Against the backdrop of multiple pressures such as sluggish global economic growth and recurring geopolitical conflicts, the export business of A-share listed companies has not shrunk, but has achieved an increase in both quantity and quality.
Taking Shanghai Main Board companies as an example, in 2025, they will achieve overseas revenue of 7.3 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14%, and overseas profits of 0.9 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 21%. The growth rates of these two indicators will be accelerated by 7 percentage points and 12 percentage points respectively compared with the previous year.
However, the resilience of the export business is not reflected in the stock price in the secondary market.
Since the beginning of this year, the stock prices of many A-share export companies have continued to weaken, with solid performance and sluggish stock prices in sharp contrast.
The reason is that the market still uses traditional foreign trade standards to measure overseas companies that have iteratively upgraded.
At a recent seminar, many industry insiders believed that many A-share export companies have jumped out of the initial stage of “simply selling goods overseas” and shifted to the leap stage of “rooted operations overseas”. At this time, the valuation logic needs to be updated urgently.
The resilience of the export business is sufficient
The first-line experience intuitively confirms the true resilience of foreign trade.
When I visited Yiwu International Trade City recently, I could see foreign faces everywhere choosing goods, comparing prices, and negotiating cooperation.
In the store of Yiwu Jingxin Toys Co., Ltd., the small shelves are filled with various dolls.
Store manager He Dan said: “Although large-scale shipments this year are slower than in previous years due to higher freight costs, orders from scattered small customers are still shipped normally, and sales are basically stable.”
This is the logical support for small commodity foreign trade to be able to go through the cycle.
Small commodity exports face global fragmented, long-tailed, and highly customized non-standard demand. An overseas buyer can use a container in Yiwu to put together 200 categories and thousands of single products.
At the same time, daily necessities, small household appliances and other small commodities are anti-inflation consumer goods with rigid needs and low unit prices. Even if the global economic growth momentum is insufficient, the demand for such cost-effective daily necessities still exists.
Platform companies are leading merchants to go overseas.
Xu Hang, Secretary of the Board of Directors of Commodity City, said that the fundamental purpose of the company’s overseas expansion is to “go global with 75,000 merchants.” To this end, the company is actively planning the global layout of the brand’s overseas expansion and breaking the traditional limitations of overseas expansion through model iteration.
By the end of 2025, Commodity City has launched a total of 78 overseas projects in 36 countries, and plans to add more than 30 new projects this year.
High-tech products such as robots and AR glasses have also quietly taken over the export baton.
In the Yiwu Global Digital Trade Center, product stores of companies such as Yushu Technology, Qiannao Technology, and Lingban (Leqi) have settled in core areas, revealing signs of the upgrading of my country’s foreign trade structure.
Guo Xiaofeng, deputy general manager of Jinhua Ruikai Technology Co., Ltd., the agent of Lingban (Leqi), said that the store is Lingban’s offline retail experience and wholesale store, and it is also the only store in China that sells overseas versions of glasses.
There is a constant flow of trucks in the Meishan Port area of Ningbo Port. On the roll-off and roll-off berths, rows of new energy vehicles are about to be loaded onto ships and shipped to the Middle East market.
Jiang Wei, Secretary of the Board of Directors of Ningbo Port, said in an interview that due to the disturbance from the conflict between the United States and Iran, the company’s container routes to the Middle East were almost at a standstill in March this year.
To this end, the company provides “three excellent” services for ships on the Middle East routes, including priority port entry, priority berthing, and priority operations, to improve customer logistics efficiency and reduce comprehensive logistics costs.
Judging from operational data, the port’s throughput has also shown resilience.
Data shows that from January to May this year, Ningbo Port expects the company to complete cargo throughput of 509 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 1.90%, and it is expected to complete container throughput of 23.01 million TEUs, a year-on-year increase of 9.98%.
Iterative upgrade of the overseas model
In fact, A-share manufacturing companies are gradually tearing off the label of “local manufacturing” when going overseas and advancing towards “global brands”.
Chunfeng Power focuses on the R&D and manufacturing of large-displacement motorcycles, four-wheel all-terrain vehicles and new energy vehicles.
At present, the company’s products have been exported to more than 100 countries and regions around the world. In 2025, the company’s export revenue was 13.79 billion yuan, accounting for 70% of the total revenue.
In the first quarter of this year, the proportion of exports further increased to 82.72%.
