On the night of October 10, 2025, Digital China Group Co.,Ltd. (000034.SZ) issued an announcement disclosing the first-instance court verdict in the divorce case of the company's controlling shareholder and actual controller Guo Wei: "On September 30, 2025, the Haidian District People's Court of Beijing rendered a judgment ordering the divorce of Guo Wei and Guo Zhengli." However, the first-instance judgment did not specify a property division plan, stating only that it would "continue the trial and render another judgment."
Digital China Group simultaneously disclosed in the announcement that some of the company shares held by Guo Wei have been judicially frozen by the Haidian District People's Court of Beijing. According to Digital China Group's 2025 interim report, as of June 30, the number of shares under Guo Wei's name that were judicially frozen totaled 77,388,902 shares.
This figure represents half of Guo Wei's total personal shareholding and approximately 10.75% of Digital China Group's total share capital.
"Since the above litigation judgment is a first-instance preliminary judgment, the final litigation outcome cannot be predicted at present, and there is uncertainty as to whether the company's actual control will change," Digital China Group emphasized in its announcement regarding potential changes in company control.
This announcement about the founder's "family affairs" coincidentally appears at a special juncture in the company's operations.
Just over a month ago, Digital China Group delivered its interim results: operating revenue of 71.59 billion yuan, up 14.4% year-on-year, which appeared positive. However, net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was only 426 million yuan, down 16.3% year-on-year.
Regarding the reason for increased revenue but decreased profit, the company's explanation in its financial report and earnings briefing was consistent: it is increasing investment in research and development and other areas to seize artificial intelligence opportunities.
But at this critical juncture, a major question about the company's actual control hangs overhead. How will this affect Digital China Group's transformation that requires sustained investment and has already put pressure on profits?
**The Billions-Worth "Divorce Settlement"**
Guo Wei's "divorce settlement" is quite complex.
First to calculate is the scale of this equity stake awaiting division. Based on Digital China Group's closing price of 43.86 yuan per share on October 10, the 77,388,902 frozen shares under Guo Wei's name correspond to a market value of approximately 3.4 billion yuan.
This 3.4 billion yuan equity stake represents about 10.75% of Digital China Group's total share capital.
Looking at Digital China Group's 2025 interim report shareholder register, as of June 30, the company's new second-largest shareholder, China New Era Limited, held only 4.65% of shares.
This means that if Guo Wei's frozen shares are ultimately fully divided to his ex-wife Guo Zhengli, she could potentially become Digital China Group's single second-largest shareholder with over 10% shareholding, more than double the current second-largest shareholder's holdings.
This adds a huge variable to the company's future decision-making mechanism.
In the first half of 2025, Digital China Group's operating revenue reached 71.59 billion yuan, up 14.4% year-on-year, setting a historical high for the same period. However, supporting this massive revenue is still the company's traditional business.
Digital China Group's business is mainly divided into three segments: IT distribution and value-added services, proprietary brand products, and digital cloud services and software. Among these, IT distribution and value-added services contributed 68.39 billion yuan in revenue in the first half, accounting for 95.5% of total revenue.
Distribution business essentially means acting as an intermediary, purchasing products from upstream technology brands and selling them to downstream customers.
This is a business that relies on scale and channels for profit, characterized by huge turnover but thin margins. The interim report shows that Digital China Group's IT distribution business had a gross margin of only 2.7%, which declined compared to the same period last year.
The 71.59 billion yuan in operating revenue ultimately yielded only 426 million yuan in net profit attributable to shareholders, down 16.3% year-on-year.
The company's explanation in its financial report was that to promote its "AI-driven digital cloud integration" strategy, it increased R&D investment in the first half.
"We will not overly concern ourselves with short-term returns. We have a clear understanding of the transformations AI will bring and will continue to increase investment in Shenzhou Wenxue and in AI computing infrastructure investment and cooperation," emphasized Wang Bingfeng, Co-Chairman and CEO of Digital China Group at the earnings briefing.
However, according to its interim report, Digital China Group's R&D expenditure increased 10.6% year-on-year in the first half of 2025, but the specific amount was only 210 million yuan.
This means that besides the company's proactive strategic investments, profit decline had other causes.
The interim report shows that Digital China Group's "credit impairment losses" increased from approximately 17.61 million yuan in the same period last year to 108 million yuan this year, an increase of 513.7%, mainly due to increased bad debt provisions for accounts receivable. Meanwhile, due to reduced government subsidies and other reasons, Digital China Group's "other income" also dropped significantly from approximately 62.48 million yuan in the same period last year to about 11.37 million yuan.
On one hand, traditional business profits are meager; on the other hand, new businesses require substantial upfront investment. This pressure is also directly reflected in the company's cash flow.
As of June 30, Digital China Group had 5.346 billion yuan in monetary funds on its books, while short-term borrowings due within one year totaled 10.219 billion yuan.
