China Agritech: Factory Visits Reveal a Scam
Seeking Alpha Analyst Since 2010
Based on our research, which includes factory visits and discussions with customers, competitors, and government officials, as well as examinations of Chinese financial filings, we think that China Agritech does not have a currently functioning business generating anything close to $100 million in revenue. We’re very confident that the company is a scam.
We have put together a report discussing our research, which can be downloaded here: CAGC Research Report
Our report features the following highlights:
- Despite a $230 million market capitalization and claims of $119 million revenue in 2010, our factory visits revealed that Agritech’s manufacturing facilities are currently all idle and only one out of its four factories produced anything at all in 2010. We visited each Agritech facility and found each one idle and highly unlikely to produce significant amounts of fertilizer.
- Even though it has raised over $70 million in capital since 2005, Agritech appears to have acquired only several million dollars worth of capital equipment. By contrast, it has paid its two founders at least $4 million in rental fees and real estate purchases during that time.
- Companies Agritech claims as clients, such as the big state-owned fertilizer company Sinochem, deny having any contracts with Agritech. Sinochem has told us that it does not sell any Agritech products.
- Agritech’s stated suppliers cannot be found in any directory under possible Chinese names that would correspond to the transliterated names or under the alphabetic names. They do not appear on industry lists of companies making humic acid or ingredients for organic fertilizers.
- Revenue, profit and fixed assets reported to the Chinese government are 10x, 5x and 3x lower than the figures reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
- Agritech’s CFO has been involved in two listed companies before Agritech in which he personally collected seven-figure sums while the companies went to zero. Another Seeking Alpha analyst has written on this previously (here and here). Insiders have sold over $2.5 million worth of stock over the past 12 months.
We discuss highlights of the report below.
Factories are Idle, Distribution Centers Cannot Be Identified, and Products are Nowhere to Be Found
After visiting Agritech’s reported manufacturing facilities in Beijing, Anhui, Xinjiang, and Harbin, we found virtually no manufacturing underway. Pictures are available in our report. The single exception was the facility in Pinggu County on the outskirts of Beijing, where the plant was not in operation on the Friday when we visited but local people told us that it has sporadically produced some liquid fertilizer over the last year. Plants in Bengbu, Anhui (supposedly the largest), Harbin, and Xinjiang were completely shuttered.
The Harbin facility – supposedly a major manufacturing facility for the $100 million revenue business – had a sign hanging on the gates last summer reading “this factory is for sale.”
Although the company has announced 21 regional distribution centers, we have not been able to locate any. In May 2010, Agritech issued over 1.4 million new shares, raising just under $19 million for the construction of distribution centers. But we have not been able to find evidence that any distribution centers were actually built.
We attempted at some length to purchase at least one bottle of the Agritech product but were disappointed. Fertilizer distributors listed on a popular industry website did not carry Agritech product. We looked for the addresses of retail locations. Then we tried buying online via the popular site Taobao or an agricultural products site, with no luck. Then, we telephoned the company. We asked for retail locations, but the staff member who answered the phone said that they could only fill our order directly. We explained that we wanted one bottle as a sample before making a bigger order. She said that the company is able to fulfill only wholesale orders. When we persisted, the staff member said that a distributor would be passing through our area, Beijing, the following week and would drop off a sample, but that did not happen. When we called the number for the “distributor” the following week, the phone was unanswered.
Non-Existent Customer Relationships And Mysterious Suppliers
Last month, Agritech announced that the company had previously renewed a “contract supplying organic liquid compound fertilizers to Sinochem, China's largest fertilizer distributor. The sales contract is worth RMB 61 million (approximately $9 million) and the Company will also continue to supply Sinochem with organic granular compound fertilizer under another existing contract.” We spoke with a manager at Sinochem and he told us that Sinochem has no contract with Agritech and in fact has never bought or sold organic liquid fertilizers.
A January Agritech announcement states: “In May 2010, the Company signed a renewed contract supplying organic liquid compound fertilizers to Sinochem, China's largest fertilizer distributor. The sales contract is worth RMB 61 million (approximately $9 million) and the Company will also continue to supply Sinochem with organic granular compound fertilizer under another existing contract.” But a manager with Sinochem told us that Sinochem has no contract with Agritech and in fact has never bought or sold organic liquid fertilizers.
