Author: centurium

China’s less-than-truckload logistics market, which sits in between express couriers and big truck operators, is ripe for consolidation. GPs have identified their favored players.

This story was written and published by Asia Venture Capital Journal at: https://www.avcj.com/avcj/official-record/3023087/deal-focus-ane-logistics-targets-an-attractive-middle

By Larissa Ku

March 4, 2021

The recent $300 million round for ANE Logistics represents the continuation of a trend. It is the third large large-scale deal in 12 months in China’s less-than-truckload (LTL) logistics space, where capital appears to be coalescing around the three market leaders.

In addition to ANE’s round – which was led by CPE – SF Freight, the LTL arm of local courier giant SF Express, received $300 million from CITIC Capital, CDH investments and Legend Capital, while the likes of Boyu Capital and Hopu Investment piled into a RMB1 billion ($154 million) extended Series D round for Yimidida.

LTL operators occupy the logistics industry’s middle ground. They typically carry goods 30 kilograms and 3 tons by road; too big for the express parcel players and too small for full-truck-load carriers. “You can distinguish between the three segments in last-mile delivery by vehicle type,” says Jeff Wang, chairman of ANE. “It’s motorcycles for general parcels, vans for LTL, and trucks are full-truck-load.”

Buoyed by e-commerce, express is the most developed segment and the most concentrated. The likes of SF Express, YTO Express, ZTO Express, Yunda Express and STO Express dominate in terms of market share. By comparison, LTL and full-truck-load remain fragmented.

“The market share of top LTL companies is only in the single digits, the market is in urgent need of consolidation. Traditionally, mom-and-pop shops and provincial and regional players have occupied the mainstream, but they have a relatively low standards in providing complex logistics routes, information systems and service quality. Emerging nationwide logistics firms are replacing them,” says Michael Chen, a partner Centurium Capital.

He compares the opportunity set in LTL now to that in the express segment several years ago. In 2019, Centurium committed $300 million to ANE.

Cornering C2M

ANE claims to be the number one LTL player by shipment volume, with most of its customers coming from manufacturing, distribution, and e-commerce. While e-commerce has spurred express business, it only accounts for 20% of the ANE’s orders. Flexible manufacturing – the consumer-to-manufacturer (C2M) model, characterized by small batch, high frequency deliveries – is the real growth driver.

“Today, a factory delivers to thousands of stores directly instead of to 10 distributors. The key to this evolution is to remove the inventory and increase the circulation efficiency of supply chains,” says Wang.

ANE is positioning itself as a one-stop-shop to capitalize on this trend. It plans to extend service coverage to mini parcels as small as 15 kg, while simultaneously strengthening its network in villages and small towns. “The competitive edge is no longer making timely shipments to Guangzhou and Shanghai. It’s whether you deliver fast enough to Aksu or Qiqihar while keeping your costs low,” says Wang.

The company operates 140 transhipment centers and manages over 26,000 partner outlets and agents covering 96% of China’s townships. More than 4,000 vans are sent out every day. Its daily peak truckload has surpassed 50,000 tons.

However, this ascent has not been trouble-free. ANE entered the LTL space in 2010 and became the market leader in 2016. It decided to expand into express services the same year. Challenging the incumbent giants turned out to be a strategic mistake. ANE entirely exited the segment in early 2019 and refocused on LTL.

“We backed ANE because we invest in market leaders. We’ve known the management team for a long time, and we have confidence in them. The company has further solidified its leadership position in LTL in the past few years,” says Chen.

ANE’s immediate priorities include improving operational efficiency. If a typical truck has capacity of 130 cubic meters and carries 30 tons, the goal is to make full use of the space without wasting weight capacity. But geographical demand patterns are uneven. Xi’an is known for producing apples and a truckload of apples weighs less than 30 tons. ANE therefore offers discounts on shipments of heavy goods. A similar promotion for light goods would be launched in a region with high ironware output.

“We have accumulated a lot of data and our system automatically generates price quotations for different places during different seasons. Our full-load-rate could be 5-10% higher than competitors, but I get a 40% increase in yearly volume through cost advantages,” says Wang.