Of course, for distribution businesses that require substantial capital turnover, high debt and significant guarantees are common phenomena. According to subsequent company announcements, as of September 25, the total external guarantee amount of Digital China Group and its controlling subsidiaries reached 68.326 billion yuan.
With core business profits thin, new business high investment consuming substantial resources, and cash flow already tight—Guo Wei's equity division worth approximately 3.4 billion yuan that could change the company's power structure occurs at such a juncture.
**"Handover" Moment?**
Twenty-five years ago, to resolve conflicts between two core internal businesses, Liu Chuanzhi, then Chairman of Lenovo Group's Board of Directors, completely spun off the agent distribution and system integration businesses from the Lenovo system, establishing a completely new, independent company platform.
He handed this platform to Guo Wei, who was then in his thirties. It can be said that the birth of Digital China Group itself was the result of a "handover."
Twenty-five years later, a similar scene seems to be unfolding, except this time, the protagonist has become Guo Wei himself.
Just months before the first-instance judgment in Guo Wei's divorce case was announced, he had already made a separation in the role relationship between himself and the company.
According to Digital China Group's announcement on June 28, the company's legal representative has been changed from Guo Wei to Co-Chairman and CEO Wang Bingfeng.
Personnel adjustments are also proceeding simultaneously. On August 28, Vice President Lu Jing, who was responsible for the company's core information innovation business, announced his resignation to become a business consultant.
A series of changes have pushed Wang Bingfeng and his management team to the forefront, taking over a Digital China Group that is at its most critical transformation juncture in 25 years.
This team's mission is very clear.
"We believe that future AI technology is very likely to make enterprises redo all their applications, which is also a very big opportunity for us," explained Wang Bingfeng, Co-Chairman and CEO of Digital China Group, regarding the AI opportunities the company sees at the interim results briefing held on September 2.
It's worth noting that Guo Wei, as company chairman, did not attend this important earnings briefing. The management attending the meeting included Co-Chairman and CEO Wang Bingfeng, President Chen Zhenkun, CFO Chen Ping, and AI Research and Development Center General Manager Hou Hao.
Wang Bingfeng's statement also addressed external questions about Digital China Group's "revenue growth without profit growth": to seize this opportunity to "redo all applications," sacrificing current profits is an inevitable choice.
The specific path for this choice is Digital China Group's "AI-driven digital cloud integration" strategy.
To execute this strategy, Digital China Group has built its own product matrix.
One is the enterprise-level Agent middleware called "Shenzhou Wenxue." According to Hou Hao, General Manager of the company's AI Research and Development Center, its positioning is "to provide AI assistants for enterprise employees, similar to enterprise-level Copilot."
The interim report provided specific cases of "Shenzhou Wenxue" implementation: it helped a large manufacturing enterprise improve equipment warranty accuracy from 52% to 94% and reduce maintenance cycles from an average of 35 days to half a day; it helped a government department handle public inquiries, serving over 36,000 people in the first month online and saving nearly 1,100 hours of manual work; it was used by a state-owned enterprise to compile bidding documents, compressing work that originally took one to two weeks into two to three days.
Another core product is the proprietary brand AI server called "Shenzhou Kuntai," including "Wenxue Integrated Machine" and "Zhihui Magic Cube," mainly meeting enterprises' needs for private deployment of AI models in their own data centers.
These products and services brought Digital China Group 13.332 billion yuan in AI-related business revenue in the first half of 2025, up 56% year-on-year. Among this, AI software and services revenue doubled, and third-party AI computing service revenue grew 62%.
However, Wang Bingfeng himself is clear that this business is not easy.
At the earnings briefing, he used a "tractor" example to illustrate the common challenges facing AI commercialization.
He said that current generative artificial intelligence is like when tractors first appeared—although they represented advanced productivity tools, the technology itself needs time to mature. More importantly, the labor market and production organization forms need to change before this new tool can be truly utilized effectively.
He frankly admitted that the market is still in a phase of "active embrace, but in trial and verification stages." Most AI revenue flows to enterprises providing infrastructure, while companies doing software and application platforms are still in early development stages.
Digital China Group's response method is called a "combination punch" by Wang Bingfeng—not just selling software or hardware, but providing integrated capabilities in four aspects: hardware, software, consulting services, and ecosystem cooperation, with the core being "helping customers quickly find scenarios with positive returns."
This "AI-driven digital cloud integration" strategy was set by Guo Wei. Now, it is being refined into more specific action plans in the hands of Wang Bingfeng and the management team.
According to company management statements, Digital China Group will continue to increase resource investment in proprietary AI servers, financial and medical industry applications, supply chain diversified cooperation, and overseas mergers and acquisitions.
Amid the turmoil, the founder's role seems to be changing, while the strategy he set requires Digital China Group's resource investment to continue accelerating in the future.
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