The companies that Agritech lists in its corporate materials as suppliers of raw materials, including Harbin Haiheng Chemical Distribution Co., Beijing Zhongxin Chemical Development Co., and Shenzhen Hongchou Technology Co., cannot be found in any directory under possible Chinese names that would correspond to the transliterated names or under the alphabetic names. No companies with names resembling these appear on industry lists of companies making humic acid or ingredients for “green” fertilizers. In fact, we speculate that the companies, if they ever existed, form an outdated supplier list, since at least three of Agritech’s four factories are closed down.
For example, Agritech lists a supplier they call “Beijing Zhongxin Chemical Development Company.” No such company exists, although there is one in Beijing called “Beijing Zhongxin Trading Company” listed on the Internet. However, when we called the Beijing operator for directory assistance, she could find no such company listed in the active directory. We gave her the phone number listed on the Internet site (010-66067374) and asked her to do a “reverse look-up” of the number. She advised us that this is a number for a public phone booth, not a legitimate business phone number. All other searches for the suppliers mentioned in the 10K filing were futile.
Agritech gives no information about customers or distributors in the two most recent 10Ks; we had to go back three years to find the names of any such companies. We decided to contact each of the companies mentioned in that three-year-old 10K. We could verify only one of the names – Sinochem, which had already told us they do not do business with Agritech. We were not able to find active businesses with active phone numbers for any of the other supposed customers listed by Agritech.
SAIC Filings Show Dramatically Lower Revenue, Profit and Fixed Assets than SEC Filings
Below are CAGC revenues, profit and fixed assets reported to the Chinese government for the year 2009 in every subsidiary we were able to trace — including the Beijing subsidiary, which is mysteriously unreported by the company. We were able to review CAGC’s results from its companies in Anhui, Beijing, Heilongjiang, and Xinjiang. The branch company in Chongqing, we were told by government sources, does not keep a separate P&L but instead records its revenue through its parent company. We did not find a record of a Xinjiang branch company.
Gross revenue, profit and fixed assets reported to the government in these companies for 2009 was as follows:
| Subsidiary Name | 2009 Gross Revenue (RMB) | Profit (Loss) (RMB) | Fixed Asset Value (RMB) |
| Harbin Pacific Dragon Liquid Compound Fertilizer Co. | 580,000 | (7,000) | 1 million |
| Agritech Fertilizer Company (Beijing) | 46.65 million | 7.61 million | 10.95 million |
| Anhui Agritech Agricultural Development Co. Ltd. | 530,000 | (94,000) | 2.73 million |
| Xinjiang Agritech Agricultural Resources Co. Ltd. | 3.82 million | (250,000) | 20,000 |
| Totals Reported to SAIC (in RMB) | 51.58 million | 7.259 million | 14.7 million |
| Totals Reported to SAIC (in USD) | $7.58 million | $1.067 million | $2.16 million |
| Numbers reported to the SEC | $76.13 million | $5.69 million | $5.98 million |
| SEC figures as a multiple of SAIC | 10x higher | 5x higher | 3x higher |
Below are further notes on China Agritech’s SAIC filings:
- The Harbin company, Pacific Dragon, has cumulative losses since 1994 of over 4 million RMB. None of its 2009 revenue was actually received but all was entered into “accounts receivable.” Meanwhile, the debt-to-asset ratio is 98%. There were no sales expenses at all, only administrative expenses. In short, the 2009 audit report on CAGC’s Harbin company shows a relatively worthless company.
- The Anhui facility has generated losses every year since its establishment in 2006. By the end of 2009, it had lost 3.89 million RMB. The company had zero cash on its books.
- The Xinjiang company reports zero fixed assets, meaning that it owns no equipment for production. Moreover, its 75% parent is the Anhui company, yet the Anhui company never reported making the required investment in the Xinjiang subsidiary.
- The Beijing facility has licensed registered capital of $20 million, but by the end of 2009 had received 88 million RMB, so only more than half of the legally required amount. But despite the missing capital, half of the registered capital was still sitting in the account in cash in 2009, indicating that the company had not purchased much, if any, equipment.
