Coolpad

Coolpad Group Limited formerly known as China Wireless Technologies Limited is a Caymans-incorporated holding company. Its major subsidiary Yulong Computer Telecommunication Scientific (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd., is a Chinese telecommunications equipment company headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong. It was a large smartphone company in China (as of 2012)[2][3] and the largest Chinese domestic brand by sales outside of China (as of 2014).[4] From January to June 2012, the company had a market share of shipments of 10.4% phones of China.[5]

Coolpad Group Limited
FormerlyChina Wireless Technologies
TypePublic
SEHK: 2369
IndustryConsumer electronics
Founded
  • 29 April 1993 (1993-04-29) (as Yulong Computer)
  • 2002 (as China Wireless Tech.)
Founder
Guo Deying(as chairman)
Shenzhen University(as shareholder)
Dickman Enterprises(as shareholder)
Headquarters
Shenzhen, China(general office)
Cayman Islands(registered office)
Hong Kong(second office)
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Chen Jiajun(CEO)
Leung Siu Kee(director)
Lam Ting Fung Freeman(director)
Liang Rui(director)
ProductsSmartphones
Revenue HK$1,277 million (2018)
HK$ -409 million (2018)
Total assets HK$3,117 million (2018)
Total equity HK$0414 million (2018)
Owner
Chen Jiajun(17.83%)
Zeal(10.95%)
Guo Deying(09.21%)
Number of employees
 637 (Dec.2018)
SubsidiariesYulong Computer (100%)
Chinese name
Simplified Chinese酷派集团有限公司
Traditional Chinese酷派集團有限公司
Hanyu PinyinKùpài jítuán yǒuxiàn gōngsī
Literal meaningCoolpad Group Limited
Chinese short name
Simplified Chinese酷派
Traditional Chinese酷派
Hanyu PinyinKùpài
Literal meaningCoolpad[nb 1]
Websitewww.coolpad.com
Footnotes / references
in consolidated financial statement[1]

History

Yulong Computer Telecommunication Scientific

Yulong Computer Telecommunication Scientific (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. (Chinese: 宇龙计算机通信科技（深圳）有限公司) is a wholly owned subsidiary and predecessor of Coolpad Group, that was incorporated on 29 April 1993 in Shenzhen, China.[6]:29 It was a Sino-foreign joint venture, which Shenzhen University Culture Technology Services owned 52% stake, and a Hong Kong-incorporated company Dickman Enterprises owned 48%.[6]:65 Guo Deying (Chinese: 郭德英) was the first chairman of Yulong who later became the largest shareholder and chairman of Coolpad Group.[6]:65 Guo was an academic staff of the Shenzhen University, which he resigned in order to lead Yulong in that year.[7] Dickman Enterprises was majority owned by Tsang Dick-man (Chinese: 曾迪民) for 60% shares,[8] which Dickman Enterprises nominated him as the director of Yulong until July 2001.[9]:71

In 1999, a 52% stake of Yulong, that was held by Shenzhen University, was sold to wife and mother-in-law of Guo for CN¥3.81 million .[6]:65 in June 2001, the remaining 48% was also acquired by Guo and his wife from Dickman Enterprises for CN¥1.488 million , making Guo, his wife and his mother-in-law owned 100% stake of Yulong.[6]:65

Yulong at first was a maker of pagers and paging systems. In 2002 the company started to make mobile phones.[7]

Coolpad Group

Coolpad was originally the smartphone brand of Yulong.[4] In 2002, an overseas holding company, China Wireless Technologies Limited was incorporated in the Cayman Islands, for the shares of Yulong; China Wireless Technologie's shares were floated in Hong Kong stock exchange in 2004, which was considered as an international/offshore market for mainland Chinese companies and citizens.[6]

In 2003, China Wireless made the first Chinese CDMA1X-based smartphone, with color display and hand writing input.[7] In the next year, the company made a dual SIM-slot phone.[7] In 2005 the company made a phone with dual SIM-slot which could operated simultaneity in both GSM and CDMA-based mobile networks, which was the first manufacturer in the world to invent it.[7]

In 2012, Coolpad was one of the major brands that Chinese would buy in the domestic market, along with Chinese brands Lenovo, Huawei and ZTE[3] (The big 4)[7] and import brands Samsung, Apple Inc. and Nokia.[3][5]

