May 27 was the fifteenth birthday of the SME board. After its establishment and growth in the past 15 years, the SME Board has gradually become an important part of China's multi-tiered capital market, an important engine for SME development and a gathering place for leading companies in sub-sectors.
On May 17, 2004, upon the approval of the State Council, the CSRC approved the establishment of the SME Board on SZSE. On May 27, 2004, the SME Board was officially launched. On June 25, 2004, the first batch of eight companies, including Zhejiang NHU, was successfully listed on the SME Board. Since then, SMEs have entered the fast lane of the capital market, continuing to become better and stronger. As of May 27, 2019, the 933 listed companies on the SME Board had a total IPO financing of CNY612.7 billion, and a total refinancing of CNY1.6 trillion, indicating the increasingly enhanced direct financing function. More than 400 M&A restructurings were implemented, with a transaction amount exceeding CNY800 billion, and the supporting financing exceeding CNY200 billion, which effectively promoted the optimization of resources allocation and industrial transformation and upgrading. In the past five years, the CAGR of research and development expenditures of SME Board companies was 25.3%, thus further stimulating the technological innovation momentum. In the past 15 years, the performance of SME Board companies achieved double-digit compound growth, thus having cultivated a batch of champions in sub-sectors. A number of leading enterprises have emerged, including Hikvision, Suning Commerce, BYD, etc., which have made good examples for industrial development, and transformation and upgrading.
After its establishment, the SME Board has continued to reform and innovate in the construction of institutional rules such as share offering, listing, information disclosure, investor protection and delisting, having accumulated valuable experience for the construction of the multi-tiered capital market and created favorable conditions for the launch of ChiNext. Since its inception, the SME Board has been striving to build a board of integrity, taking the lead in establishing an integrity archive system and taking integrity building as the top priority of its construction. If there are doubts, there will be responses; if there are violations, there will be investigations and treatment. SZSE has always treated information disclosure as the center, improved the rules system, done a good job in first-line supervision, urged listed companies to continuously improve the sense of standard operation and the quality of information disclosure, so as to facilitate development with standardization and improve the quality of listed companies. After fifteen years of development, the SME Board has initially established an institutional system that is compatible with SME characteristics, laying a solid foundation for its healthy and stable development.
For the SME Board, it was about hard work and growth in the past fifteen years. Adhering to the concept of "supervision, innovation, cultivation, and service", the SME Board has been determined to make progress and live up to its mission, so as to make positive contributions to promoting China's multi-tiered capital market construction, serving the real economy and practicing national strategies. In the past fifteen years, a large number of outstanding enterprises have become an important force in optimizing the economic structure, transforming the momentum of economic growth, and promoting the construction of China's modern economic system. Faced with the increasingly complex market environment, the SME Board has been remaining true to its original aspiration and working hard. It has also been continuously summing up experience, improving its basic systems which are compatible with enterprise development, and unswervingly promoting its growth and standardizing its development.
In line with the laws of the times, the SME Board started from scratch and has become bigger. The development of the SME Board is the result of the efforts, care, and hope from all parties in the capital market. Facing the future, SZSE will continue to focus on the standardized development of listed companies, improve the quality of listed companies, and create a better future and step into the next level with all builders and participants.
At the age of fifteen, the young SME Board is heading ahead at full speed.