Humic Acid Fertilizer Manufacturing is a Low-Margin Business
We visited one of China’s largest manufacturers of pure humic acid, a factory that produces 2,000 tons of humic acid per year. 2,000 tons of humic acid can yield about 75,000 tons of fertilizers. Currently earning 10,300 RMB per ton of humic acid, this company estimates 20 million RMB in gross revenues for the current year, or about $3 million. The managers believe that, if they can use all their production for their own end product, they may be able to triple revenues. Even these optimistic estimates, however, would not bring the company anywhere close to the revenues claimed by Agritech. Not permitted to expand production and concerned that its existing outdated equipment may have to be replaced, this company is now shifting to manufacture blended fertilizers under its own brand in order to extract more value from the existing facility.
As market prospects for humic acid have dwindled, China Agritech, China Green Agriculture, and other producers of natural fertilizers have been driven into compounds, where the admixture of chemical fertilizers adds volume and market acceptance.
The problem is that compounds earn slim or negative margins. In 2008, the compound fertilizer production volume showed negative growth, as raw materials prices soared and farmers limited consumption to manage their costs. According to the China National Chemical Industry Information Center (CNCIC), China’s production capacity for compound fertilizers in 2008 was 200 million tons per year, while actual production was only 50 million tons. Product prices are essentially determined by the input costs plus 1-3%. That means manufacturers of compounds, if they produce at all, are doing so at razor-thin margins. Given that Agritech claims to produce 200,000 tons of granular compounds against 13,000 tons of higher-margin liquid compound fertilizers, a 28.5% EBITDA margin in 2009 should be viewed as a feat of magic by large competitors like Sinofert (HKG: 297). In 2009, Sinofert sold about 1.01 million tons of granular compounds. The company’s EBITDA margin in 2009 was negative. Although only 20% of Sinofert’s revenues is derived from its own manufacturing rather than agency sale of compounds, margins are similar on that side of the business.
Faced with industrial fragmentation and losses, China’s government agencies in 2008-2009 issued policies designed to consolidate the industry, shutter high-cost manufacturers, and convey expansion capital and other benefits to large producers. Lower prices of nitrogen in 2009 bolstered production of compounds to about 55,000 tons, often at a small profit. But small producers and newcomers like Agritech were not able to obtain production licenses for compounds. Local government officials told us that Agritech had not obtained licenses for manufacturing compounds in any of its facilities and was restricted to making liquid compounds at the facility in Beijing. A government official in charge of regulating a part of Agritech’s business and who was very familiar with the company estimated that, nationwide in 2010, Agritech did not have more than 50 million RMB in revenues.
Self-Dealing and Fundraising
China Agritech has been active in the capital markets since going public, completing three significant private placements and a fourth secondary public offering since 2005. In total, the company has raised more than $70 million. Yet SAIC filings show that the company had no more than $2 million of fixed assets since 2009. Even according to SEC filings, the book value of its fixed assets were only $8.3 million at the end of the third quarter 2010.
Rodman & Renshaw handled the public offering in April 2010 of 1.24 million shares of CAGC stock, raising almost $19 million. The money was intended for the buildout of distribution centers, Agritech said. But the company by summer 2010 had still not received production permits for granular fertilizer, while demand for liquid fertilizers was limited. We have not been able to identify any distribution centers that were built with the share proceeds.
While the capital raises have not been re-invested in productive manufacturing capacity, company insiders have profited handsomely from CAGC. Real estate companies owned by founders Chang Yu and/or Teng Xiaorong have earned at least $4 million from China Agritech since 2004. Since its reverse merger, Agritech has been renting certain of its Harbin and Beijing premises from its founders, with the rent cost totaling more than $500,000 annually over the past few years. The premises are mostly empty. Agritech has also purchased real estate from its founders. Last August, the company paid Ms. Teng $1.49 million to purchase 750 square meters of office space in Beijing from her.
Share sales have been an even more lucrative form of monetizing their involvement with CAGC for insiders. Over the past twelve months, at least 200,000 registered insider shares have been sold by Ms. Teng, CFO Gareth Tang, and officer Zhu Mingfang (Steve Zhu) for a value exceeding $2.5 million.
Conclusion
Our careful examination of China Agritech’s business indicates that along all parameters, Agritech has grossly inflated its revenue, failed to account for tens of millions of investor dollars, and now has virtually no product in the market. We believe this company should not be listed on NASDAQ. Fundamentally, CAGC is worth no more than the $2-per-share cash that is still in the company’s accounts – if insiders don’t empty it first.
Disclosure: We have short positions in the stock of CAGC
Seeking Alpha's Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.