China Real Estate Information Corporation (CRIC – a subsidiary of E-House) released estimated 1H18 sales data for the country’s top 200 property developers (LINK). Xinyuan China is shown at #77 with estimated sales of 13.34Bn RMB year-to-date which implies 7.30Bn RMB in 2Q18.
CRIC does not have access to any official company records and compiles its estimates from 3rd party sources like municipal data. “Sales” estimated by CRIC are never going to equal “contract sales” reported under US GAAP financial statements and “contract sales” are also different from “revenues” reported by Xinyuan under ASC 606. Some of the sales in the CRIC data do not end up being closed and some are recognized in later periods (Xinyuan does not book a “contract sale” until it has received 30% of the price in cash). Despite these limitations, CRIC data has usually been a good indication of the trend in Xinyuan results in the past.
This week’s CRIC estimate is far above the guidance Xinyuan provided in May for 2Q contract sales of “around 530 million” which would be equivalent to about 3.3Bn RMB.
Koneko Research 
I wonder if some of the sales CRIC attributes to XIN are sales by their equity investees. XIN acquired some significant interests in development companies in 2017, and they may not count them in their contract sales figures.
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Good point. XIN disclosure about those investments has been very limited.
I believe XIN’s financial report will include contract sales, revenues, and expenses from all projects where it has a controlling interest, but a portion of the earnings will be subtracted as “Minority Interest” where there is another investor.
Where XIN does not have a controlling interest it will only report equity earnings. I don’t know how CRIC will treat those projects – maybe included or maybe excluded. In the 20-F it appears that the two significant equity investee companies control the projects in Qingdao and Chengdu. The 1Q18 press release shows both of these with pre-sales launch date “to be determined” so I assume nothing in 2Q18.
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Makes sense. The big equity method investments in the 20-F are the Qindao project and the Wuhu Penghua Tenth Investment Center project. I do not see these in their list of projects under planning in the latest earnings release, so I assume that they are not in there.
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