Express delivery firms popular with investors

Benefiting from China's huge e-commerce market, express delivery companies have been popular among investors and industry integration, said a report from ChinaVenture on Tuesday.

Citic Capital, Oriza Holdings, China Merchants Group and Jade Capital between them purchased less than 25 percent of shares in leading private express delivery company SF-Express last month, but the investment amount was not released.

Sequoia Capital and Goldstone Investment bought into ZTO Express in May.

Leading Capital, Phoenix Capital and Beijing Pengkang Investment purchased 200 million yuan ($32.7 million) of Quanfeng Express in January.

The report said M&A and industry integration would be the trend of the industry.

The Chinese express delivery market is fragmented with more than 20 large players.

The largest is EMS, accounting for 15.5 percent of the market, followed by STO Express with 15.2 percent and YTO Express with 12.9 percent.

The State Post Bureau of China released a rule early in 2011 that China would encourage large-scale express delivery companies with annual revenue of more than 10 billion yuan each by mergers and acquisitions during the period of the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15).

Express delivery companies above that designated size delivered 5.7 billion packages in 2012 and annual revenue totaled 105.5 billion yuan, increasing 39 percent year-on-year.

In the first half of 2013, the figures were 3.8 billion units and 63 billion yuan.