The annual performance release conference of CITIC Holdings was held on May 8, 2025. The meeting was conducted in Mandarin, with simultaneous interpretation provided in English and Cantonese. The management team attending the meeting includes the chairman, vice chairman and general manager, executive director and deputy general manager, vice general manager, and finance department general manager. Mr. Zhang Xuejun first introduced the annual performance of CITIC Holdings in 2024, followed by a Q&A session on the focus issues by the management team.

In 2024, CITIC Group adhered to the general principle of seeking progress while maintaining stability in the context of geopolitical tensions and trade protectionism. It actively responded to internal and external environmental pressures, achieving revenue of 752.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth of 10.6%. The acquisition of Nansteel shares and the expansion of existing business contributed 8.5% and 2.1% to the revenue growth, respectively. Net profit attributable to common shareholders reached 58.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth of 1.1%, expanding by one percentage point compared to the mid-term performance. Despite challenges such as global economic slowdown and insufficient domestic effective demand, the company's main performance indicators still maintained steady growth.

The financial sector achieved a year-on-year revenue and net profit growth of 4.3% by building a comprehensive financial system. The industrial sector showed resilience, with a 14.7% year-on-year increase in revenue despite a 2.4% decrease in net profit. The advanced manufacturing and new urbanization sectors performed well, achieving positive growth in both revenue and net profit. Additionally, the company announced a full-year dividend of RMB 0.55 per share for 2024, representing a 6.8% year-on-year increase and reflecting the steady increase in dividend profits and continuous growth in market value.

In 2024, CITIC Group achieved rapid growth in its overseas business, with overseas revenue and assets increasing by 21.8% and 13.7% respectively. The dividend payout ratio increased from 13.4% in 2014 to 27.5%, and the company's stock price has seen four consecutive years of increases. At the same time, the company has increased investment in technology, with technology investment growing by 11% year-on-year. Its credit rating has also been upgraded, with S&P raising its corporate credit rating to A-, with a stable outlook, providing a cost-saving basis for the company's debt financing.

In 2024, CITIC Group's comprehensive financial services sector achieved revenue of 2794.69 billion yuan and profit of 52.649 billion yuan, an increase of 10.3% year-on-year. This sector demonstrated its service advantages in terms of full license, full cycle, and full scenario, accelerating the advancement of five major financial initiatives. At the same time, it innovatively adopted a risk resolution model based on collaboration, with the Shanghai Dongjiadu project being a typical case of successful risk resolution by subsidiaries such as CITIC Financial Assets and CITIC Trust.

In 2024, CITIC Bank achieved a revenue of 213.2 billion yuan and a profit of 68.6 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 3.7% and 2.3% respectively, achieving rare double growth in the market. Its performance highlights include better interest rate spread changes than its peers, continued improvement in asset quality, and significantly enhanced capital strength, especially through the high ratio of conversion of 40 billion yuan convertible bonds, the core Tier 1 capital adequacy ratio has shown significant improvement. By the end of the year, the non-performing loan ratio had decreased to 1.16%, the coverage ratio had risen to 209.43%, and the risk resistance capacity had been further improved.

In 2024, CITIC Securities achieved a revenue of 63.8 billion yuan and a profit of 21.7 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 6.2% and 10.1% respectively. Its leading position in domestic business is stable, with the scale of various businesses staying ahead, and it has ranked first in the industry in major financial indicators for 19 consecutive years. The expansion of overseas markets has shown significant results, with international business revenue increasing by 16%. In the Hong Kong market, the scale of underwriting of offshore bonds by Chinese mainland companies ranked first in the market, while the scale of equity financing business and global M&A transactions by Chinese companies ranked second in the market. The overseas business revenue and profit growth of CITIC Securities have made significant contributions.

