Latest / Investor Exchange / Zixin’s FY2026 Results Signal A Shift In Modern Agritech
Transcript
- 0:00Time for another Investor Exchange podcast. Here are your hosts, Matt and Sally.
- 0:08Imagine turning literal farm garbage, you know, like potato peels, bruised crops, the
- 0:14kind of stuff you normally have to pay someone to haul away.
- 0:17Right. Just pure waste.
- 0:18Exactly. Imagine turning that into a revenue stream that jumps over 1000% in a single year.
- 0:25It sounds impossible, but that is exactly what we're looking at today.
- 0:28Yeah, we're looking at a biotech company doing exactly that. And we're asking the big question
- 0:32for you today. Is their so-called sweet potato circular economy a genius blueprint for the
- 0:40future of food? Or is there a cash-burning illusion hiding behind these really glossy
- 0:46financial reports?
- 0:47It is a fascinating question.
- 0:49Welcome to the Deep Dive. We are skipping the small talk today and getting straight
- 0:52into the numbers for Zicks and Group Holdings, specifically looking at their full year financial
- 0:57results ending in March 2026.
- 1:00I mean, the headline numbers they just reported, they definitely demand attention from an investor's
- 1:05perspective.
- 1:06Oh, for sure.
- 1:07We are looking at a 43% jump in total revenue and a nearly 44% jump in net profit.
- 1:12Which is massive.
- 1:13It is. But as anyone who actually spends time reading financial statements knows, headline
- 1:19numbers only tell you the end of the story. They rarely tell you how the company actually
- 1:23got there.
- 1:24Exactly. Or, more importantly, how sustainable that path really is.
- 1:29Exactly.
- 1:30Which is basically our entire mission today. We are going to strip away the corporate gloss.
- 1:35We need to look objectively at what is actually driving this explosive growth.
- 1:41Because when you start digging into the filings, a really fascinating puzzle emerges.
- 1:45Yeah, it really does. You have this massive top-line growth, but their profit margins
- 1:50are actually shrinking.
- 1:51Which is always a red flag.
- 1:53And on top of that, they're embarking on some highly aggressive expansion plans. So let's
- 1:57unpack this for you. Total revenue hit 607.5 million Chinese Renminbi.
- 2:02A huge number.
- 2:04And that resulted in a net profit of 61.4 million Chinese Renminbi. Their earnings per
- 2:08share went up by over 30%.
- 2:09So those are the big flashy numbers. But the real question is, where are those revenues
- 2:13actually coming from?
- 2:14Right. How do they actually make their money?
- 2:16So to understand the engine here, you have to look at their processed products division.
- 2:20A single segment brings in 68% of their total revenue.
- 2:24Wow, 68%.
- 2:25Yeah, which comes out to about 413.1 million Chinese Renminbi. That segment alone grew
- 2:33by nearly 28% compared to the previous year.
- 2:36And I want to clarify something here, because when the documents say processed products,
- 2:40we aren't talking about just tossing raw potatoes into a burlap sack.
- 2:44No, not at all.
- 2:45They launched entirely new consumer product lines this year. We are talking about sweet
- 2:49potato crisps, sweet potato fries, and these additive-free vacuum-packed steamed sweet
- 2:55potatoes.
- 2:56And that distinction is just so vital for investors. They are moving aggressively up
- 3:00the value chain.
- 3:01How do you mean?
- 3:02Well, selling a raw agricultural commodity usually comes with razor-thin margins. And
- 3:07the pricing is highly unpredictable because it's dictated by the broader market.
- 3:10Right. You're at the mercy of the commodities market.
- 3:13Exactly. But by taking that raw sweet potato and processing it into crisps or a vacuum-packed
- 3:19snack, they are creating branded shelf-stable products.
- 3:23Oh, I see. So it lasts longer and they can charge more.
- 3:26Yes. That allows them to command a premium price and insulate themselves from the daily
- 3:31price swings of raw vegetables.
