Xingyu Shares is making headlines again. It might be the company with the longest streak of trending topics in 2026.

The company has topped the Tonghuashun public sentiment list for several consecutive days.

This time, it's not about car lights or finding a 'scapegoat,' but a set of numbers that have left the financial community speechless.

The 2024 annual report shows that the total remuneration paid for labor outsourcing reached a staggering 2,435,263,884,900 yuan. That's 2.44 trillion yuan. Meanwhile, the company's total annual revenue for the year was 13.25 billion yuan.

The outsourcing cost is 184 times the revenue.

Can a company that makes car lights really spend enough on outsourcing in a year to rack up debt nearly two and a half times that of Evergrande?

How outrageous is this figure?

According to publicly disclosed information, Xingyu Shares' total operating costs for 2024 were approximately 10.6 billion yuan. In other words, if the 2.44 trillion figure were true, all other costs combined would account for less than 0.5% of the outsourcing costs.

Now, let's compare it to the industry. In 2025, the total revenue of the automotive parts manufacturing industry was about 1.59 trillion yuan. Xingyu's 'outsourcing fees' alone would exceed the entire industry's annual revenue by more than 800 billion yuan.

Obviously, this is impossible.

So, what should the actual figure be? The annual report also discloses that the total labor hours for outsourcing that year were 8,638,200 hours. Using the median hourly wage range of 25 to 40 yuan in the automotive parts industry for outsourced labor, a reasonable outsourcing cost would be approximately between 220 million and 350 million yuan.

In fact, Xingyu Shares' total outsourcing remuneration for 2025 was 302 million yuan, with an hourly wage for outsourced labor of 27.78 yuan/hour.

So, the correct figure is most likely 244 million yuan. The number in the right-hand table was mistakenly written as 'ten thousand yuan' instead of 'yuan,' resulting in a difference of ten thousand times.

One 'ten thousand' turned into over 40 trillion yuan. This isn't just a clerical error; it's a fantastical figure on an astronomical scale.

A Response, But Not a Complete One

On September 9, the company did issue an announcement. However, it addressed a different issue: in the 2025 annual report, the age of Vice Chairman and Deputy General Manager Zhou Yuheng was listed as 58 years old, while he was actually born in December 1985, making his real age around 40.

The company admitted this was a 'clerical error,' emphasizing that it did not involve financial data and 'would not have a material impact on the authenticity, accuracy, and completeness of the periodic report.'

Data Source: Company Announcement

On the same day, the Shanghai Stock Exchange issued a regulatory letter to Xingyu Shares, clarifying regulatory requirements regarding the company's related matters.

However, as of the publication of this article, Xingyu Shares has not yet issued a specific correction announcement regarding the core data error of the 2.44 trillion outsourcing fee.

The company admitted to an error that 'did not involve financial data' but remained curiously silent on the number that had launched the annual report data into outer space.

Recent Public Sentiment: One Issue After Another

Looking back just over a month, public sentiment surrounding Xingyu Shares has never really subsided.

On August 25, the Changzhou Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau announced that Xingyu Shares had recruited 440 college graduates from the class of 2026 and terminated labor contracts with 107 of them. The process was criticized for being 'simplistic, blunt, and lacking sufficient and effective communication,' leading to the suspension of the Human Resources Director.

The core issue was that hundreds of graduates, including masters and doctoral students, were asked to choose between 'working on the factory floor' and 'voluntary resignation' just one month after joining the company.

On August 27, the company issued an apology letter, promising to provide a three-month job-seeking subsidy and, if still unemployed by the end of November, an additional six months' salary compensation.

On September 2, Chairwoman Zhou Xiaoping publicly apologized at an earnings briefing. Shortly after, the chairwoman's personal resume was dug up by netizens, but due to privacy concerns, it will not be disclosed in this article.

On September 7, the company issued its third apology announcement, announcing a one-year salary cut for General Manager Zhou Xiaoping, the dismissal (instead of suspension) of Human Resources Director Yu Zhiming, a six-month salary cut for Deputy General Manager Li Shujun, and the demotion and transfer of Human Resources Department Head Li Mei.

However, subsequent media investigations revealed that the position of 'Human Resources Director' mentioned in the announcement was difficult to pinpoint in Xingyu Shares' publicly disclosed information. This role was absent from the list of executives in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange prospectus, and the company's official website only listed positions at the 'department head' level, not 'director.'

In other words, the person held accountable might have been a 'temporary' scapegoat.

Meanwhile, the age mix-up in the annual report was exposed.

In the 2025 annual report disclosed in March 2026, Chairwoman and General Manager Zhou Xiaoping was listed as 65 years old, while Vice Chairman and Deputy General Manager Zhou Yuheng was listed as 58.

Based on the annual report data, the age difference between mother and son was only seven years. In reality, Zhou Xiaoping was born in March 1961, and Zhou Yuheng in December 1985, making the actual age difference about 24 years and nine months.