In 2024, CITIC Trust achieved a revenue of 53.8 billion yuan and a profit of 25.6 billion yuan, representing year-on-year growth of 8.1% and 0.9% respectively. Its business structure continued to optimize, with a 27% increase in asset size from the beginning of the year to 2.6 trillion yuan. The proportion of asset service trust in the total assets increased to 58%, with new trust business revenue increasing by 13% year-on-year, and the existing scale ranking first in the industry. At the same time, CITIC Trust successfully resolved existing risks, maintained the quality of its core business assets, and exerted synergies in the financial and real estate sectors.

The Dongjiadu project effectively mitigated risks, promoted the transformation of business towards high value direction, with the value of new business increasing by 16% year-on-year to 28.2 billion yuan, and the value rate increased to 42%. Capital strength has been enhanced, with shareholders CITIC and PICC injecting 1.25 billion each. Meanwhile, the advanced manufacturing sector revenue last year was 50.793 billion yuan, with a profit of 8.6 billion yuan, an increase of 0.7% and 4.6% respectively compared to the previous year.

China Minmetals Group has achieved significant results in expanding overseas markets, making important contributions to the group's revenue and profit growth. At the same time, its global market competitiveness is continuously increasing. Key projects in technological innovation have made breakthroughs and have won multiple national awards. The group's leading position in the aluminum wheel industry has been solidified, with market share further increasing. Its aluminum casting business has achieved market breakthroughs, and it has independently developed China's largest 7500-ton two-platen die-casting machine, producing the world's first heavy-duty integrated component for the automotive manufacturing industry. Additionally, China Minmetals Heavy Industry has seen a substantial increase in overseas orders, with over 80% of annual overseas orders taking effect, driving the company's overall new effective orders to exceed 15 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 28.7%. Research and development investment remains above 7%, and the world's largest coal chemical rotary kiln has been put into operation.

The advanced materials sector has significantly strengthened its performance through enhancing overseas mining resource development, upstream and downstream channel construction, and the improvement of strategic resource security capabilities. ZhongXin TaiFu Special Steel and Nansteel Corporation, despite the overall industry losses, achieved counter-cyclical growth in sales and profits through product differentiation layout, technological innovation, and intelligent transformation. At the same time, the sector has accelerated the process of globalization, actively exploring overseas markets, and effectively enhanced product competitiveness and market share through synergies and technological innovation. ZhongXin Metal also achieved stable growth in revenue and profits.

In the business report of 2025, CITIC Metal achieved significant growth in the trading volume and profits of non-ferrous metals through its stable position in the metal trading industry and proactive market analysis, with year-on-year growth of 9% and 163% respectively, reaching new historical highs. At the same time, the overseas mining investment of the company has achieved significant results, with the completion of commercial production ahead of schedule for the Afenhaou KK mine and the Gips zinc mine, expected to become the world's third largest copper mine and the fourth largest zinc mine. CITIC Metal also timely reduced its stake in iPhone by 1%, achieving good investment returns. CITIC Resources achieved a revenue of HK$9.5 billion and a profit of HK$570 million last year, with year-on-year growth of 148% and 3.8% respectively.

As of May 8, 2025, the oil and gas trading business made a breakthrough, successfully completing the share exchange transaction with AWC and Alcoa, increasing the after-tax profit by approximately 1.1 Hong Kong dollars. Despite a one-third reduction in production at the Central Medicine Mine and Central Mine Two, a profit of $176 million was still achieved. In the new consumer sector, the telecommunications publishing seed business maintained a leading position in the segmented market, but performance declined year-on-year due to price wars in the domestic car market and demand in the Brazilian seed market.

China CITIC International Telecom continues to expand its leading position in the 5G market in Macau, with a 51% increase in users compared to the beginning of the year. The market share has increased to 53.3%, and they have launched 5.5G commercial services while making progress in the Southeast Asian market. CITIC Publishing achieved a 2% increase in profit compared to last year by building a digital publishing system and upgrading its content e-commerce marketing system, with a 4.09% increase in gross profit margin. As the largest shareholder of Longping High-Tech, CITIC Stock has driven its revenue growth in the rice industry by over 10% and accelerated innovation in new varieties, with 78 new varieties approved by the government. Da Changxing has expanded its overseas market and exported its mainland car business, with an overall 1.1% year-on-year growth in car sales, maintaining over 100,000 units sold.