Profit over scale

ANE claims to be the only LTL company in China to realize a profit, generating annual net income of several hundred million renminbi. Wang stresses that profit is more important than scale.

“The operational efficiency gap between the top LTL players will continue to widen, just like in express,” he explains. “Scale rankings mislead investors. When the evaluation model moves from price-to-sales to price-to-earnings, two players might be of similar scale but one has a 20-30x larger market capitalization than the other.”

ZTO and Best, both of which are US-listed, offer a good example. They are of similar scale: In the first half of 2020, ZTO posted revenue of RMB10.3 billion to Best’s RMB13.9 billion. However, ZTO generated a net profit of RMB1.8 billion, while Best had a loss of RMB767 million. Best priced its IPO at $10 per share in 2017 and now trades at $2.30 for a market capitalization of $883 million. ZTO is worth $29.7 billion, having seen its stock price rise 80% to $35 since its 2016 offering.

ANE’s cost control solution is to pursue a franchise model, with franchisees mainly responsible for last-mile-delivery and collecting returned goods from customers. “ANE pioneered the franchise model in LTL, and it’s a proven model,” Chen says. “It’s actually a platform approach. Each franchisee’s IT system is deeply integrated with ANE, so delivery speed and routes can be monitored.”

However, franchising doesn’t necessarily work for intercity fleets. At present, 40% of ANE’s transportation capacity is operated directly and the goal is to reach 70% by the end of this year. This initiative is expected to deliver further cost savings by increasing mileage per truck by 30%. The key is that a centralized fleet can operate across multiple routes, while a collection of third-party service providers cannot.

March 11, 2021 – Fadada, a leading e-signature and cloud contract service provider in China, announced today that the company has completed D-round financing of RMB 900 million from Tencent, Centurium Capital and ZWC Partners.

Mr. Xiang Huang, Founder and CEO of Fadada, commented, “With a primary focus on e-signature application and e-contract signing solutions, we are a leader in technology and product innovation. We will continue to expand our partnership network to promote scalable cloud contract signing applications in all industry verticals and deliver value for our customers and clients.”

Fadada offers a full suite of e-signature products including one-stop SaaS products, open API solutions for corporate IT and ERP systems, as well as hybrid cloud solutions for local hosting of electronic contracts and process management.

Fadada is a pioneer in legal technology innovation. It was the earliest provider of block-chain based e-signature product with enhanced security features and credibility. It pioneered in building an industry-leading e-contract management system, which significantly improved the efficiency of the legal process involved in contract signing. It was the first to enable online data sharing and connection with judiciary bodies, including online arbitration institutions, online courtroom, notary offices and forensic evaluation centers, providing one of the most complete technology solutions for online dispute resolutions in China.

Nick Tao, Executive Director of Centurium Capital, commented, “E-contract and e-signature will play a more and more important role in the infrastructure of corporate activities in the future. We have witnessed and are deeply impressed by Fadada’s continuous evolvement and growth under its CEO Xiang Huang’s leadership. We look forward to partnering with the company and supporting its growth, as the company expands further its industry network and pushes wider applications in different sectors.”

The Covid-19 pandemic has served as a catalyst for e-signature adoption in China and globally. At the outset of the Covid-19 outbreak, the daily average number of registered new users of Fadada was eight times of the same period in 2019, with peak number surpassed nearly 20 times year-over-year. Responding quickly to spiking customer demand since early 2020, Fadada worked closely with Tencent and introduced a number of light mobile e-signature applications on Wechat Mini-applications, Enterprise Wechat and Tencent Qidian, a marketing SaaS platform by Tencent.  

March 1, 2021 – Iluvatar Corex (“Iluvatar” or “the Company”), a leading graphics processing units for general-purpose computing (GPGPU) developer in China, today announced that the Company has completed C-round financing of RMB1.2 billion. The financing was jointly led by Centurium Capital and Cedarlake Capital, and participated by Gortune Investment and China Unicom Innovation Investment. The financing is expected to facilitate the Company to enhance its research capabilities of its core products and accelerate the commercialization to empower more customers in multiple sectors.

Centurium first invested in Iluvator in 2019 through the Company’s B round financing.