Even more embarrassingly, in Xingyu Shares' previous annual report, Zhou Yuheng's age was listed as 40, only to become 58 a year later. The company's previous board transition announcements and the 2019 appointment of Zhou Yuheng as Deputy General Manager had clearly disclosed the mother-son relationship between Zhou Xiaoping and Zhou Yuheng, with Zhou Xiaoping recusing herself from related votes at the time.

An investor made a memorable comment on social media: 'I invested in a leading car light company, not a joke writer.'

The Real Issue Goes Beyond a Single Error

Let's take a look at Xingyu Shares' fundamental business performance, which is actually not bad.

Data Source: Company Annual Report and First Quarter Report

With a three-year compound annual growth rate of 22.75% in revenue and 19.93% in net profit, Xingyu Shares reported a net cash flow from operating activities of 2.437 billion yuan in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 168%.""From the data, Xingyu Shares remains a robust and profitable leader in the car light industry.

But precisely because of this, the problems are even more serious.

In the first quarter of 2026, the automotive parts industry's overall net profit attributable to shareholders decreased by 7.63% year-on-year.

A research report by Guohai Securities pointed out that traditional parts companies face rigid costs, with research and development, sales, and management expenses difficult to reduce in line with revenue. When revenue growth slows, expense ratios rise passively, significantly weakening profit elasticity.

Against the backdrop of industry pressure, the trust cost for investors is already high. The company's repeated 'mistakes' in information disclosure are like pouring sand into the gap of trust.

More notably, these errors share a common feature: they should have been intercepted at multiple stages.

The 2.44 trillion outsourcing fee went through financial department preparation, internal audit review, external audit verification, and board deliberation without a single red flag being raised along the entire risk control chain.

The absurdity of a mother-son age difference of only seven years, which any individual could spot, somehow passed through all annual report review processes unchecked. This isn't a mistake by a single person; it's a simultaneous failure of the entire internal control pipeline.

A media professional made a comparison: management salaries in the annual report were precise to two decimal places, yet executive ages could be off by 18 years. Precision where it doesn't matter, and neglect where it does.

The IPO Window in Hong Kong Can't Afford This Kind of Wear and Tear

Xingyu Shares submitted its second application for a Hong Kong Stock Exchange listing on July 29 this year and received the China Securities Regulatory Commission's overseas listing registration notice on August 14, planning to issue no more than approximately 44.8 million H shares.

However, the registration is only valid for one year, meaning the company must complete the H share issuance by August 15, 2027, at the latest.

The Hong Kong Stock Exchange has even stricter requirements than the A-share market regarding information disclosure quality and ESG compliance.

A company that has already made headlines in mainland China due to labor disputes and subsequent annual report errors is likely to face even stricter scrutiny during the Hong Kong Stock Exchange's review process.

Analysts have already pointed out that ESG inquiries during the company's Hong Kong IPO review are likely to increase, potentially lengthening the listing timeline.

The more direct impact comes from clients. Xingyu Shares' core clients include overseas automakers like Volkswagen, whose supply chain compliance review mechanisms are highly mature.

Labor disputes, once brought to clients' attention, could trigger supplier compliance investigations. For a company with a growing proportion of overseas revenue, this is no small matter.

The Most Expensive Cost for Listed Companies: Repeated Explanations

The case of Xingyu Shares offers at least three insights for listed companies.

First, annual reports are not promotional brochures but legal documents that must withstand item-by-item verification. A single unit error can shift numbers across several orders of magnitude, affecting not just readability but also investors' judgment of the entire financial reporting system.

Second, internal controls cannot exist solely in audit reports. Finance, human resources, procurement, legal, and board secretary departments should all establish cross-review mechanisms. Abnormal figures must be automatically flagged by the system, and someone must be willing to stop and ask questions.

Third, public sentiment management cannot rely solely on post-hoc remedies. Employee relations, supplier management, major recruitment plans, and overseas listing arrangements are all governance matters requiring long-term communication.

The more a company is expanding or raising funds, the more it needs to communicate information upfront, assign responsibility clearly, and complete corrections thoroughly.

For Xingyu Shares, the priority is not to quickly remove '2.44 trillion yuan' from the trending topics but to issue a formal, verifiable explanation clarifying the numerical error. At the same time, it must address outsourcing labor, campus recruitment decisions, and internal controls in a unified governance response.

Listed companies can experience operational fluctuations and make management mistakes, but the market cannot be left guessing indefinitely.

Every explanation consumes trust, and once trust is repeatedly eroded, the cost of repair is often higher than 244 million yuan.

The real concern is not a specific error itself but whether repeated errors indicate deeper management weaknesses.

A one-time clerical error can be attributed to carelessness, but when the same company makes headlines multiple times within a month for different issues, it cannot be dismissed as mere 'oversight.'

Trust takes a decade to build and collapses with a single 'ten thousand.'

The author also calls on other listed companies and public enterprises not to just watch from the sidelines but to urgently self-examine their annual reports, rating reports, prospectuses, and other publicly disclosed documents.

Having worked in the primary market for years, the author has seen too many such clerical errors, especially in bond prospectuses, which are often updated annually using old templates. When such errors are exposed during public sentiment, the resulting trending topics may last even longer than Xingyu Shares' current situation.