statements. Additionally, Guokai New Energy Fund directly invested in the project company for Yichu's 100MW/400MWh energy storage power station in Weixian, Hebei.

Yichu Digital Intelligence is not a small project company. Established by Ganfeng Lithium in 2024, it specializes in grid-side independent shared energy storage. It pushed seven projects to start construction in its founding year, totaling 3.9GWh. Known operational projects are distributed across provinces including Guangdong, Hebei, Ningxia, and Yunnan, including two 400MW/800MWh stations in Qujing, Yunnan, and a 200MW/400MWh station in Huizhou, Guangdong, with single station sizes mostly between 100MW and 400MW. This enterprise, where Wanxin Green Energy is the largest shareholder, just filed for a 675 million yuan storage inter-institutional REITs at the SZSE on July 28. Combined with this 230 million yuan project accepted by the SSE,‌the Suqian Guokai system is simultaneously advancing two new energy REITs applications at the SSE and SZSE within 20 days, with a total declared scale of approx. 900 million yuan‌.

On the manufacturing side, Suqian Guokai also introduced the Guochi Ruineng 3GWh energy storage equipment manufacturing project (expected annual output value approx. 2 billion yuan) and the Guofeng Yuanchu 30GWh battery PACK and system integration project under Yichu Digital Intelligence. However, these two belong to the manufacturing sector, not power station operating assets.

On the capital platform side, Guokai New Energy Equity Investment Fund (Suqian) was established in November 2024 with a subscribed scale of 1 billion yuan, completing AMAC filing in January 2025. The GP is Wuxi Guolian Xinchuang, with Jiangsu Guokai New Energy Group subscribing for 845 million yuan. Publicly disclosed direct investment projects include a 130 million yuan contribution to Suqian Xinkai Tianhai, contributions to Wanxin Green Energy, and investment in the Weixian project company. Additionally, there is another fund, Suqian Guokai Xinchuang Technology Equity Investment Fund, also with a subscribed scale of 1 billion yuan and the same GP, Wuxi Guolian Xinchuang. It has externally invested in projects like Yasheng Semiconductor and Xintao Microelectronics and also participated in contributing to Wanxin Green Energy.

Plan manager Guolian Asset Management and fund GP Guolian Xinchuang both belong to the Wuxi Guolian system. They have collaborated since the fund management stage, and this REITs application is a natural extension of their cooperation chain. In July 2026, Jiangsu Guokai New Energy additionally invested in the Suqian Jingkai Guolian Native New Energy Industry Fund, deepening Guolian's participation in the Suqian new energy sector.

For regional state-owned asset platforms like Suqian Guokai, the logic behind pushing REITs is actually straightforward. The return cycle for traditional infrastructure investments is lengthening. New energy is one of the few heavy-asset investment directions with both policy support and stable cash flows. However, under pure holding models, the recovery period for distributed PV is generally over ten years, and expansion rhythms can easily be constrained by the platform's balance sheet capacity. Putting mature power stations into securitized products, recovering funds, and reinvesting in new projects theoretically forms a rolling cycle.

230 Million is Just the Starting Point

But acceptance is merely the first step.

At 230 million yuan, the volume is on the smaller side in the current market. Zhengtai Aenergy alone had a 6.662 billion yuan deal with approx. 27GW of self-held stations; Haier New Energy 5 billion yuan, Zhongguang New Energy 750 million yuan, Yichu Digital Intelligence 675 million yuan, Huanghe Tianwei 304 million yuan, and Hangtai Digital Intelligence 383 million yuan are all higher than this Suqian deal. For reference, Bicheng Energy's initial 297 million yuan product was established in December 2025, and just six months later, a 500 million yuan follow-on offering was approved, bringing the cumulative scale close to 800 million yuan. The "initial issuance - follow-on" rolling mechanism already has precedents of successful execution. Suqian Guokai's first deal is more about going through procedures and validating the model. Whether it can rely on the 1 billion yuan industry fund to continuously acquire assets and form a stable follow-on rhythm remains to be seen. As of the acceptance stage, the specific underlying asset list, asset types (PV or storage), and geographic distribution of this project have not been publicly disclosed.‌The final quality of the assets will depend on the issuance documents‌.

The certainty of regional returns is also questionable. The commercial and industrial electricity price levels and load stability in northern Jiangsu are generally weaker than in southern Jiangsu and the core areas of the Yangtze River Delta. After the implementation of Document No. 136, new projects have fully entered market-based trading, leading to increased electricity price volatility. Investors require higher risk premiums for assets in non-core regions, which in turn compresses the issuer's profit margins.

