Another celebrity private equity was "beaten back to its original shape".

According to data from AMAC, the current management scale of well-known private equity Taiyang Assets is 1 billion to 2 billion yuan, and according to third-party platform data, the company once exceeded the 10 billion mark in May 2021.

In more than three years, the scale of management has shrunk from more than 10 billion yuan to less than 2 billion yuan.

According to public information, Taiyang Assets was established in March 2015 and completed registration in April of the same year, the company takes GARP (buying stocks with higher growth at a lower price) as the core stock investment strategy, and focuses on selecting high-quality growth stocks with reasonable valuation and higher growth for medium and long-term investment through a combination of top-down industry screening and bottom-up selection of individual stocks.

Liu Tianjun, the actual controller of Taiyang Assets, joined China Merchants Securities as a researcher in July 2001, and then worked in Harvest Fund for 10 years from March 2003 to June 2013, during which he served as the director of the company's equity investment department and fund manager. Later, Liu Tianjun wholly founded Shenzhen Boya Asset Management and served as the company's general manager and investment director, but soon returned to Harvest Fund in March 2014 as institutional chief investment officer, until he bid farewell to Harvest Fund before founding Taiyang Asset. At the same time, according to the data of Tianyancha APP, Liu Tianjun has transferred out all 100% of the shares of Shenzhen Boya Assets in January 2015 and completely withdrew from the company's shareholders.

Tianyancha APP data shows that since its establishment in March 2015, Liu Tianjun has always been the largest shareholder of Taiyang Assets, but due to the company's subsequent equity changes, Liu Tianjun's shareholding ratio has also changed.

Specifically, in October 2016, Shi Jingkui, the founder of Taiyang Assets, who originally held 30% of the shares, withdrew from the list of shareholders, while Zhang Peng Xinjin became a shareholder of 1% of the company's shares, and Liu Tianjun's shareholding ratio increased significantly to 99%; In January 2019, Tang Mingze became a 5% shareholder of Taiyang Assets, and Liu Tianjun's shareholding ratio dropped to 94%; In March 2020, Zhang Peng withdrew from the company's list of shareholders, and Tang Mingze's shareholding rose to 6%.

However, the above-mentioned equity changes all occurred before Taiyang Assets was promoted to 10 billion private placements.

Generally speaking, changes in the scale of private equity management often have a strong correlation with the performance of a company's products, and Taiyang Asset Management is no exception.

According to the data of Haomai Fund Network, from 2017 to 2020, the average annual returns of Taiyang Assets on the website with performance updates were 37.87%, -5.96%, 43.65% and 45.19% respectively. From 2021 to 2023 and the most recent year, the average returns of products with performance updates on the website were -11.28%, -19.59%, -11.51% and -4.99%, respectively.

Table: Historical performance of Taiyang Assets

Data source: Haomai Fund Network, Interface News Collation

Judging from the net value of some of the company's products that have performance updates on the Haomai Fund Network, the more accurate "performance change" point of Taiyang Assets is likely to be at the end of June 2021.

Taking "Taiyang Innovation Growth No. 7 Phase B" as an example, the product was established in June 2018, and the cumulative yield reached 108.39% by the end of June 2021, and then the net value of the product fluctuated all the way back down, as of January 3 this year, its latest cumulative net value was only 0.9389, which was as high as 59.19% compared with the net value high more than three years ago. The company's "Taiyang Innovation Growth No. 7 Phase E", which was established in May 2021, also fluctuated and fell in net value after the end of June of that year, and as of January 3 this year, the cumulative loss rate of the product has been as high as 50.13%.

Wind data shows that Taiyang Asset has filed a total of 72 private placement products, of which 67 products were established from 2017 to 2021, accounting for 93.06%, and 31 products were established between August 2020 and October 2021, accounting for 43.06%. Since November 2021, the company has only filed a total of 1 product. Considering that there will be a certain time period for private placement products, the timing of Taiyang Asset's "new disconnection" coincides with the company's "performance change".

Figure: Distribution of the establishment time of Taiyang Assets' products

Data source: Wind, interface news collation

While the issuance of new products has stagnated, the decline in overall performance is also consuming the scale of Taiyang's assets. Wind data shows that 16 of the company's 56 products still in operation have an existing scale of less than 10 million yuan as of the third quarter of 2024.

From another point of view, Taiyang Assets issued a large number of products around 2021, which may also be one of the important reasons for the company's subsequent performance decline. Generally speaking, the larger the scale of funds under management, the higher the difficulty of investment, and the higher the requirements for the company's investment and research capabilities. According to the data of Tianyancha APP, from 2020 to 2022, the number of insured people of Taiyang Assets will be 20, 22 and 22 respectively, which also means that the company's employees have not increased significantly during the period of centralized issuance of a large number of products and rapid expansion of management scale.