China Wireless was officially renamed Coolpad Group Limited at the end of 2013.[10] In the eve of termination of the tie-in sales agreement with the majority state-owned mobile phone carrier China Mobile in 2014,[11] the group started to sell their products via online stores.[12]

The group was included in Forbes' Asia's Fab(ulous) 50 Companies once, in 2015 edition.[13] However, the company was suffered from the poor sales of their 3G smartphones in 2015 financial year, which saw a 41% drop in total revenue;[14] thanks to 3% increase in revenue of 4G smartphones and extraordinary profit by selling part of the stake of Coolpad E-commerce, the company avoided a net loss but a net profit of HK$2.3 billion.[14] In December 2014 the company formed Coolpad E-commerce, a joint venture with Qihoo 360 in 55-45 ratio,[14] but in mid-2015, chairman and largest shareholder, Guo, sold part of the shares of Coolpad Group to Qihoo 360's competitor, Jia Yueting of LeEco Group, despite Jia used an overseas holding company Lele Holding, instead of domestic incorporated LeEco (aka Beijing Leshi Holding) to acquire the shares.[14] LeMobile, a subsidiary of LeEco, was also a producer of smartphone.

In December 2016, Coolpad Group sold 80% stake of a subsidiary "Shenzhen Coolpad Mobile Tech" (Chinese: 深圳市酷派移动科技), which runs the smartphone brand "ivvi",[15] to another Chinese technology company SuperD that specialize in virtual reality and augmented reality.[16] Coolpad Group retained 20% stake in Coolpad Mobile.

According to a research by Canalys, neither Coolpad nor sister brand LeMobile (of Jia's Le.com) were the major brands of the domestic smartphone market, in any of 2016,[17] nor in the first quarter of 2017.[18]

Since acquired by Jia Yueting, Yulong/Coolpad Group also sold mobile phone parts to Lesai Mobile HK (Chinese: 樂賽移動香港), associate company of Coolpad Group (they shared the same largest shareholder Leview Mobile HK). The connected transaction was renewed on 16 May 2017; in 2016 the transaction value in the connected deal was HK$192.774 million.[19][20] The shares of Coolpad Group was also suspended from trading since 31 March 2017, as the external auditor requested the company to provide more information, in order to verify the 2016 financial statements of the company.[21]

In October 2017, the company also entered real estate industry by signing a cooperative agreement with a Chinese developer, in order to re-develop its old headquarters in Shenzhen: "Coolpad Information Harbor".[22][23] In November 2017, Jia Yueting resigned as the chairman and a member of the board,[24][25] 4 months after he was resigned from sister company Le.com. Two more non-executive directors also followed Jia to resign,[24][25] including former CEO Liu Jiangfeng, who already resigned as CEO in mid-2017. Jia soon sold all the shares he held in January 2018.[26]

Coolpad then shifted to sell phones in the United States market. However, days after Vice-Chairman and CEO Jiang Chao appearance in the Consumer Electronics Show, he was removed from the board and other positions in January 2019.[27] In April 2019, after a net loss of HK$2,674 million in 2017 financial year,[28] the company had announced that the net loss of 2018 financial year had decreased to HK$409 million, despite the revenue of the company had also decreased.[29]

Ownership
As of 11 January 2018

During 2015 Jia Yueting became the second largest shareholder of Coolpad; he became the largest shareholder in the next year. As of 31 December 2015 Jia owned 17.92% shares. (via "Leview Mobile HK" (Chinese: 樂風移動香港), a subsidiary of BVI-incorporated Lele Holding; Jia owned 100% stake of Lele Holding)[14] In August 2016, Lele Holding purchased an additional 10.97% shares from the founder and former largest shareholder Guo Deying, making Lele Holding the largest shareholder for 28.83% shares.[30] Guo retained 9.22% shares as the second largest shareholder.[30]

However, it was also reported that the aforementioned 11% was owned by Le.com instead (was claimed by Le.com as the owner, via a private equity fund since 2016),[31][32][33][34] which was owned by Zeal Limited since January 2018 according to Coolpad.[35][36] The additional 18% that previously owned by Jia, was sold to Power Sun Ventures in the same month; Power Sun Ventures was owned by Chen Jiajun (Chinese: 陳家俊).

