On the evening of August 28, Offcn Education Technology Co.,Ltd. released its 2025 interim report. The financial statements showed that in the first half of this year, Offcn Education achieved revenue of 1.155 billion yuan, a year-on-year decline of 20.21%, and net profit attributable to shareholders of 62 million yuan, down 46.69% year-on-year.
While facing pressure on performance, Offcn Education is also embroiled in hundreds of disputes. According to an announcement released by Offcn Education on July 16, from January 25 this year to the disclosure date, the company and its holding subsidiaries have accumulated 700 new litigation and arbitration cases, with a total amount involved of nearly 54 million yuan.
It is understood that among these 700 disputes, individual refund-related disputes account for as high as 82%. This phenomenon reflects the historical issues left by Offcn Education's agreement classes in its early years, which have not been thoroughly resolved to this day.
It is reported that with its high-priced agreement classes featuring the "no pass, full refund" model, Offcn Education rapidly expanded in the civil service examination training sector, with its market value once soaring to nearly 270 billion yuan, securing its position as the industry leader.
However, as problems such as difficulty in refunding agreement classes gradually emerged, Offcn Education's performance has been under continuous pressure. Now, the company's market value has shrunk significantly. As of the close on September 2, the company's market value was only 18.317 billion yuan.
It is worth noting that in 2021, Offcn Education's leader Li Yongxin and his mother Lu Zhongfang topped the education sector in the "Hurun Global Rich List" with a wealth of 142 billion yuan.
However, in the recently released "2025 New Fortune Magazine 500 Wealth Creation List," Li Yongxin and Lu Zhongfang's wealth has shrunk by more than 100 billion yuan from its peak, falling to 11.5 billion yuan.
**Revenue and Net Profit Both Decline, Performance Under Continuous Pressure**
A review shows that in recent years, Offcn Education's performance has been under continuous pressure.
Data shows that from 2021 to 2024, the company's revenue was 6.912 billion yuan, 4.825 billion yuan, 3.086 billion yuan, and 2.627 billion yuan respectively, representing year-on-year decreases of 38.3%, 30.19%, 36.03%, and 14.89% respectively.
During the same period, Offcn Education recorded net profits attributable to shareholders of -2.37 billion yuan, -1.102 billion yuan, -209 million yuan, and 184 million yuan respectively. Except for last year's profitability, the company was mired in losses for the other three years.
According to the company's latest disclosed 2025 interim report, during the reporting period, Offcn Education achieved revenue of 1.155 billion yuan, down 20.21% year-on-year, and net profit attributable to shareholders of 62 million yuan, down 46.69% year-on-year.
Looking at quarterly performance, in the first and second quarters of this year, Offcn Education achieved revenue of 575 million yuan and 580 million yuan respectively, both showing slight sequential increases but declining 24.69% and 15.22% year-on-year respectively.
Compared to the single-quarter revenue record high of 4.631 billion yuan in Q3 2020, Offcn Education's Q1 and Q2 revenue this year has declined by nearly 90%.
It is understood that the decline in Offcn Education's performance mainly stems from the reduction in revenue from its main business (education and training). In the first half of the year, the company's education and training business recorded revenue of 1.126 billion yuan, down 20.93% year-on-year.
By product category, the company's various sub-businesses, including civil service recruitment training, public institution recruitment training, comprehensive training, and teacher recruitment and teacher qualification training, all experienced varying degrees of revenue shrinkage.
Meanwhile, the "blood-making ability" of the company's core business also faces challenges. In the first half of the year, Offcn Education's net cash flow from operating activities was 273 million yuan, plummeting 39.37% year-on-year.
It is noteworthy that in the first half of this year, Offcn Education's regular-priced course training reached 450,000 person-times, an increase of 18.42% compared to 380,000 person-times in the same period last year.
The aforementioned data means that Offcn Education's training enrollment scale has stabilized and warmed up, with growth momentum actively recovering. The company's adjustments to its business model in recent years (completely canceling high-fee, high-refund courses, reducing the proportion of agreement classes, and increasing the proportion of actual payment classes) may have shown results.
