Author | Huang Yu

In the past three to four years, as the real estate sector has entered a deep adjustment period, the landscape of the real estate industry has undergone significant reshuffling. Currently, among the top ten real estate companies by sales, only one private enterprise remains, which is the Binjiang Group from Hangzhou.

On August 26, Binjiang Group announced its semi-annual report for 2025. In the first half of the year, Binjiang Group achieved operating revenue of 45.449 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 87.8%; the net profit attributable to the parent company was 1.853 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 58.87%.

In the current market, which is in a bottoming phase, Binjiang Group's performance rebound is mainly due to the increase in the volume of delivered properties in the first half of the year compared to the same period last year. At the same time, the gross profit margin in the first half of the year increased by 2.67 percentage points year-on-year, rising to 12.24%.

In terms of sales, in the first half of this year, Binjiang Group achieved sales of 52.75 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 9.4%, ranking 10th in the CRIC national real estate company rankings, down two places from the same period in 2024, but still the number one among private enterprises.

To ensure a positive cycle of "land acquisition-sales," Binjiang Group has maintained a certain level of investment intensity.

The financial report shows that in the first half of this year, Binjiang Group added 16 new land reserve projects, including 2 in Jinhua and 14 in Hangzhou, continuing to consolidate its market share in its home base of Hangzhou; the newly added projects have a total planned construction area of 1.0067 million square meters, with total land costs of 33.272 billion yuan.

According to data from the China Index Academy, in the first half of this year, land acquisition companies were still dominated by central and state-owned enterprises, with 8 of the top ten companies by land acquisition amount being central and state-owned enterprises, while Binjiang, as a private enterprise, ranked fifth.

As of the end of the first half of this year, 73% of Binjiang's land reserves were in Hangzhou, while cities in Zhejiang Province outside of Hangzhou, including Jinhua, Huzhou, and Ningbo, accounted for 17%, and areas outside Zhejiang Province accounted for 10%.

Clearly, in the context of the real estate industry slowly stabilizing, maintaining its home base remains Binjiang Group's primary development strategy.

Entering the second half of the year, Binjiang Group continues to increase its investment in Hangzhou. Recently, Binjiang Group President Zhang Hongli revealed that from January to July, Binjiang acquired a total of 19 land parcels, including 17 in Hangzhou and 2 in Jinhua. The total land acquisition amount reached 42.2 billion yuan, with equity land acquisition amounting to 16.3 billion yuan, and newly added value exceeding 68.8 billion yuan.

While maintaining a certain level of investment intensity, ensuring financial health remains Binjiang's top priority.

The financial report shows that as of the end of the first half of the year, Binjiang Group's interest-bearing liabilities were approximately 26.506 billion yuan, a decrease of nearly 4 billion yuan from the beginning of the year, with consolidated interest-bearing liabilities totaling 33.352 billion yuan, a decrease of 4.083 billion yuan from the end of last year, of which bank loans accounted for 83.9%, and direct financing accounted for 16.1%.

In terms of debt levels, Binjiang Group's asset-liability ratio, excluding advance receipts, was 57.8%, an increase of 2.71 percentage points from last year, while the net debt ratio was 7.03%, a decrease of 15.83 percentage points from the same period last year.

In terms of debt maturity structure, short-term debt was 9.408 billion yuan, accounting for only 28%, which is lower than the end-period cash and cash equivalents (29.5 billion yuan), with a cash-to-short-term debt ratio of 3.14 times, effectively covering short-term debt At the same time, Binjiang Group's comprehensive financing costs have been continuously declining in recent years, with 5.2% in 2020, 4.9% in 2021, 4.6% in 2022, 4.2% in 2023, and 3.4% in 2024. As of the end of June 2025, its average financing cost was 3.1%, a decrease of 0.3 percentage points compared to the end of the previous year.

While the decline in financing costs is certainly a good thing, there is another important indicator to evaluate whether a company is returning to healthy development, which is the net cash flow from operating activities, reflecting a company's own "blood production capacity."

Binjiang Group's net cash flow from operating activities remains negative, and the outflow has further increased. According to the financial report, in the first half of this year, Binjiang Group's net cash flow from operating activities was an outflow of 8.964 billion yuan, compared to a net outflow of 4.584 billion yuan in the same period last year.

In response, Binjiang Group explained that this was mainly due to an increase in land payment.

Going forward, how to maintain a balance between investment in land acquisition and promoting sales collection remains a challenge that Binjiang Group needs to overcome