The Warring States Era of Property Management: Wanyun's "Defense" and "Offense"

In the “Warring States Era” of the property services industry, Wanwu Cloud has taken the lead in industry-first moves for risk clearing and business optimization.

On March 20, after disclosing its full-year 2025 performance, Wanwu Cloud held its annual earnings briefing in Shenzhen, with Chairman, Executive Director, and General Manager Zhu Baoquan and the core management team in attendance. Facing the continued spread of systemic industry risks, the company provisioned 740 million yuan in bad debt impairment related to affiliates to proactively shrink developer-related businesses and complete risk clearance; meanwhile, core cyclical businesses achieved an 8.5% year-over-year growth and released operational resilience to the market with a 9% annual dividend yield.

The financial report shows neither embellishment nor emotion. Wanwu Cloud is trying to find a steady survival path amid market volatility.

Continuous Decline in Dependency on Affiliates

The year-over-year decline in net profit is the most noticeable explicit signal in this financial report, but the core cause of performance fluctuations is not a slowdown in main business operations, but non-operational disruptions caused by clearing risks in the real estate industry chain.

Data shows that in 2025, Wanwu Cloud achieved total revenue of 37.27 billion yuan, a slight increase of 2.7% year-over-year; net profit attributable to the parent was 694 million yuan, facing phased pressure on profits. Overall performance remains affected by developer-related businesses, with core net profit for the year around 2.13 billion yuan, up 0.8%. Excluding developer-related businesses, core net profit grew 11.1% year-over-year.

According to observations, in 2025, the company’s profit decreased by 473 million yuan, with credit impairment losses on receivables from related parties alone reaching 742 million yuan.

At the earnings briefing, management quantified the fluctuations in net profit. Besides the negative impact from bad debts and asset amortization related to developers, the residual non-developer businesses and administrative cost savings contributed positively by 1.2 billion yuan and 1.5 billion yuan respectively, indicating that the internal operating fundamentals did not deteriorate trend-wise.

Zhu Baoquan, Chairman of Wanwu Cloud, stated directly at the briefing: “2025 is still a period of continued decline in real estate, with no signs of recovery. All property companies related to real estate development have seen their related businesses decrease over the past three years, and some impacts are still reflected in the financial statements.”

He further pointed out that the industry’s core challenge has shifted from “ensuring delivery” over the past three years to “resolving vacancies.” If the issue of vacant homes cannot be properly addressed, it could trigger a new wave of social risks, which is also the core industry background putting pressure on property companies’ profitability.

Regarding the handling of impairment provisions, Wanwu Cloud’s CFO Wang Xubin clearly stated at the meeting that the credit impairment provisions “are relatively prudent, sufficient, and responsible, and have been recognized by auditors.”

From the details in the financial report, impairment provisions are not merely superficial “cosmetic” adjustments but are synchronized with the ongoing reduction of risk exposure.

In 2025, Wanwu Cloud recovered a total of 2.85 billion yuan in related-party receivables through multiple channels such as cash collection, debt offset, and asset set-off, with 1.89 billion yuan in cash recovered. In January–February 2026, an additional 480 million yuan was recovered, forming a clear path for closed-loop management of related-party risks.

Contrasting the proactive shrinkage of related-party businesses, Wanwu Cloud’s business structure continues to optimize, with dependency on the parent company at a historic low.

The financial report shows that in 2025, Wanwu Cloud’s related-party transaction revenue continued at 2.239 billion yuan, down 1.197 billion yuan from the previous year, reducing its proportion of total revenue from 9.5% in 2024 to 6.0%. Non-developer business revenue reached 34.72 billion yuan, up 8.4%, with market-oriented operations now forming the core of its business.

“The decreasing proportion of related-party businesses is the result of proactive management, and we expect this trend to continue,” Wang Xubin said at the earnings briefing. “This process may temporarily pressure revenue and gross profit, but in the long run, it’s necessary for optimizing revenue structure, improving operating quality, and enhancing business independence.”

He also revealed that in 2026, Wanwu Cloud will implement stricter controls on related-party transactions, prudently engaging with related businesses that have no clear repayment path, vacancy rates over 20%, or overdue repayment cycles, to control risk exposure from the source.

Despite the profit decline caused by impairment provisions, Wanwu Cloud’s financial safety cushion remains solid, and shareholder returns have not weakened.

As of the end of 2025, Wanwu Cloud held 12.09 billion yuan in cash and cash equivalents, with 11.085 billion yuan in cash and equivalents. The company generated a net cash flow from operating activities of 1.69 billion yuan for the year; the board recommended a total dividend payout of 1.731 billion yuan for 2025, remaining at a relatively high level in the market.

“The company’s willingness to return value to shareholders has always been there,” Zhu Baoquan said at the earnings briefing. “If the market growth, especially in Lingshi, shows an upward turning point, we might focus on deploying funds for future growth; if not, we will continue with buybacks and dividends.”

Fundamentals and New Growth in a Red Ocean Competition

“The current property market competition is, in our judgment, a Warring States period,” Zhu Baoquan said at the earnings briefing, which provides the core context for understanding Wanwu Cloud’s 2025 operational strategies.