In the first half of this year, Offcn Education's gross profit margin reached 59.61%, an increase of nearly 3 percentage points compared to the same period last year. However, this growth was mainly achieved through "cost-cutting" measures such as significantly reducing personnel costs (management expenses down 33.56% year-on-year) and compressing R&D investment (R&D expenses down 37.93% year-on-year), which is difficult to sustain and may damage the foundation of its long-term development.
As of the end of the first half of the year, Offcn Education's asset-liability ratio was as high as 87.17%. This figure has declined from 88.87%, 89.43%, and 89.98% in the same periods of 2022 to 2024, showing a slight improvement trend.
However, compared to the level of 70.52% in the same period of 2021, it is still significantly high. This means that while Offcn Education's current debt pressure and financial risks have been slightly alleviated, it still bears considerable operational burden.
Offcn Education stated in its financial report that management believes the company's operations are normal and can use cash flows generated from operating activities as the main source of funds to maintain the company's continued operations.
In addition, company shareholders Li Yongxin and Lu Zhongfang have agreed to provide all necessary financial support for overdue payables in the foreseeable future to maintain the company's continued operations, while the company is also intensifying relevant operational strategic transformation measures.
**After "Wild Growth," Falling into Operational Difficulties**
It is reported that during Offcn Education's early expansion period, agreement class income accounted for 70% to 90% of total revenue. These high-priced agreement classes typically promised "large percentage refunds if exams are not passed." With this selling point, Offcn Education attracted a large number of candidates to pay for enrollment.
Due to significantly higher tuition fees than ordinary regular-priced courses, agreement classes did bring considerable profits and ample cash flow to Offcn Education in the early stages. At its peak in 2020, Offcn Education achieved annual revenue of 11.202 billion yuan and net profit attributable to shareholders of 2.304 billion yuan.
Although the popularity of civil service and public institution examinations has continued to heat up year after year, the total number of admissions each year has not increased significantly. Facing the refund demands of a large number of unsuccessful candidates each year, the risks hidden behind the high-priced agreement classes that Offcn Education vigorously developed in its early years gradually emerged.
After 2020, problems related to Offcn Education's agreement classes such as "difficult and slow refunds" continued to be exposed, and large-scale refund pressure continued to accumulate.
According to Offcn Education's announcement "Reply to the Inquiry Letter on the Company's 2021 Annual Report," from 2019 to 2021, Offcn Education's refund amounts were 7.423 billion yuan, 10.009 billion yuan, and 15.302 billion yuan respectively, with refund rates of 44.14%, 46.54%, and 68.46% respectively.
After 2018, Offcn Education also began to venture into real estate investment and purchased land in Changping, Beijing for 3.005 billion yuan in 2020, intending to build the company's R&D training education headquarters.
In the same year, Offcn Education announced plans to raise no more than 6 billion yuan for additional issuance to build the Huairou base and supplement working capital.
One year later, Offcn Education transferred the Changping plot to Longfor Properties for collaborative residential development at a price of 1.43 billion yuan through the transfer of controlling rights of its wholly-owned subsidiary.
In January 2022, an investor inquired about the latest progress of the Huairou base on the investor interaction platform. In response, Offcn Education replied that the company's Huairou base additional issuance application was withdrawn, and relevant parties were negotiating on subsequent project matters.
In the same year, in the announcement "Reply to the Inquiry Letter on the Company's 2021 Annual Report," Offcn Education acknowledged that the company's expenditures on purchasing land and training facilities and other long-term assets increased significantly, occupying a large amount of the company's working capital, which was one of the important reasons for the company's capital shortage.
As the real estate industry overall entered a downward cycle, Offcn Education's real estate assets quickly depreciated. The uncertainty of external investments combined with the huge refund scale put continuous pressure on the company's overall asset structure and cash flow, ultimately leading to severe operational difficulties.
**Former Education Tycoon's Wealth Shrinks by Over 100 Billion Yuan**
The most intuitive reflection of Offcn Education's journey from rapid rise to developmental setbacks is the change in the wealth of its founder Li Yongxin's family. Li Yongxin and his mother Lu Zhongfang are the actual controllers of Offcn Education.
Public information shows that Li Yongxin, born in Tonghua, Jilin in 1976, studied at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at Peking University (now the School of Government at Peking University).
