Shenzhen Stock Exchange's First Collective Performance Briefing: China National Building Material System Companies Face Cycle Pressures and Seek New Growth Points

21st Century Business Herald reporter Yang Ping

On April 3, the Shenzhen-listed 2025 annual first batch of collective earnings briefings was held in the Shenzhen Stock Exchange’s listing hall. The briefing is themed “Build solid foundations, bravely shoulder responsibilities · Strengthen hard support for the real economy.”

Management of publicly listed companies under China National Building Materials Group, such as Tianshan Shares, Beixin Building Materials, Sinoma Technology, and Ruitai Technology, exchanged ideas with investors face to face and responded to market concerns including annual performance, industry trends, cost reduction and efficiency improvement, international expansion, and nurturing new businesses.

Through this exchange, it is clear that against the backdrop of the real estate supply chain still being in a readjustment period and traditional building materials facing demand pressure, these central-government-backed building-materials listed platforms are trying to reshape the capital market’s understanding of their growth logic through coordinated integration, structural upgrading, technological iteration, and overseas expansion.

At the briefing, investors’ most concerns were highly concentrated: When will demand for traditional building materials stabilize? When will price competition ease? Is there still room for cost reduction and expense control? Can overseas business become incremental volume? Can high-end materials and emerging segments take over the baton for growth? And the answers from multiple companies point to the same main thread—while holding the “base business,” accelerating the shift from “scale competition” to “quality competition,” and from single-product output to system solutions and global operations.

Cost reduction and efficiency improvement remain the “chassis” for crossing the cycle

The traditional building materials industry is still in an adjustment phase. The industry as a whole faces pressures such as declining demand and intensifying market competition. Many enterprises under Sinoma have directly faced industry challenges, achieving cost reduction and efficiency improvement through internal control and strengthening their operational foundation.

Tianshan Shares stated that in 2025, affected by the overall industry environment, the company’s operating performance came under pressure. However, through internal optimization and management controls, the company achieved lower sales costs for products such as cement and ready-mix concrete, and maintained steady operating cash flow, demonstrating strong operational resilience.

Beixin Building Materials also admitted the pressures on industry development. The company said that in 2026, it will continue to advance the integration of the gypsum board business segment groups around the strategy of “one body with two wings, global layout,” using measures such as price controls, channel co-building and shared use, production line transformation and upgrades, and technological interconnection to consolidate the gypsum board fundamental base. At the same time, it will promote linkage between gypsum boards and waterproofing and paint businesses. In conjunction with the “one-cents-per-yuan” cost savings plan, procurement by centralized tender via the supply chain center, optimization of organizational structure, and digital upgrades, the company is attempting to turn cost control from single-point measures into a system-wide engineering project spanning the entire value chain of production, procurement, and management. In 2025, its financial expenses decreased by 60% year over year, which already serves as a direct, intuitive reflection of the effectiveness of its cost control.

Ruitai Technology, in turn, relies on technological iteration and supply chain optimization to steadily implement cost reduction and efficiency improvement measures by locking in core raw material resource supply, optimizing production processes, and promoting resource recycling.

This is a clear signal jointly released by multiple companies at this collective briefing: before a comprehensive recovery appears on the demand side, companies’ maintenance of profitability is increasingly dependent on internal deep-diving, coordinated integration, and cash flow management. This also means that industry competition is shifting from the past “competing on scale, competing on price” to “competing on organization, competing on efficiency, competing on resilience.”

If cost reduction and efficiency improvement address the “stability” issue, then high-end transformation and new business layout are what determine the “upside space” these enterprises will have in the future.

Ruitai Technology’s statements about “anti-intensifying internal competition” are quite representative. The company said that “anti-intensifying internal competition” is not about rejecting normal competition, but about correcting low-end homogenization and cutthroat price competition in the refractory materials industry. The industry is moving from price competition to value competition and barrier competition. Based on this judgment, the company has clearly proposed to strengthen competitiveness across four dimensions: technological core barriers, product structure differentiation, supply chain and cost barriers, and service and ecosystem barriers. It will focus on high-value-added fields such as nuclear industrial applications, new energy, semiconductors, special metallurgy, non-ferrous metals, and petrochemicals, and promote a business model upgrade from “selling single products” to “upgrading to system-wide overall solutions.” The company also said that since 2026, demand has shown obvious structural differentiation: traditional areas are mainly driven by inventory maintenance and preservation, while emerging areas maintain growth, and demand for high-end refractory materials continues to show strong momentum.