In 2024, the new urbanization sector achieved an income of 46.987 billion yuan and a profit of 5.135 billion yuan, with year-on-year growth of 8.3% and 137.4% respectively. The key focus of the sector's business includes seizing market opportunities along the Belt and Road Initiative, successfully landing multiple major overseas projects, and significantly increasing the value of newly signed effective contracts. In the face of downward pressure in the real estate industry, efforts were made to actively promote project delivery and reduce provisions for bad debts. The revenue of the real estate development and operation sector showed significant growth, with key real estate projects being delivered smoothly and a year-on-year increase of 40.4% in revenue from real estate development business. In terms of engineering construction and urban operation business, breakthroughs were made in overseas markets, with the successful signing of multiple major projects and a 75% year-on-year increase in newly signed contract value. Meanwhile, quality benchmark projects were created, such as the full opening of the TKU highway reconstruction project in Kazakhstan, the Wuhan Jiangxia sewage treatment plant being named one of the first batch of national green and low-carbon benchmark sewage treatment plants, and the completion of the second phase of the Futian water purification plant in Shenzhen, which is now the largest double-layer semi-underground water purification plant in Asia.

In the current economic environment, CITIC Securities values shareholder returns and continues to increase dividend levels. In 2024, the company announced a shareholder return plan, committing to a dividend rate of not less than 32% by 2026, and has already raised the dividend rate to 27.5% in 2024, an increase of 1.5 percentage points year-on-year. At the same time, CITIC Securities pays attention to market value management, actively responds to regulatory policies, and values market value performance. The company stated that it will maintain a stable dividend policy and continuously enhance shareholder returns.

Citic Group's market value has increased by 27.5% since the beginning of this year, with a cumulative growth of 124% over the past four years. However, they believe that there is still room for improvement. The company plans to further promote performance and market value growth by seizing policy opportunities, deepening reforms to enhance operational management, and continuously improving the effectiveness of communication with the capital market. Citic Group will leverage its advantages as a comprehensive institution, seize policy opportunities, deepen reforms, enhance internal management efficiency, and strengthen communication with the market in order for investors to better understand its comprehensive advantages and increase valuation. Meanwhile, Citic Group will continue to focus on its core business, optimize its business structure, and expand into strategic emerging industries to achieve healthier and more sustainable development.

In 2025, CITIC Group shared the progress and achievements of its comprehensive deepening reform, emphasizing the optimization of financial business, industrial transformation and upgrading, substantial risk reduction, and promotion of international exchanges. Especially in the financial field, five leading strategies were implemented to increase revenue and net profit, while continuously deepening reform and transformation in securities, trusts, insurance, and financial leasing businesses, enhancing the ability to serve the real economy. In terms of industry, the focus is on high-end, intelligent and green development, promoting the revitalization of traditional industries and innovation in emerging industries. In addition, CITIC successfully reduced the non-performing loan ratio in real estate and local government debt-related businesses by reorganizing and revitalizing projects and disposing of risks in key areas. In terms of international exchanges, CITIC plans to become a bridge connecting the world, enhancing its influence in Hong Kong and expanding global cooperation.

