(Yicai Global) May 18 -- Shares of Kingfa Sci & Tech jumped to a nearly five-year high after China's largest modified plastics manufacturer said that its unit has received a large face mask order from the States, looking to gain USD975 million.

Kingfa's stock price [SHA: 600143] climbed by the daily limit to CNY13.34 (USD1.90) this morning, the highest since June, 2015.

The company's unit has obtained a KN95 face mask order from a US firm, the Guangzhou-based parent said in a statement yesterday, without disclosing the purchaser's name. The goods will be delivered within three months.

Founded in 1993, Kingfa just started making face masks and the related fabrics this year during the Covid-19 pandemic. On February 17, it said that its daily output could reach 5 million tons of modified polypropylene by the end of that month. One ton of that could be made into 80,000 N95 masks, according to industry insiders.

The net profit expected from this deal equals more than half of the parent's net profit for the whole year 2019, the statement added. Last year, the firm's net profit nearly doubled to CNY1.2 billion (USD168.9 million) from a year earlier. Its revenue rose by 16 percent to CNY29.3 billion (USD4.1 billion).

Companies in China have exported CNY134.4 billion (USD18.9 billion) worth of epidemic prevention equipment in the first sixteen days of March, according to customs data. The most popular destinations were the US, Japan, France, and Italy. The shipments included nearly 60 million face masks, 162 million Covid-19 detection kits, and 72,700 ventilators.

Editor: Emmi Laine