What are the directions of Taiyang assets before and after the "performance change"?

Looking through the monthly observations released by the company around 2021, it is not difficult to see that Taiyang Assets paid very much attention to the direction of medicine and biology at that time.

Among them, in July 2021, Taiyang Assets clearly revealed that medicine is the industry's key investment, and pharmaceutical contract outsourcing services (i.e., CXO) and national brand consumer goods are the two most successful tracks of the company's investment in the first half of the year. At the same time, the company judged that "CXO is one of the scientific and technological innovation tracks with the highest growth performance in the next 5-10 years, and the leading companies in this track are expected to hit the trillion market value and become a Chinese innovative enterprise that can compete with top technology companies in Europe and the United States on the global stage." ”

Wind data shows that in 2021, Taiyang Assets conducted a total of 168 surveys, involving a total of 97 stocks. Taking Shenwan's first-level industry classification as a reference, the number of stocks in the pharmaceutical and biological industry is also the largest among the stocks surveyed by the company, reaching 29, accounting for 29.9%. Among them, Mindray Medical (300760. SZ), Bairen Medical (688198. SH), Medicilon (688202. SH) and other stocks in the pharmaceutical and biological industry were investigated as many as 8 times, 7 times and 4 times respectively.

From the perspective of market performance, July 2021 is precisely the time point when the pharmaceutical and biological industry "turns from prosperity to decline". Wind data shows that since the beginning of July 2021, the Shenwan Pharmaceutical and Biological Industry Index (801150. SI) began to fall all the way from its high, and by the end of September 2022, the maximum decline in the 15-month range had been as high as 42.67%.

Jiemian News noticed that after the pharmaceutical and biological sector has been falling heavily for a long time, Taiyang Assets still mentioned many times in its monthly observation that it is optimistic about the follow-up investment opportunities in this direction.

In September 2022, the company believed that "after experiencing the triple impact of policy changes, repeated epidemics, and disturbances in Sino-US relations, some pharmaceutical companies have been able to well resolve the adverse effects of the above factors through technological innovation, or through new business expansion, or through global layout, and with the realization of performance and the approach of the valuation switch in 2023, some excellent pharmaceutical companies are expected to usher in a good investment time." ”

In January 2023, Taiyang Asset mentioned that "after multiple rounds of centralized procurement in the pharmaceutical field, the profitability of enterprises tends to be stable, and some companies with real pricing power and international competitiveness are emerging." After the epidemic, the government and residents' attention to medical health will also promote the long-term development of the pharmaceutical industry. In November of the same year, Taiyang Assets said, "Focusing on the certainty of demand next year, we can gradually increase our positions in pharmaceutical stocks with performance or bottoming out." In December of the same year, the company also mentioned that "the technology field with incremental industrial changes, or the biomedical field with rigid demand, is expected to be in a relatively favorable position in investment in the coming period".

Unfortunately, after a short repair of about 4 months, the direction of medicine and biology began to decline again after February 2023. Wind data shows that on September 24, 2024, the intraday Shenwan Pharmaceutical and Biological Industry Index (801150. SI) brushed a new low of 6061.23 points in recent years, a decline of 55.23% from the high range in July 2021.

Chart: Shenwan Pharmaceutical and Biological Sector Index (801150. SI) market trends in recent years

Source: Wind

In terms of the latest market views, in the monthly view released recently, Taiyang Asset Management said that for Chinese assets, on the one hand, as domestic interest rates are still in a downward channel, high-dividend theme assets are still expected to be favored by investors in 2025; On the other hand, the exploration of AI applications continues to deepen, and the path for it to empower various industries is becoming clearer. New products in the field of robotics have emerged, and various innovative products have appeared one after another; The commercialization of intelligent driving technology is accelerating significantly. The positive progress in these frontier areas will strongly drive the vigorous development of upstream and downstream related industrial chains, and give birth to a series of eye-catching investment opportunities.

However, there are huge variables in 2025 whether the market will deduce in the direction predicted by Taiyang Assets, and whether the company can seize the opportunity to achieve the restoration of the net value of products and the recovery of the scale of management.

In fact, according to the data of Haomai Fund Network, even in the stage of strong rise of A-shares from late September to early October 2024, the net value of products such as "Taiyang Innovation Growth No. 7 Phase B" and "Taiyang Innovation Growth No. 7 Phase E" under Taiyang Assets with updated performance have not been able to achieve too much repair.