- 3:33That makes a ton of sense. But see, here's where my initial read of the documents got
- 3:37a little bit confusing, because their raw produce sales are also absolutely booming
- 3:42right now. Sales of fresh sweet potatoes grew by almost 85%.
- 3:47Which is a huge spike.
- 3:48Yeah. Hitting 184.6 million Chinese renminbi. Now, the filings credit this to a strong harvest,
- 3:56but they also lean heavily into their investment in smart warehousing technology.
- 4:00Right. The warehousing is key here.
- 4:02They mentioned automated washing, automated sorting, and then these specialized cold storage
- 4:06facilities utilizing, and I have to quote, this wound healing and sacrification process.
- 4:11That's quite a mouthful.
- 4:12I got to admit, it sounds a little bit like science fiction. What actually is sacrification
- 4:16and, like, why does an investor care?
- 4:18It does sound incredibly technical, but the underlying concept is just really smart agricultural
- 4:24economics. Sacrification is basically a curing process.
- 4:28Okay.
- 4:29It breaks down the complex starches inside the sweet potato into simple sugars.
- 4:34So it literally makes the potato sweeter.
- 4:36Exactly. It makes it taste better. But more importantly, when they combine that with the
- 4:41controlled humidity and temperature of the smart warehousing, it actually heals the cuts
- 4:46and scrapes the potato gets during harvest.
- 4:48Oh, wow. So they're essentially putting the potatoes in a spa so they don't rot.
- 4:53Yes, exactly. Well, I wouldn't call it a spa, but, you know, agricultural products rotting
- 4:57is the fundamental risk of farming.
- 4:59Right. You're fighting the clock.
- 5:01You lose inventory just by the simple passage of time. So by investing in this specific
- 5:06technology, they significantly extend the shelf life of their fresh sweet potatoes.
- 5:10And I imagine the economic impact of that is pretty huge.
- 5:13It's massive. Without it, a farmer is basically forced to flood the market with their crop
- 5:19immediately at harvest time.
- 5:20Which is when everyone else is selling, too.
- 5:22Right. That is exactly when supply is highest and prices are at their absolute lowest.
- 5:26Oh, I see.
- 5:27Because Zixin Group can store the crop safely for months, they can hold their inventory
- 5:32and just sell it strategically when market prices eventually rise.
- 5:36So they are essentially removing that ticking clock from their inventory entirely.
- 5:40Exactly.
- 5:41Alongside those fresh potatoes, their seedling sales exploded, too.
- 5:46Seedling revenue went up by over 300 percent.
- 5:49Another massive jump.
- 5:50Yeah. The filings note this was directly because they doubled the physical size of their nursery.
- 5:56They took it from 100 mu to 200 mu.
- 5:58And for anyone trying to visualize that, a mu is a Chinese unit of land measurement.
- 6:03Right. So they basically expanded their nursery from about 16 acres to 33 acres.
- 6:08And expanding that physical footprint allowed them to capture way more external sales to
- 6:12local farmers during the planting season.
- 6:14Makes sense.
- 6:15But, you know, if we pull back and look at the whole system, the most innovative revenue
- 6:18stream is actually the smallest one on the balance sheet.
- 6:22But it is growing at a staggering rate.
- 6:24Oh, you were talking about the waste recycling segment.
- 6:28Yes.
- 6:29This is where the whole circular economy concept they always talk about really clicks into
- 6:32place for me.
- 6:33It really does.
- 6:34Because they took agricultural waste, the sweet potato peels, the stems, the leaves,
- 6:39and you know, the bruised or spoiled potatoes that couldn't be sold on the fresh market.
- 6:43The stuff that didn't survive the spa.
- 6:45Exactly.
- 6:46And they used a proprietary fermentation process to turn it all into probiotic-infused animal
- 6:52feed.
- 6:53And the financial leap there is just incredible in percentage terms.
- 6:57That segment jumped from roughly 400,000 Chinese Renminbi last year to 4.5 million Chinese
- 7:04Renminbi this year.