GPU is the mainstream solution for powering artificial intelligence computation in areas like autonomous driving, finance, education, and healthcare. GPU chips, which can satisfy general graphics and high-performance computing, are deemed to represent the height of chip technology.

Illuvatar, headquartered in Shanghai, is the only company in China that has chip products under the GPU architecture. The company initiated the 7-nanometer cloud computing GPGPU chip in 2018 and was taped out in May 2020, and its usability was proved last December.

The flagship GPGPU product, BI, provides more flexible programming ability and stronger performance at a lower cost than competing mainstream offerings.

Charles Lin, Executive Director of Centurium Capital, commented, “We strongly believe the huge prospects of China’s semi-conductor industry and are very impressed by the technical strengths of Iluvator CoreX. In the past two years, we have witnessed the company’s journey of every step of BI’s development, and pleased with the recent research and product breakthrough. We look forward to accompanying and supporting the Company’s continuous advancement on its path of commercialization and mass production.”

ANE Logistics, China’s leading less-than-truckload (LTL) logistics service platform, today announced that it has received approximately US$300 million financing. The financing is led by CPE and participated by Great Bay Area Fund, NWS Holdings (0659.HK), Liumai Capital and Huagai Capital.

Since its inception 10 years ago, ANE Logistics has become a leading and well-regarded LTL logistics player through consolidating the LTL truck transportation industry and building the truck transportation partnership platform. So far, the daily peak truckload handled by ANE has surpassed 50,000 tons, with over 26,000 partner outlets and agents covering 96% of the townships in China. The successful financing demonstrates the strong confidence by the capital market in the LTL sector and leading logistics network players.

Jeff Wang, Chairman of ANE Logistics, commented: “The logistics network is an important pillar supporting the development of China’s internet-driven C2M manufacturing industry and flattened supply chain, as well as part of the infrastructure for the manufacturing and logistics sectors. ANE will leverage this financing to invest in the upgrade of the digital capabilities and acceleration of China’s logistics sector.”

Centurium Capital invested in ANE in January 2020 and is its second largest shareholder in the company. Michael Chen, Managing Director of Centurium Capital, commented, “Congratulations to ANE for the closing of this new round of financing from CPE and other investors, which we believe will further expand the company’s leadership position. We continue to be confident of the huge potential of China’s logistics sector and ANE’s unique proposition. Despite challenges in 2020, the company has sustained its growth momentum through market consolidation to build its platform, providing the best solutions to its customers.”

January 26, 2021 — YXT (Yunxuetang), a leading corporate training SaaS and services provider in China, today announced the closing of E1 round of financing led by Tencent.

YXT’s existing investors include Centurium Capital, YF Capital and Himalaya Capital. So far, YXT has raised a total of US$300 million funding since its founding.

Teng Zu, CEO of YXT, said that the E1 financing will be invested in AI technology and software product innovation, buildout of digital and IT capabilities, improvement of content production and delivery, as well as upgrade of client services.

Yunxuetang’s total solutions include training infrastructure establishment, training materials development, training program maintenance, data analysis and vendor management to meet increasing demands for more efficient staff training as Chinese companies grow and evolve.

According to a research by Qianzhan Research Institute, China’s corporate training market will reach RMB768.1 billion in 2020 and is expected to exceed RMB 900 billion in 2025.

August 27, 2020, New York/Guangzhou — XPeng Inc. (“XPeng” or the “Company”), a leading Chinese smart electric vehicle (“Smart EV”) company, started trading of its ADSs today at New York Stock Exchange (“NYSE”) under the symbol “XPEV”.  

Centurium Capital RMB Fund I invested in Xpeng in 2017 and held around 3.5% of stake prior to the IPO.

The company priced its IPO of 99,733,334 American Depositary Shares (“ADSs”), each representing two Class A ordinary shares of the Company, at a public offering price of $15.00 per ADS. In addition, XPeng has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an aggregate of 14,959,999 additional ADSs.

The gross proceeds from the offering, before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and other offering expenses payable by XPeng, will be approximately $1.5 billion, excluding any exercise of the underwriters’ option to purchase additional ADSs.

The offering is expected to close on August 31, 2020, subject to customary closing conditions.