“The company has deployed two core production bases in Mexico and Thailand, breaking the single ‘Made in China, shipped globally’ model.” said Zhou Xiongxiu, Secretary of the Board of Directors of Dongfeng Power.
According to reports, CF Dynamics will continue to optimize production capacity and market layout at home and abroad. On the basis of consolidating the core fundamentals of Europe and the United States, it will actively explore emerging incremental markets such as Central and South America and Asia to enhance global resource allocation capabilities and risk resistance capabilities.
Huayou Cobalt is a representative enterprise in the new energy lithium battery industry.
Li Rui, secretary of the company’s board of directors, said that the company has established a business structure of “overseas resources, international manufacturing, and global markets.”
In April this year, Huayou Cobalt put into operation Africa’s first large-scale lithium sulfate plant, pioneering local lithium salt production in Africa.
Previously, the company has entered the Democratic Republic of the Congo to develop cobalt and copper resources, entered Indonesia to develop laterite nickel mines, and acquired the Arcadia lithium mine project in Zimbabwe to develop lithium resources.
“If you cannot control the source, you cannot control the destination.” Li Rui said that in order to ensure the safety and stability of the industrial chain and supply chain, the company adheres to the line of “upward control of resources”, promotes global resource layout, strengthens control over the sources, costs and supply rhythm of key metal raw materials, and improves the company’s ability to resist risks in the face of resource price fluctuations, changes in trade policies and changes in the geopolitical environment.
From “selling goods overseas” to “operating locally overseas”, these A-share overseas companies that are deeply tied to the global industrial chain can no longer be priced using the valuation framework of traditional trading companies.
The pricing and valuation system awaits reconstruction
How to reconstruct the pricing and valuation system for A-share companies with global layout?
“From a capital market perspective, globalization is an important support for improving long-term valuation. The growth ceiling of companies in a single market is visible, but only companies that can allocate resources and participate in competition globally will have their long-term value fully recognized by the capital market.” Li Rui said.
Dai Fei, a researcher in the emerging industries team of Tianfeng Securities Research Institute, dissected the value revaluation brought about by the iteration of the overseas model.
In terms of overseas export models, in the past, Chinese companies mostly set up factories in Southeast Asia and Mexico and then re-exported their products overseas.
Nowadays, Chinese enterprises have expanded their overseas destinations to Europe, the Middle East and other regions; from the perspective of strategy, enterprises are changing from building assembly plants overseas and earning price differences to building entities overseas, deploying R&D teams, and driving the upstream and downstream of the supply chain to go global.
Jin Qiu, chief analyst of Xingye Commerce and Retail Industry, took Commodity City as an example to analyze. The essence of Commodity City is not a simple market store operating company, but a comprehensive infrastructure platform for going overseas.
In her view, the business boundary of the Commodity City extends from ordinary shops to digital trade and service trade, and the core logic is to shift from “selling goods” to “selling services.”
“When service trade accounts for an increasing proportion of the income structure of the Commodity City, its profit quality will undergo fundamental changes, and the market will then provide more adequate pricing.” She said.
Going overseas is considered the first step towards becoming a multinational enterprise and can often reshape its long-term development value.
Cathay Fund Macro Strategy Analyst Yang Yiting said that for companies, going overseas is not only about “going global”, but also about the value transition process of deeply integrating into the global production and supply chain. “Based on the perspective of investment institutions, companies going overseas can often experience a full range of value revaluation.”
She further elaborated on the three-dimensional pricing framework for the reconstruction of global enterprise valuation.
First, the scale of going overseas corresponds to the market space in corporate valuation and pricing, which can help companies further open up the market space ceiling; second, the global value chain position corresponds to the quality of profits in corporate valuation and pricing, and the level of status determines the level of bargaining power after going overseas; third, the barriers to overseas competition correspond to the industry competition pattern in corporate valuation and pricing. The complexity, uncontrollability and even unpredictability of risks faced after going overseas are significantly higher than in the local operation stage, so the resilience of going overseas is often included in the evaluation system of the long-term value of enterprises.
In the context of the continued resilience of foreign trade and the upgrade of overseas models, the old traditional trade valuation system of A-share export companies is no longer appropriate, and a discussion on the reconstruction of pricing logic is underway.
The industry predicts that, given time, high-quality leading foreign trade companies with global layout, industrial chain voice, and strong ability to resist risks may see a return in value.
