(Yicai Global) Sept. 1 -- The 165 firms listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s new Nasdaq-style Star Market overcame the adversity of the Covid-19 pandemic and external environmental changes in the first half to outperform their peers on the Shanghai and Shenzhen bourses overall. They also found favor with institutional investors and the number of funds holding Star Market stocks jumped 11-fold from the first quarter.

Star-listed firms posted total revenue of CNY112.8 billion (USD16.5 billion) in the first half, an increase of 5.8 percent on the year, the SSE said on its website yesterday. Their total net profit jumped 42.3 percent to CNY12.4 billion.

These data far surpass the general level of companies listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen. The combined revenue of all on firms on the Shanghai and Shenzhen bourses that have released their semi-annual reports fell by 2.65 percent, and their net profit slumped by 18.24 percent in the first half, according to data from leading Chinese financial data provider Wind Information.

This situation was even more apparent in the second quarter, when Star Market firms recorded CNY58.7 billion of revenue in a 52 percent rise from the previous quarter and 9 percent over a year earlier. Their total net profit was CNY8.8 billion, up 210 percent from the previous quarter and 41 percent from last year. The revenue of companies trading in Shanghai and Shenzhen grew 2.7 percent at the same time, while their net profit fell 13.1 percent.

The biomedicine and integrated circuit industries performed particularly well on the Star Market. Revenue and net profit of the biomedical industry vaulted 34.6 percent and 2,757.7 percent, respectively, while those of the chip industry jumped 22.4 percent and 97.1 percent.

Star companies’ investment in research and development also continued to take off. They laid out CNY12.9 billion on R&D in the first half for an average of 18.5 percent of their revenue, up 6 percentage points from the year before.

The ranks of institutional shareholders and their shareholding ratios of Star-listed firms have both skyrocketed. The number of funds holding Star stocks was 16,544 in the first half, an 11-fold increase from the first quarter. Of these, 75 percent had funds as holders of tradable shares, up 20 percentage points from the first quarter. The ratio of funds gained from an average of 7.1 percent in the first quarter to 11.7 percent in the first half, the SSE noted.

Editor: Ben Armour