Sinoma Technology demonstrates another transformation path. The company responded to multiple market concerns regarding its three core businesses: glass fiber, wind power blade, and lithium battery separator membranes. In particular, it addressed topics such as capacity expansion for special fiber fabric, mass production of ultrathin lithium films, and construction of overseas bases. According to the company, its 5μm lithium film products have achieved mass production and become leading suppliers in the market. Development of second-generation 5μm ultrathin high-strength base film products has been completed and is in the final stages of testing, with mass production capability. In the field of special fibers, Taishan Fiber Glass Research and Development has had a layout for eight years; the product categories cover four types of full-range products and have completed certification with leading customers. The company will actively expand application scenarios for fiber composite materials in commercial aviation, new energy vehicles, hydrogen energy, wind power, marine engineering, and other areas.

Beixin Building Materials said it will continue to implement the development strategy of “one body with two wings, global layout,” and advance four transitions: “from public construction to home renovation,” “from cities to counties and towns,” “from base materials to surface materials,” and “from products to services,” to accelerate its transformation into a consumer building-materials comprehensive manufacturer and service provider. Its gypsum board business will continue to drive deeper coordination to enhance its industry control capability; its waterproofing business will seize opportunities for ecological recovery in the industry to continuously improve profitability; and its paint business will focus on segmented areas, offering differentiated products for different scenarios.

Internationalization: turning from a “choice” into a “required answer”

At this briefing, internationalization became one of the core main lines of enterprise planning. Related businesses have moved from earlier planning into a new stage of landing effectively and turning into profit realization, serving as an important lever for companies to respond to domestic cyclical fluctuations.

Tianshan Shares provided fairly direct data in this regard. The company said that in 2025, revenue from internationalization increased by 95.93% year over year, total profit increased by 136.71% year over year, and overseas business gross margin reached 40.30%. During the reporting period, the company completed the acquisition of the Tunisia project, launched a Kazakhstan greenfield project, and piloted a light-asset operations project in Zimbabwe. Although the domestic cement industry is still troubled by demand downturn, the overseas business has already verified— to a certain extent— the profitability potential of its internationalization strategy. At the same time, the company will continue to pay attention to demand opportunities brought by major engineering projects in regions such as Xinjiang. Relying on its production capacity network laid out across 13 prefectures and states in Xinjiang and the advantages of products such as oil well cement and special cement, it will strive to obtain more orders in national key engineering construction.

Beixin Building Materials’ internationalization approach places even more emphasis on “expanding from points to a broader area.” The company clearly proposed that in the future it will focus on four major regions: Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Africa, and Europe and the region around the Mediterranean. Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and Africa will be dominated by greenfield construction, while Europe and the region around the Mediterranean will adopt investment and M&A more often. The company said that its capacity deployment in Tanzania, Uzbekistan, and Thailand has already been put in place, and the Thailand project achieved “production and profitability in the same year.” In its description, internationalization is no longer limited to gypsum boards; it will, when opportunities arise, also push “two wings” businesses such as waterproofing and paint to go overseas in parallel.

At the briefing, the reporter also learned that Sinoma Technology’s blade industry Brazil base has been put into full operation and has achieved stable delivery, while the Central Asia base has been formally established and is currently under construction. The company said it will accelerate the construction of overseas production bases and the development of overseas leading customers, while also strengthening cooperation with domestic strategic customers and increasing the proportion of blades exported from China.

Ruitai Technology also included “enhancing the international influence of its brand” in this year’s growth points, and puts it alongside business integration, the “three-precision” management approach, and green intelligent upgrades.

Executives participating in the meeting generally believe that internationalization has become an important lever for listed companies in the Sinoma building-materials segment to respond to domestic cyclical fluctuations and reshape their growth curve. In the past, overseas business was often viewed mainly as incremental supplementation; today, it is increasingly taking on the functions of profit repair, structural optimization, and valuation reshaping.