After graduating from university, Li Yongxin chose to start his own business. Initially, he founded a company called Beijing Xinxing Weiye Information Technology Co., Ltd., but this attempt failed due to investor withdrawal.
In 2001, Li Yongxin began to venture into civil service examination training and formally established Offcn Education Group in 2003, specializing in civil service examination training.
In 2018, Offcn Education successfully listed on the A-share market through a reverse merger with Yaxia Automobile, becoming the "first civil service examination stock." After the backdoor listing, Offcn Education's stock price once soared, and its market value reached a peak of nearly 270 billion yuan in 2020.
As the controlling shareholder and actual controller of Offcn Education, Li Yongxin and his mother Lu Zhongfang once topped the education sector in the "2021 Hurun Global Rich List" with a wealth of 142 billion yuan, thanks to the company's outstanding performance in the capital market.
At that time, the wealth of Li Yongxin and his mother was even more than the combined wealth of two education industry leaders: Zhang Bangxin of TAL Education (100 billion yuan) and Yu Minhong of New Oriental (30 billion yuan). In the same year, Li Yongxin also attracted attention for donating 1 billion yuan to his alma mater, Peking University.
However, as Offcn Education's stock price plummeted more than 90% from its historical high, Li Yongxin and his mother's wealth shrunk significantly. According to the recently released "2025 New Fortune Magazine 500 Wealth Creation List," Li Yongxin and Lu Zhongfang's wealth this year is 11.5 billion yuan, evaporating more than 100 billion yuan from their peak.
In addition to wealth shrinkage, Li Yongxin's wealth accumulation has also been accompanied by some controversies. According to public reports, since the end of 2022, Li Yongxin and his mother Lu Zhongfang have cumulatively cashed out more than 10 billion yuan through multiple reductions of Offcn Education shares.
According to data, Offcn Education conducted high cash dividends in 2018 and 2019, with annual cash dividend amounts of 1.738 billion yuan and 1.48 billion yuan respectively, totaling more than 3.2 billion yuan.
With the large number of shares they held, Li Yongxin and his mother could obtain considerable returns through dividends. However, it is noted that since 2020, Offcn Education has not paid dividends for consecutive years.
**Actively Seeking Transformation, Heavily Betting on AI**
At the investor relations event held on June 27, Offcn Education disclosed that the company is promoting performance growth through organizational structure adjustments (such as branch school self-collection and self-support management reforms), promoting youthful organizational updates, and clarifying reward and constraint systems.
Besides the adjustment measures mentioned above, Offcn Education is also actively seeking transformation paths.
In September 2024, Offcn announced that its company strategic position was upgraded from a "large multi-category vocational education institution" to an "employment and re-employment service provider," while comprehensively deploying AI, hoping to empower traditional education services through AI technology and open new markets with the core strategy of "AI employment."
Facing the impact of post-pandemic consumption downgrade and the "double reduction" policy on peer transformation, Offcn Education established "Offcn AI Employment" as a strategic sub-brand under the background of continuous pressure on traditional civil service examination training business.
In the first half of this year, Offcn Education achieved a leap from concept initiation to product delivery, launching AI employment learning machines and high-end employment service products adapted to different job-seeking stages. As of now, the overall sales scale of its AI employment business segment has exceeded 50 million yuan.
At the investor relations event on July 28, Offcn Education revealed that the core competitiveness of its AI employment learning machine products lies in: built-in rich core functions including AI intelligent assistants and AI employment planning; adoption of a tiered pricing strategy, combining AI machines and manual services to meet different consumption level needs; high-end products have undergone pilot verification with more than 3,000 people, have obtained preliminary market verification data, the service model has been tested, and have also verified the real effectiveness of the employment service market where AI learning machines are located.
Some analysts believe that Offcn Education's transformation is a strategic breakthrough that adapts to policy, market, and its own development needs. By expanding from simple "training" to "training + service + ecosystem," Offcn Education intends to seize broader employment market opportunities.
However, whether Offcn's new strategy can ultimately succeed depends on whether it can continuously fulfill its promises to users, truly solve employment problems, rebuild market trust, and establish solid barriers in new competitive areas. This process is by no means overnight and requires long-term investment and patient verification.
How will Li Yongxin, the former education tycoon, lead Offcn Education out of its predicament in the future? This will continue to be monitored.
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