Annual report blunder! China Everbright Bank's latest response

Source: Securities Times Network Author: Huang Yulin

On the evening of April 1st, China Everbright Bank’s H-shares announced on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that they need to revise the previously published preliminary performance data (i.e., the annual performance announcement).

Previously, the “blunder” in China Everbright Bank’s annual report version attracted market attention: in the initial annual reports released by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the data for “asset size” and other figures for several branches of the bank showed obvious formatting misalignments and mislabeling. Subsequently, the Shanghai Stock Exchange version was quickly corrected, but there remained significant discrepancies compared to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange version, resulting in vastly different branch asset sizes disclosed by the same bank in two locations.

According to the latest announcement from China Everbright Bank on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, all data errors involving 8 branches have now been corrected.

Data shows that by the end of 2025, the asset sizes of China Everbright Bank’s Shanghai Branch, Shijiazhuang Branch, Tianjin Branch, Qingdao Branch, Yantai Branch, Ningbo Branch, Shenzhen Branch, and Chengdu Branch were 443.19B yuan, 120.27B yuan, 101.33B yuan, 98.01 billion yuan, 72.6 billion yuan, 81.89B yuan, 286.7B yuan, and 96.14B yuan, respectively.

Previously, the H-share annual report listed the asset sizes of these branches as 39.54 billion yuan, 286.7B yuan, 59.84B yuan, 443.19B yuan, 27.47B yuan, 338.49B yuan, 51.88B yuan, and 145.88B yuan.

China Everbright Bank stated that the corrections do not affect any other information contained in the annual performance announcement.

On the left is a screenshot of the revised annual report published by China Everbright Bank on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange; on the right is a screenshot of the bank’s Shanghai Stock Exchange annual report, with the relevant data marked.

The day before this annual report data blunder escalated, China Everbright Bank had just held its 2025 performance release conference.

Data shows that in 2025, China Everbright Bank achieved operating income of 126.31 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 6.72%; net profit of 39.14 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 6.61%. As of the end of December 2025, the bank’s total assets exceeded 7 trillion yuan, increasing by 2.96% from the end of the previous year to 71.65319 trillion yuan.

In terms of asset quality, as of the end of December 2025, the bank’s non-performing loan balance was 70k yuan, an increase of 1.49 billion yuan from the end of the previous year; the non-performing loan ratio was 1.27%, up 0.02 percentage points from the end of last year. The provision coverage ratio was 174.14%, down 6.45 percentage points from the end of last year.

Regarding the decline in revenue, the management of China Everbright Bank responded that there are three main reasons: first, the net interest margin has declined, constraining the growth of interest income; second, due to a significant decline in bond market interest rates, other income has temporarily decreased; third, the bank has increased efforts in risk resolution and operational transformation, with credit card fee and interest income facing temporary pressure.

The management stated that 2026 will be a year to consolidate the foundation. The bank will adhere to differentiated development, build distinctive advantages, increase income, control costs, strengthen risk management, enhance resource support, and promote stable profit recovery.