- 7:05Okay.
- 7:06I see the percentage jump, but I have to play devil's advocate here.
- 7:08Go for it.
- 7:09In the context of a company making over 600 million Renminbi in total revenue, 4.5 million
- 7:16still feels like a rounding error.
- 7:18I mean, is this really a game changer or is it just a really good PR talking point?
- 7:21No, it is a genuine game changer, and it all comes down to the margin profile.
- 7:25Okay.
- 7:26Explain that.
- 7:27Think about the traditional POS structure of a farm or a food processing plant.
- 7:32You have to pay someone to haul away your biological waste.
- 7:36It is a literal line-item expense.
- 7:38Right.
- 7:39It costs you money.
- 7:40But here, they have taken a disposal cost and transformed it into a commercial product.
- 7:44That is a clever flip.
- 7:46But the true genius is the biological loop.
- 7:48This probiotic feed is sold to local livestock farmers.
- 7:52The feed helps the livestock grow faster and healthier.
- 7:56Then the livestock produces manure, which enriches the local soil, which in turn grows
- 8:01better sweet potatoes for the company to buy.
- 8:03Wow.
- 8:04It creates a closed-loop ecosystem that locks local farmers directly into their supply chain.
- 8:10So to put it in an analogy, it sounds like they weren't just selling the apple.
- 8:13They are selling the apple tree, the apple pie, and they're even using the apple core
- 8:17for compost to grow the next tree.
- 8:19That is the perfect way to look at it.
- 8:20They have found a way to monetize every single stage of the sweet potato's life cycle.
- 8:25They really have dialed in this incredibly efficient zero-waste system.
- 8:29They absolutely have.
- 8:30Which brings me to the second part of our deep dive.
- 8:32And frankly, the part that seems totally contradictory to me.
- 8:36The margins.
- 8:37Yes.
- 8:38If everything is so incredibly efficient and their revenue is up 43%, why did their overall
- 8:44gross profit margin actually drop this year?
- 8:48It went from 34% down to 30.8%.
- 8:52That seems like a major red flag for any investor looking at this.
- 8:55It is an essential detail for you to catch because it highlights the harsh reality of
- 8:59scaling a business.
- 9:00How so?
- 9:01Well, a growing top line is fantastic, but if the cost to generate that revenue grows
- 9:06even faster, your margins inevitably get squeezed.
- 9:10The financial statements show that this margin drop was driven by a mix effect.
- 9:14It was primarily due to lower profitability on those fresh sweet potatoes they sold.
- 9:18Let me make sure I'm following this.
- 9:20So even though they made a slightly better margin on their processed snacks this year.
- 9:23The crisps and fries.
- 9:24The sheer volume of fresh, raw sweet potatoes they pushed out the door at a lower margin
- 9:30essentially dragged the overall average of the entire company down.
- 9:34Exactly.
- 9:35That is the trap of raw agriculture.
- 9:37You can double your sales volume, but if the market price for raw potatoes dips even a
- 9:42little bit or say your transportation costs rise.
- 9:46Your margins just evaporate.
- 9:48They do.
- 9:49And it wasn't just the cost of the goods themselves dragging down the bottom line.
- 9:53Their operating expenses surged significantly this year too.
- 9:56I saw that.
- 9:57Administrative costs went up by nearly 22%.
- 10:00Yeah.
- 10:01And the documents specify exactly what drove a massive chunk of that administrative surge.
- 10:05It was a 9.6 million Chinese renminbi increase in research and development.
- 10:10Which is a huge investment.
- 10:12They're spending heavily to invent new sweet potato varieties and better production techniques.
- 10:16But I have to ask, why does a sweet potato need biotech intervention?
- 10:21Like what are they actually researching in a lab?
- 10:22They are researching survival and yield.
- 10:25Agricultural biotech isn't just about making a potato taste better for a crisp.
- 10:30They are engineering virus-free seedlings to combat root rot, which is a disease that
- 10:35can devastate an entire harvest.