Since its establishment, CITIC Group has been committed to an internationalization strategy, adhering to reform and opening up, conducting business according to market rules and international practices, integrating into the wave of globalization, and establishing a good international reputation and a team of professional talents. By the end of 2024, the total overseas business assets of CITIC Group reached 1.15 trillion yuan, and overseas business income exceeded 100 billion yuan, with year-on-year growth of 13.7% and 21.8% respectively. The Group operates in more than 160 countries and regions, with overseas business accounting for 15.1% of total revenue. CITIC Group will focus on its main responsibilities and advantages, adhere to market-oriented and commercial principles, and promote competitiveness and attractiveness as the main line, to drive the entire chain of products, services, and technologies going overseas. At the same time, the group will implement classified measures, steadily promote regional choices, focus on Hong Kong and Macao, deepen cultivation around the periphery and the Belt and Road, and steadily expand into developed economies markets. In terms of guarantee mechanisms, the group will implement the Ten Hundred Thousand Talent Program for international talents, strengthen the construction of overseas risk management mechanisms, and ensure the stability and compliance of overseas business.

CITIC Group has made significant progress in the coordinated resolution of risks through production and financing, effectively isolating risk assets and revitalizing existing assets through business model innovation. Since 2022, the total amount of assets coordinated resolved has reached 82 billion, successfully revitalizing more than seventy risk projects. In addition, CITIC Group will continue to focus on technology innovation, digitalization, and artificial intelligence, building a lighthouse factory to promote technological innovation and the improvement of productive forces.

Sinotrans Group views technological innovation as a significant driving force for its development, and has maintained a high level of investment in technology for many years. It has accumulated more than 10,000 patents and achieved significant results in areas such as smart factories, digital manufacturing, and the transformation of scientific research results. In the future, the group will further promote technological innovation through the "two grasps and one promotion" strategy, focusing on high-quality technology supply and results transformation, as well as industry-academia-research collaboration. In addition, the group has successfully deployed multiple AI models, effectively promoting the intelligent upgrade of its financial and industrial sectors.

In the discussion in 2025, a bank executive detailed how the bank has maintained a net interest margin level superior to its peers over the past few years through a continuous value management concept, optimizing asset-liability structure, and strengthening customer base and deposit cost management. Looking ahead, despite facing interest rate declines and economic pressure, the bank plans to take further measures such as adjusting asset structure, increasing credit issuance, compressing low-yield notes, and strengthening transaction banking construction and deposit cycle control to stabilize and optimize the net interest margin, striving to continue outperforming its peers.

In the context of reducing fees and making profits for the real economy in financial services, CITIC Group is facing pressure to adjust the growth of traditional financial business in a low-interest-rate environment. Through comprehensive operation and full license advantages, CITIC Group focuses on improving comprehensive financial competitiveness from five aspects: deep synergistic integration to release comprehensive financial value, strengthening international layout to enhance international business capabilities, seizing opportunities in the capital market to enhance service and asset allocation capabilities, focusing on retail customers to improve wealth management capabilities, and strengthening lean management to continuously improve operational efficiency. CITIC plans to achieve high-quality development of comprehensive financial services through these measures, providing better returns to shareholders.

The CITIC Group continues to focus on and resolve financial risks while expanding its business. In terms of real estate finance, it supports high-quality real estate companies' reasonable financing needs, optimizes customer structure, reduces industry concentration and non-performing loan ratio, and significantly reduces the risk exposure of troubled real estate companies. In terms of local government debt, it actively responds to the national debt-to-equity swap policy, implements regional coordination and tailored strategies for different regions, reduces business scale, and has low non-performing assets mainly concentrated in Guizhou and Inner Mongolia. In the future, CITIC will continue to promote a coordinated mechanism for real estate financing, seize the opportunity of debt-to-equity swap policy, optimize asset structure, resolve risks, and seek new business development opportunities.

In 2024, China CITIC Bank maintained a stable and positive trend in asset quality, with the non-performing loan ratio continuously decreasing for six years, reaching its best level in a decade. The performance of non-performing loan ratios in the corporate and retail sectors varies, but overall pressure is manageable. Looking ahead to 2025, the main sources of pressure from non-performing assets are expected to come from the retail sector, real estate sector, and financing platforms. Despite challenges, China CITIC Bank expects to effectively mitigate pressure and maintain stable asset quality with policy support and market recovery.