Yangzijiang Shipbuilding down 6.1% amid steep fall in Q1 order wins

[SINGAPORE] Shares of Chinese vesselmaker Yangzijiang Shibuilding fell on Friday (May 23) as its Q1 order wins plunged to US$300 million from US$3.3 billion in the year-ago period.

After the midday trading break at 1.05 pm, the counter fell to S$2.01, down by 6.1 per cent or S$0.13 from its Thursday closing price of S$2.14, with some 28 million shares changing hands. This is the lowest price the counter has hit in May, ShareInvestor data shows.

This also marks a 37.6 per cent fall from the counter’s last closing price, of S$3.22, before the US Trade Representative (USTR) office on Feb 21 announced proposed fees for Chinese-built vessels, which triggered a massive sell-off that weighed its share price down.

The counter remained at S$2.03 as at 3.09 pm, with around 36.2 million shares having been transacted.

The marine vessel manufacturer on Thursday reported that its order wins for the first quarter of 2025 amounted to six vessels – around 5 per cent of its US$6 billion target for FY2025.

This was a steep drop from its order wins for the corresponding year-ago period, when it bagged orders for 38 vessels – nearly three-quarters (74 per cent) of its target for that fiscal year.

Yangzijiang Shipbuilding has been caught in the crossfire of US-China tensions this year.

Shares of the counter have been battered ever since the USTR office proposed charging Chinese-built vessels entering US ports fees as high as US$1.5 million, as part of a probe into China’s dominance in global shipbuilding, maritime and logistics sectors. 

One of the Singapore Exchange’s star performers for 2024, Yangzijiang Shipbuilding’s stock price had appreciated by more than 100 per cent through the year, based on ShareInvestor data.

In January, the world’s biggest asset manager BlackRock bought 10.8 million of its shares and became a substantial shareholder.