- 10:37They are breeding varieties with higher starch content that are specifically optimized for
- 10:42their crisp making factories.
- 10:44They are working on drought resistance.
- 10:46So they're building super potatoes.
- 10:48Exactly.
- 10:49R&D is an absolute necessity if you want to build a competitive moat in agriculture.
- 10:53However, from an investor's perspective, R&D is an immediate hit to the income statement.
- 10:59Right.
- 11:00Because it costs millions today.
- 11:01Exactly.
- 11:02You pay millions for the laboratory research today, but you might not see the financial
- 11:05returns on that new drought-resistant sweet potato variety for maybe 5 to 10 years.
- 11:11Okay.
- 11:12That makes sense.
- 11:13But I want to pivot to the biggest mystery in this entire financial report.
- 11:17Let's hear it.
- 11:18I love these numbers and I am just totally lost.
- 11:20The company reported over 61 million Chinese Renminbi in net profit.
- 11:25Right.
- 11:26But when you look at their cash flow statement, their operating cash flow for the year was
- 11:29actually negative.
- 11:30Yes, it was.
- 11:31They ran a cash flow deficit of 18.5 million Chinese Renminbi.
- 11:36How does a company claim 61 million in profit on one page, but they're actively bleeding
- 11:41cash day-to-day on the next page?
- 11:44It is the classic disconnect between accrual accounting and actual cash in the bank.
- 11:50Break it down for me.
- 11:52Sure.
- 11:53The profit figure you see on the income statement is basically an accounting calculation.
- 11:57It matches revenues earned against expenses incurred in that specific year, regardless
- 12:01of when the cash actually changes hands.
- 12:04But the cash flow statement shows you the literal movement of money in and out of their
- 12:09bank accounts.
- 12:10So where did the cash go?
- 12:11The documents reveal a massive cash outflow.
- 12:14They made 107.1 million Chinese Renminbi upfront payment to local agricultural cooperatives
- 12:21and suppliers.
- 12:22Over 100 million?
- 12:23Yes.
- 12:24And the filings state this massive payment was to lock in 15-year supply contracts for
- 12:29fresh sweet potatoes.
- 12:30Exactly.
- 12:31The structure of these contracts requires the company to pay upfront every five years
- 12:36just to guarantee the supply.
- 12:37Right.
- 12:38So it's like paying for 15 years of a streaming service subscription upfront in cash today
- 12:43just to guarantee they never raise your monthly rate.
- 12:45That is a very accurate way to look at it.
- 12:47I mean, it protects you from inflation down the road, but it completely drains your savings
- 12:51account right now.
- 12:52It does.
- 12:53From an accounting perspective, that 107.1 million Renminbi isn't an immediate expense
- 13:00that destroys their profit margin this year.
- 13:02Because it's a prepaid asset.
- 13:04Right.
- 13:05So they have a balance sheet as an asset, an upfront payment, and they slowly deduct
- 13:08a portion of it each year as they actually receive the physical potatoes.
- 13:13But from a cash perspective...
- 13:15That money is gone today.
- 13:16It's totally gone.
- 13:17Which forces us to ask the big strategic question here.
- 13:21Wait, so they made over 61 million in profit, but their day-to-day operations actually drained
- 13:26cash this year because they prepaid their suppliers by over 100 million Renminbi.
- 13:32That is the situation.
- 13:33Is that a sign of supply chain panic?
- 13:35Are they terrified they won't get potatoes?
- 13:37Or is it a brilliantly aggressive move to build a long-term moat against competitors?
- 13:41Well, it depends entirely on your outlook for the Chinese agricultural market.
- 13:45How so?
- 13:46Management explicitly notes the flourishing trend in China's drive to safeguard food security.
- 13:52By locking in these long-term contracts, they are neutralizing the risk of a future sweet
- 13:58potato shortage.
- 13:59Ah, so they're buying peace of mind.
- 14:01Exactly.