‌The property rights architecture is a common underlying constraint for distributed new energy REITs‌. PV power stations are built on commercial and industrial rooftops, most of which are leased. Pooling typically adopts a bundled structure of "project company equity + equipment ownership + long-term lease + electricity fee collection rights". The effectiveness of asset isolation is inferior to that of self-owned real estate. The situation for energy storage stations is similar; most are built on leased land, and many projects cannot obtain complete real estate ownership certificates. This is one of the core constraints preventing distributed new energy assets from achieving public REITs landing, a hurdle that state-owned backgrounds also cannot bypass.

Another point worth noting:‌Implicit binding of entity credit‌. The new rules explicitly state that inter-institutional REITs should highlight asset credit and not rely on external guarantees. However, in practice, many projects still set up shortfall payment or liquidity support arrangements. State-owned projects have local platform backing, making issuance easier, but this also means the assets may not truly be off-balance-sheet. The Hongzuo New Energy project established on August 4 used a flat-layer design and did not rely on entity credit enhancement, securing oversubscription from insurance institutions and bank wealth management products. Among current state-owned projects, those completely free of entity credit enhancement like Hongzuo are rare. Whether this model can become the norm requires verification from more projects.

No Longer Comparing Installed Capacity, But Who Turns Faster

The differentiation in the industry is already clear.

Market-oriented industrial players like Bicheng Energy, Canadian Solar, and Hangtai Digital Intelligence have large self-held asset volumes, with declared scales ranging from hundreds of millions to billions. Their core goal is to open channels for continuous follow-on offerings. Bicheng Energy has cumulatively connected over 1.5GW to the grid, completing a follow-on offering just six months after establishing its initial product. The chain of "fund incubation - mature operations -装入 REITs - recover funds for reinvestment" has undergone practical validation. Canadian Solar, backed by global component production capacity, still holds a large reserve of assets after its first storage REITs listing. Hangtai Digital Intelligence, formerly the distributed PV division of Chint New Energy, holds over 1.5GW of self-owned stations.

Zhengtai Aenergy represents another kind of shift. As a leader in residential PV, it once sought securitization through spin-off listing. After the IPO was terminated, it quickly pivoted to REITs, with a declared scale of 6.662 billion yuan, exceeding the original IPO fundraising amount. This is not an isolated case—Yichu Digital Intelligence, after exiting the Ganfeng Lithium system and introducing Wanxin Green Energy (backed by Suqian state-owned capital) as its largest shareholder, advanced REITs alongside a three-year listing plan. Tianwei Energy stands behind Shanxi Huanghe Industrial Group, as well as coal-coking capitals like Meijin Energy, Yaxin Energy, and Kaijia Group, which set up an initial 500 million yuan storage M&A fund to incubate assets. For these enterprises,‌REITs are no longer a backup plan for IPOs but rather a more flexible tool for revitalizing existing assets in heavy-asset industries compared to equity financing‌.

The demands of regional state-owned asset platforms like Suqian Guokai are different. The core is to revitalize local resources and optimize the platform's asset structure. However, by taking the largest shareholder position in Yichu Digital Intelligence through Wanxin Green Energy, it shows they are unwilling to only focus on small local projects: using fund leverage to invest in a national-scale energy storage operator and then exiting via REITs. From public information alone,‌this approach is uncommon among local city investment platforms‌. However, fund shareholding does not equal asset consolidation. Whether the 664 million yuan acquisition cost corresponding to the energy storage stations can generate stable cash flows covering dividend requirements, and whether the issue of high proportion of asset disposal gains in Yichu Digital Intelligence's H1 2025 profits can be improved, still needs time for verification.

The competitive dimensions of the new energy industry are indeed changing. REITs have 打通 the last link of "Invest-Finance-Manage-Exit". Power stations are no longer just assets kept for generation but have become financial products that can be priced, traded, and exited. Zhengtai Aenergy switching from IPO to REITs, Bicheng expanding within half a year, and Suqian Guokai testing the waters with 230 million yuan—on the surface, these are enterprises of different scales and backgrounds finding their own paths. At their core, they are saying the same thing: the old road of heavy asset holding is getting heavier and heavier. Activating existing assets and keeping funds moving is the only way to sustain expansion.

But this does not mean all players can succeed. Bustling at the application stage does not mean the model is mature. Long-term stability of underlying cash flows, compliance of property rights, and whether asset off-balance-sheet treatment is genuine—all these ultimately need to be tested by operational data.‌For Suqian Guokai, having the 230 million yuan project accepted is just the first step. Subsequent issuance pricing, dividend fulfillment, and the ability to continuously inject new assets are the true hurdles that cannot be bypassed.