Click the image above for details On July 31, according to the CSRC official website, the CSRC approved Nongfu Spring Co., Ltd. to issue no more than 1.38 billion overseas listed foreign shares with a par value of RMB 0.1 per share, all common shares. After the issuance, the company can list on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Nongfu Spring, formerly known as Zhejiang Qiandao Lake Health Drinking Water Co., Ltd., was founded in 1996. In 1998, the advertising slogan 'Nongfu Spring is a bit sweet' became widely known. This differentiated innovation helped Nongfu Spring rapidly rise to third place in market share in 1998, forming a tripartite balance with Wahaha and Robust. Since then, Nongfu Spring has been unstoppable, and its reputation as 'Nature's Porter' spread across the world: In 2013, Nongfu Spring achieved revenue of 9 billion yuan. In April, its market share reached 27.65%. From 2014 to 2016, Nongfu Spring experienced its largest growth in recent years, with revenues of 9.09 billion yuan, 12.6 billion yuan, and 15 billion yuan respectively, with year-on-year growth rates as high as 38.6% and 19%. In 2017, Nongfu Spring achieved operating revenue of 16.25 billion yuan, an increase of 8.3% from the previous year's 15 billion yuan, with net profit (unaudited) of 3.369 billion yuan. In 2018, Nongfu Spring's revenue reached 20.911 billion yuan, achieving steady growth for five consecutive years, becoming the first food enterprise with a business scale exceeding 20 billion yuan and mainly engaged in packaged water, and ranking first in the packaged drinking water industry with a 26.5% market share. In 2019, Nongfu Spring achieved operating revenue of 24.021 billion yuan. Among this, revenue from packaged drinking water products reached 14.346 billion yuan, accounting for 59.7% of revenue; functional beverages revenue was 3.779 billion yuan, accounting for 15.7%; tea beverages revenue was 3.138 billion yuan, accounting for 13.1%; fruit juice beverage products accounted for 9.6%; other products including coffee beverages, soda water beverages, plant-based yogurt, etc., accounted for 1.9% of revenue. Until April 29 this year, Nongfu Spring submitted its listing application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The prospectus showed that net profit margin in 2019 was as high as 20.6%, while the average profitability level of the international soft drink industry was less than 10%. To date, Nongfu Spring is not only the industry leader in mineral water, but many of its beverage brands have also become industry stars. Many consumers are familiar with its tea beverage Oriental Leaf, functional beverage 'Scream', fruit juice beverage Vitamin Water, Nongfu Orchard, Water-soluble C100, NFC, etc. Although Nongfu Spring now has many beverage types, packaged drinking water still accounts for the majority of its business, with more than 50% of revenue coming from packaged drinking water. According to the announcement, the CSRC approved the conversion of a total of 4,588,200,000 domestic unlisted shares held by 70 shareholders including the company's shareholder Health (Yang Sheng Tang) Co., Ltd. (see table below for shareholder names) into overseas listed shares. After the conversion, these shares can be listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. In addition, it is worth noting that Zhong Shanshan, the 65-year-old founder of Nongfu Spring, holds approximately 87.44% of Nongfu Spring's shares directly or indirectly. From 2017 to 2019, Nongfu Spring's cumulative net profit was 11.9 billion yuan. During this period, Nongfu Spring distributed cumulative dividends of 10.332 billion yuan, of which 9.6 billion yuan was distributed to shareholders in 2019 alone. According to his shareholding ratio, Zhong Shanshan received dividends of 9.037 billion yuan. The listing of Nongfu Spring will also add to the wealth of Zhong Shanshan, whose net worth is already close to 100 billion yuan. One cannot help but exclaim that this is not 'Nature's Porter', but rather Nature's 'money printer'.