- 14:02They're guaranteeing the raw materials for their processing factories.
- 14:06If severe weather hits or competitors can't source sweet potatoes three years from now,
- 14:10Zixin Group is entirely insulated.
- 14:12They will still be making crisps.
- 14:14Right.
- 14:15The downside, of course, is opportunity cost.
- 14:17They have tied up over 100 million Renminbi that could have been used to build new factories
- 14:23or pay dividends to shareholders.
- 14:25And regarding dividends, the company flat-out refused to pay one to shareholders this year.
- 14:29They did.
- 14:30They are explicitly hoarding cash.
- 14:32I mean, they do have a healthy cash balance overall.
- 14:34It sits at 214.6 million Chinese Renminbi.
- 14:38Which is very comfortable.
- 14:39But they want to keep every penny of it to fund new manufacturing facilities and secure
- 14:43more farmland.
- 14:44And that is textbook growth phase behavior.
- 14:47They are signaling to investors that they shouldn't expect quarterly checks right now.
- 14:52Because they need the capital.
- 14:53Right.
- 14:54The company believes they can generate a much higher return by reinvesting that capital
- 14:57back into the business.
- 14:59You will also notice a slight dip in their net asset value per share this year.
- 15:03Yeah.
- 15:04I saw that.
- 15:05The net asset value per share dropped by about 3%.
- 15:07Right.
- 15:08But looking at the footnotes, that wasn't because the company lost inherent value.
- 15:12It happened because they issued new shares when some employee stock options were exercised.
- 15:17Exactly.
- 15:18More slices of the pie mean each individual slice gets a tiny bit smaller.
- 15:23Dilution.
- 15:24Right.
- 15:25Now, dilution is not a normal part of a growing company compensating its team or raising capital.
- 15:30But it is a metric any serious investor must factor into their per share valuations.
- 15:35Absolutely.
- 15:36So, we have a company that just drained massive amounts of cash to lock up their supply chain
- 15:40for the next 15 years.
- 15:42Yes.
- 15:43And because they made that move, they have essentially painted themselves into a corner.
- 15:47I mean, they absolutely must scale up their processing and distribution to justify that
- 15:52massive upfront cost.
- 15:53They have to grow.
- 15:55And that forces us to look at where they are building next.
- 15:59What exactly is their expansion strategy?
- 16:01Well, up until now, this company has been deeply anchored in Liancheng County.
- 16:06That is their home turf.
- 16:08But now they are rapidly establishing new operations in Hainan Province, in Guangzhou
- 16:13City, and they are even setting up corporate operations in Singapore.
- 16:17Singapore.
- 16:18Wow.
- 16:19Yes, to target the wider Southeast Asian consumer market.
- 16:23That is a huge leap.
- 16:24And their filings lay out a very specific three-pronged strategy for this future expansion.
- 16:29They do.
- 16:30First, expand upstream farming to guarantee food safety and absolute traceability.
- 16:35Right, controlling the source.
- 16:37Second, build downstream brand awareness by partnering with established food and beverage
- 16:41businesses in these new regions.
- 16:43And third, keep pouring money into that biotechnology research we discussed earlier to improve crop
- 16:48yields.
- 16:49So, they are essentially trying to copy and paste their highly successful Liancheng County
- 16:53model into entirely new territories.
- 16:55They want to duplicate the machine.
- 16:57Exactly.
- 16:58They want to control the dirt the potato grows in, all the way to the branding on the bag
- 17:02of potato crisps, but on an international scale.
- 17:05But you know, expanding an agricultural base into totally new provinces in a new country,
- 17:11it's a bit like opening a second restaurant after your first one succeeds.
- 17:14It's tough.
- 17:15It is notoriously difficult to replicate the exact same secret sauce in a new environment.
- 17:21Oh, absolutely.
- 17:23Because they are dealing with totally different soil biomes, different weather patterns and
- 17:26completely different local supply chain politics.
- 17:29It's a massive challenge.