XPeng Inc. is a leading Chinese smart electric vehicle company that designs, develops, manufactures, and markets Smart EVs that appeal to the large and growing base of technology-savvy middle-class consumers in China. Its mission is to drive Smart EV transformation with technology and data, shaping the mobility experience of the future.

In order to optimize its customers’ mobility experience, XPeng develops in-house its full-stack autonomous driving technology and in-car intelligent operating system, as well as core vehicle systems including powertrain and the electrification/electronic architecture.

XPeng is headquartered in Guangzhou, China with offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Silicon Valley, and San Diego in the U.S. and the Company’s Smart EVs are manufactured at plants in Zhaoqing and Zhengzhou. For more information, please visit https://en.xiaopeng.com.

August 12, 2020, Beijing – Centurium Capital (“Centurium”), a leading private equity investment firm in China, announced today that it has acquired a controlling stake in Beijing Jingdu Children’s Hospital (“Jingdu”). Located in Changping District in northern Beijing, Jingdu is the largest private children’s hospital in China and the only private tertiary children’s hospital in Beijing.

Launched in June 2015 and located on a 40,000 square meter premises, Jingdu has 36 specialized departments, including an emergency center, and is a recognized leader in children’s hematology, cardiology, dermatology, and stomatology. Jingdu officially became a designated medical institution for Beijing Medical Insurance Plan in 2017.

In July 2020, Jingdu was awarded the Joint Commission International (JCI) accreditation with top marks, becoming the first children’s specialty hospital in China to pass the JCI review via online virtual inspection and evaluation. The JCI accreditation is recognized as a global leader for health care quality and patient safety.

Zhixing Chen, Executive Director of Centurium Capital, commented, “As the largest private tertiary children’s hospital in China, Jingdu has become a leading children’s specialty health services platform, and it has accumulated extensive medical resources and service capabilities. We highly value Jingdu’s brand and professionalism, and firmly believe Jingdu will further solidify its leadership in the industry through continued investment in its medical team and service quality.”

Healthcare is one of the key investment sectors for Centurium. Previously, Centurium has made investments in two other hospitals in China, namely the UIB Group and Beijing Arion Cancer Hospital. Headquartered in Shanghai, UIB Group is a top-tier children and women’s medical services group with a children’s hospital, an obstetrics and gynecology (OBGYN) hospital, and a postpartum center. Arion Cancer Hospital is currently under construction and expected to open by the end of 2020.

Strategically located in the densely-populated Huilongguan-Tiantongyuan area of the Changping District, Jingdu is the only children’s hospital in the district. Driven by its premium medical facilities and services, it treats nearly 300,000 outpatients and 8,000 inpatients a year.

Thanks to its track-record of professionalism and leading research contributions, Jingdu has demonstrated strong business resilience and steady growth despite the impact of Covid-19 pandemic.

We are committed to supporting our portfolio companies to build a robust and transparent corporate governance structure and responsible management system. On 30 July, 2020, we requisitioned Luckin Coffee Inc. (the “Company”) to convene an extraordinary general meeting of members (the “EGM”).

An EGM of the Company was held on 5 July 2020 (the “5 July EGM”), requisitioned by Haode Investment Inc (“Haode”), a company controlled at the time by the former chairman of the Board of Directors of the Company (the “Board”). The timing of the 5 July EGM, the subsequent liquidation process of Haode, and the resolutions proposed by Haode in the 5 July EGM, caused concerns over the independence of the directors nominated by Haode and elected in the 5 July EGM.

It is important that there be no doubt as to the bona fides and ability to exercise independent judgment of any board member in order for the Company to be able to properly function and for the directors to fulfill their fiduciary duties.

Mr Sean Shao had been an independent director and chair of the audit committee of the Company since May 2019, and the chair of the special committee of the Board (the “Special Committee”) since March 2020. In his capacity as the chair of the Special Committee, he led the independent investigation of the Company. He was removed from the Board in the 5 July EGM. His reinstatement will allow for the Board to fully implement the remedial measures as recommended by the Special Committee, and to further facilitate any process related thereto.

The proposed resolutions are necessary actions in order that the Company’s Board can be properly constituted.