He believes that currently, there are over 300,000 registered property service companies in China, and the trend is toward a transition from a market dominated by around 100,000 large companies to one increasingly concentrated among large-scale enterprises, which is unlikely to change soon.

Due to the long-term downward cycle in real estate development, in 2025, domestic residential completions fell by 20.2% year-over-year, and sales area declined by 9.2%. The era of property companies relying on big developers for stability has come to an end, and the industry has fully entered a “deep water zone” of stock competition.

In the face of intensified stock competition, declining gross margins, and decreasing collection rates, Wanwu Cloud’s resilience relies on the stability of its core fundamentals, regional deep cultivation strategies, and efficiency improvements and new growth curves enabled by technology.

Cyclical businesses, serving as Wanwu Cloud’s “ballast,” demonstrated strong cyclical resistance in 2025.

The financial report shows that in 2025, Wanwu Cloud’s cyclical business revenue reached 33.402 billion yuan, up 8.5% year-over-year, accounting for 89.7% of total revenue, becoming the main pillar of growth.

Residential property services revenue was 20.926 billion yuan, up 8.9%, representing 56.1% of total revenue; property and facility management services in commercial and urban spaces earned 10.666 billion yuan, up 7.0%. Both core property service sectors achieved steady growth, maintaining scale amid shrinking incremental space in the industry.

Amid the industry-wide decline in collection rates, growth in basic services is hard-won. CRIC Property Management data shows that in 2025, the average collection rate of the top 500 property companies nationwide fell to 71%, a four-year decline.

Wanwu Cloud openly admits that gross margin for residential property services decreased from 12.4% in 2024 to 11.7%, mainly due to residents’ reduced payment ability, increased foreclosures and disconnected owners, and rising vacant homes from developers, which pressure collection rates.

He Shuhua, COO and Executive Director, further explained at the briefing that fluctuations in residential property revenue are mainly due to declining collection rates and the ramp-up period of new projects, but the “Butterfly City” strategy effectively hedges the rigid cost increases in this business.

Meanwhile, Wanwu Cloud has achieved steady expansion in the existing market, acquiring 247 new residential projects in 2025, with annualized contracted revenue increasing by 21.1%. Among these, 51 projects were obtained through a “flexible pricing” model, breaking through regional competition with small and medium-sized property companies.

Addressing project losses industry-wide, Wanwu Cloud has set clear operational bottom lines. In 2025, it withdrew from a project developed by an affiliate in Tianjin for the first time, breaking the previous internal red line of project referrals within related entities, and selecting projects based on market principles to optimize asset quality.

Supporting the residential business through cycles is its ongoing “Butterfly City” strategy. By the end of 2025, Wanwu Cloud had built the foundation for 690 Butterfly Cities, covering over 50% of managed projects. Through street-level intensive operations, personnel reuse, and mixed employment models, it has improved efficiency in 300 Butterfly Cities, offsetting the impact of collection rate fluctuations and rising labor costs.

On this solid base of Butterfly Cities, the company extends from basic property services to full lifecycle asset management. In 2025, revenue from housing repairs reached 556 million yuan, a 67.1% increase; its self-operated renovation business signed new contracts worth 530 million yuan, up 26.6%; and the second-hand housing transaction market share in Wuhan’s self-managed communities rose to 35.7%, demonstrating the commercial scalability of the Butterfly City model.

The commercial services segment has maintained its core advantages amid fierce market competition. In 2025, Wanwu Lianghang achieved a renewal rate of 90.85%, renewing contracts worth 4.838 billion yuan.

Meanwhile, Wanwu Cloud is precisely targeting high-growth tracks, achieving nearly 92% market share in new-generation information technology fields, securing projects such as the Seventh Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University. Customer structure continues to optimize, with an increased proportion of non-affiliated businesses, further strengthening resilience against industry downturns.

Efficiency improvements and new business breakthroughs driven by technology are the most valuable long-term highlights of Wanwu Cloud’s 2025 financial report and its core tools for countering industry decline.

The report shows that in 2025, through deep application of its self-developed GC platform, the company consumed 72.5 billion tokens, launched over 1,400 AI agents, and officially employed 9 AI staff. The deep restructuring of administrative operations driven by AI directly reduced administrative expenses by 1.97 billion yuan, a 10.1% decrease, with the expense ratio dropping 0.7 percentage points year-over-year. Amid industry-wide rigid labor costs, this achieved a countercyclical management expense reduction.

“AI’s real impact on this industry begins with the middle and back office,” Zhu Baoquan said at the briefing. “For labor-intensive companies, as scale grows, the middle and back office functions—finance, legal, risk control, HR—are inefficient and do not directly serve owners. With large models, frontline middle and back office staff can achieve leapfrog capability improvements, significantly shorten approval processes, and greatly reduce supervision costs.”

Beyond internal efficiency, technological capabilities are also transforming into new profit growth points. Relying on the real estate AI brain “Lingshi,” Wanwu Cloud has built core capabilities such as energy intelligent management, energy-saving upgrades, and microgrid systems. In 2025, it signed 52 new energy management projects, generating consolidated revenue of 67.8 million yuan, with over 20% energy savings in projects like the Binhai Cloud Center in Shenzhen.