- 17:31So do the financial documents give any indication that this new expansion is actually generating
- 17:36returns yet?
- 17:37Or are they purely in the spending money phase?
- 17:39The financial documents are actually quite transparent on this point.
- 17:43These new regional expansions are strictly in their early investment heavy stages.
- 17:48So no profit yet.
- 17:49Right.
- 17:50They are not yet the profit engines that the home base is.
- 17:53In fact, the management team goes out of their way to flag some very specific macroeconomic
- 17:57risks regarding this expansion.
- 17:59Yeah.
- 18:00The language they use in the outlook section is that they're remaining explicitly cautious.
- 18:04Cautious is the key word.
- 18:05They specifically call out rising operational costs linked to the ongoing conflict in the
- 18:10Middle East.
- 18:11Which is fascinating.
- 18:12It really is.
- 18:13It's a sobering reminder that even a sweet potato farm operating entirely within China
- 18:18is incredibly vulnerable to global shocks.
- 18:22Everything is connected.
- 18:23I mean, the price of fuel to transport their goods, or the cost of the raw materials for
- 18:28fertilizer, they're all tied to global commodity markets.
- 18:32Yes.
- 18:33And management openly admits that these new regional operations will, quote, require time
- 18:38to develop.
- 18:39So they are tempering expectations.
- 18:41They are actively managing investor expectations, yes.
- 18:44They are communicating that the heavy lifting, you know, the capital expenditure, the facility
- 18:49construction, the brand building in Southeast Asia, that is all happening right now.
- 18:54But the payoff is delayed.
- 18:55Right.
- 18:56The actual financial harvest from those investments is still years away.
- 19:00Wow.
- 19:01Okay.
- 19:02So to synthesize all of this for you listening, Zixin Group has built a genuinely fascinating,
- 19:08highly profitable, circular economy around the humble sweet potato.
- 19:12They really have.
- 19:13They have achieved explosive top-line revenue growth by monetizing absolutely everything
- 19:19from the premium vacuum-packed snack down to the fermented animal feed made from the
- 19:24rotting peels.
- 19:25It is a brilliant model.
- 19:27However, any objective investor must balance that impressive top-line growth against the
- 19:32complex realities we uncovered in the filings.
- 19:34You have to look at the whole picture.
- 19:36Exactly.
- 19:37You have shrinking gross profit margins due to the heavy volume of fresh produce sales.
- 19:42You have massive upfront cash outlays to secure future crops, which literally resulted
- 19:46in negative operating cash flow for the year.
- 19:48Right.
- 19:49And you have the inherent, highly capital-intensive risks of geographic expansion into completely
- 19:54unproven territories.
- 19:56They are building a massive economic moat, but moats require an incredible amount of
- 20:00capital to dig.
- 20:01Well said.
- 20:02It is a classic story of incredible ambition funded by hoarding cash today for the promise
- 20:07of market dominance tomorrow.
- 20:09That sums it up perfectly.
- 20:10Which leaves us with a broader, perhaps even more exciting concept to ponder as you look
- 20:14at your own portfolios.
- 20:16The genius here isn't just that they found a way to sell farm trash.
- 20:19No, it's bigger than that.
- 20:21It is the closed-loop nature of their biotech-driven operations.
- 20:25If this company can successfully replicate its zero-waste, circular sweet potato economy
- 20:31in entirely new environments like Hainan or Southeast Asia...
- 20:35Which is a big if.
- 20:36Right.
- 20:37If they can, could this exact same model eventually be applied to other staple crops globally?
- 20:42That's the million-dollar question.
- 20:44We might not just be looking at a profitable snack company here.
- 20:47We could be looking at a highly efficient blueprint for the future of drought-resistant
- 20:50global agriculture.
- 20:52It's definitely something to watch.
- 20:54This content is intended to serve strictly and only as an informational, independent,
- 20:58objective summary of recent events, and should in no way be interpreted, construed, or relied
- 21:03upon by any party as inside information or financial advice.