As of 31 December 2015, rest of the shares (about 61.95%) were small investors who were not require to disclose their interests to pursuant to Section 336 of the Securities & Futures Ordinance of Hong Kong. Despite all of the member of the board directors of Coolpad Group also owned small stakes that were required to disclose their interests to pursuant to another section of the ordinance: Jiang Chao (0.59%), Li Bin (1.58%), Li Wang (0.59%), as well as independent directors Chan King Chung (0.01%), Huang Dazhan (0.01%) and Xie Weixin (0.01%).[14]

Controversies

On 17 December 2014, Palo Alto Networks announced it had found a backdoor on many Coolpad handsets, and dubbed it "CoolReaper".[37]

Footnotes
  1. The Chinese word sound like "Coolpad", while 酷 itself was the translation of "cool"; 派 itself means "school of thought".

References
  1. 2018 Annual Report (PDF) (Report). Coolpad Group. 17 April 2019. Retrieved 29 May 2019 – via Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited website.
  2. Sascha Segan (28 August 2012). "Coolpad: We Can Build Better Budget Phones". Pcmag.com. Ziff Davis. Retrieved 30 August 2012.
  3. Nusca, Andrew (23 August 2012). "The one country Apple can't crack: China". zdnet.com. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 30 August 2012.
  4. Luk, Lorraine; Osawa, Juro (28 January 2014). "In China, the Coolpad Is Hotter Than Apple's iPhone". The Wall Street Journal. News Corp. In the third quarter of last year, Coolpad, the smartphone brand of China's Yulong Computer Telecommunication Scientific (Shenzhen) Co., was the sixth-biggest smartphone vendor by units sold world-wide
  5. Shen, Jingting (25 August 2012). "Apple losing smartphone battle to Samsung". China Daily. State Council Information Office. Archived from the original on 26 August 2012. Retrieved 30 August 2012.
  6. "Prospectuses" (table of PDF download links). China Wireless Technologies. 30 November 2004. Retrieved 8 May 2017 – via Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing.
  7. EMBA (pseudonym) (23 June 2016). 他曾是手机四大家族之一，与华为齐名，如今出售股权、套现了. Sina.com.cn (blog) (in Chinese). Retrieved 12 May 2017.
  8. 1992 Annual Return of Dickman Enterprises to Hong Kong Companies Registry, PDF purchased on 11 May 2017
  9. "prospectus" (PDF) (in Chinese). Coolpad Group. 27 November 2004. Retrieved 11 May 2017.
  10. "China Wireless officially changes its name to Coolpad Group Limited" (PDF) (Press release). Coolpad Group. Strategic Financial Relations Limited. 29 November 2013. Retrieved 12 May 2017.
  11. "China Mobile Taking Steps to Cut Smartphone Subsidies". Bloomberg News. 26 September 2014. Retrieved 12 May 2017.
  12. "Coolpad Targets Online Phone Sales to Pass Lenovo". Bloomberg News. 3 April 2014. Retrieved 6 April 2014.
  13. "Coolpad Group". Forbes. 15 August 2016. Retrieved 12 May 2017.
  14. "2015 Annual Report" (PDF). Coolpad Group. 25 April 2016. Retrieved 21 January 2017 – via Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing.
  15. Joe (3 February 2015). "Coolpad Ivvi K1 Mini is now the world's thinnest smartphone with a 4.7mm body". GizmoChina. Retrieved 12 May 2017.
  16. "DISCLOSEABLE TRANSACTION DISPOSAL OF 80% EQUITY INTEREST IN COOLPAD MOBILE" (PDF) (Press release). Coolpad Group. 2 December 2016. Retrieved 29 December 2016 – via Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing.
  17. "Media alert: China smartphone market hits its highest shipment total ever". Canalys. 9 February 2017. Retrieved 13 May 2017.
  18. "Media alert: Huawei regains smartphone lead in China as top three take a 50% share". Canalys. 25 April 2017. Retrieved 13 May 2017.
  19. "COOLPAD GROUP Subsidiary, Lesai Mobile Renew Component Procurement Framework Contract". AAStocks Financial News. Retrieved 28 May 2017.
  20. "RENEWAL OF CONTINUING CONNECTED TRANSACTIONS KEY COMPONENT PROCUREMENT FRAMEWORK CONTRACT" (PDF) (Press release). Coolpad Group. 16 May 2017. Retrieved 28 May 2017 – via Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited website.
  21. Perez, Bien (31 March 2017). "LeEco-owned Coolpad halts trading of shares in Hong Kong". South China Morning Post. Hong Kong. Retrieved 29 May 2019.
  22. 酷派要靠房地产翻身？与星华安合作开发信息港项目 (in Chinese). Tencent. 18 October 2017. Retrieved 25 November 2017.
  23. "Announcement on the cooperative development of the first, second and third phases of urban renovation project of Coolpad Information Harbor by the group" (PDF) (Press release). Coolpad Group. 17 October 2017. Retrieved 25 November 2017 – via Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing.
  24. 酷派集团：贾跃亭辞任公司董事会主席等职 (in Chinese). Sohu. 20 November 2017. Retrieved 25 November 2017.
  25. "(1) Resignation of directors (2) Change of duties of directors and (3) Appointment of directors" (PDF) (Press release). Coolpad Group. 17 November 2017. Retrieved 25 November 2017 – via Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing.
  26. 贾跃亭清仓酷派股权. 北京青年报 (in Chinese). 12 January 2018. Retrieved 19 January 2018 – via XinhuaNet.
  27. Li Tao (14 January 2019). "Loss-making Chinese smartphone maker Coolpad removes CEO days after CES trade show". South China Morning Post. Hong Kong: South China Morning Post Publishers (Alibaba Group). Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  28. "2017 Annual Report" (PDF). Coolpad Group. 10 December 2018. Retrieved 28 January 2019 – via Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited website.
  29. 酷派(02369-HK)去年虧損收窄至4億不派息. finet.hk (in Chinese). Hong Kong. 31 March 2019. Retrieved 29 May 2019.
  30. "COMPLETION OF DISPOSAL OF SHARES BY THE former SINGLE LARGEST SHAREHOLDER" (PDF) (Press release). Coolpad Group. 5 August 2016. Retrieved 29 December 2016 – via Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing.
  31. "Archived copy" 关于发起设立投资并购基金的进展公告 (PDF) (Press release) (in Chinese). Leshi Internet Information and Technology. 19 August 2016. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 September 2016. Retrieved 25 April 2018 – via Shenzhen Stock Exchange.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  32. "2016 Nián niándù bàogào (xiūdìng gǎo èr)" 2016年年度报告（修订稿二） [2016 Annual Report (revision 2)] (PDF) (in Chinese). Leshi Internet Information and Technology. 14 July 2017. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 September 2017. Retrieved 22 April 2018 – via Shenzhen Stock Exchange website.
  33. "Guān yú shēn zhèn zhèng quàn jiāo yì suǒ duì běn gōng sī wèn xún hán de huí fù" 关于深圳证券交易所对本公司问询函的回复 (PDF) (Press release) (in Chinese). Beijing: Leshi Internet Information and Technology. 3 April 2018. Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 April 2018. Retrieved 25 April 2018 – via Shenzhen Stock Exchange website.
  34. "Lèshì wǎng: Duì kù pài jì tí jiǎn zhí zhǔn bèi yuē 4.68 yì yuán" 乐视网：对酷派计提减值准备约4.68亿元. 新浪科技 (in Chinese). Sina. 4 April 2018. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
  35. "Inside Information" (PDF) (Press release). Coolpad Group. 11 January 2018. Retrieved 25 April 2018 – via Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited website.
  36. "Jiǎ yuètíng qīng kōng kù pài gǔ fèn lè shì wǎng hǎn huà:"Mò shōu dào qián"" 贾跃亭清空酷派股份 乐视网喊话：＂没收到钱＂. 新浪财经 (in Chinese). Sina. 11 January 2018. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
  37. Xiao, Claud; Olson, Ryan (17 December 2014). "CoolReaper Revealed: A Backdoor in Coolpad Android Devices". Palo Alto Networks. Retrieved 17 December 2014.
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