Zhu Weisong sold 1.56% of Bloks. The market priced a 52% exit Zhu Weisong · Smart Bloks Limited · Bloks Group Limited (HKEX: 0325)
- What they did
- On 22 October 2026, Smart Bloks Limited — a British Virgin Islands company incorporated 15 July 2021 and wholly owned by Zhu Weisong, chairman, executive director and CEO — sold 3,849,000 Bloks shares by block trade at HK$65.28, about 1.56% of shares in issue excluding treasury, raising about HK$251.26m (~US$32.0m). The vehicle’s stake fell from about 3.57% to 2.01%. Bloks closed down 21.38% at HK$54.60, erasing its year-to-date gain and leaving the stock about 18% lower on the year.
- The document
- Bloks Group HKEX announcement, 22 October 2026, naming Smart Bloks Limited, its BVI incorporation date and its sole beneficial owner, and stating the sale was for Zhu’s “own funding needs” with no relationship to the company’s operations or financial condition.
Consensus read
The founder is cashing out at the top of a hype cycle in Chinese collectible toys, and a 21% drop is the market correctly repricing a company whose chairman no longer wants his own shares. The “own funding needs” language is the standard euphemism. A secondary reading, running in Chinese financial media this week, adds that he is one of a wave of founders raising cash to settle liabilities under the new offshore-trust tax regime whose filing window closed that very day.
Contrarian read
Both readings are too big for the facts. He sold 3% of his own position, not his position. The disclosure describes a sale by one member of the controlling shareholder group, and the 3.57% → 2.01% figures are that vehicle’s, not his — Zhu still controls about 52%. And the tax story is weaker than it reads: the rule that closed on 22 October permits five-year instalments, so it does not force a lump-sum liquidity event at all.
Evidence that discriminates
- The block traded above where the stock closed. The print was HK$65.28; the close was HK$54.60. The buyers of the block were 16.4% underwater by the bell. If the move were a supply-and-demand repricing for 1.56% of extra float, the stock would settle near the clearing price. Falling far through it says the market repriced the chairman’s intent, not the shares. That fact separates “correct repricing” from “overreaction to a headline”; a volume-driven move cannot land below the level at which volume actually cleared.
- The denominator. 1.56% of issued shares against a retained ~52% control stake is a 3% trim. A 21.4% drawdown against a 3% trim is roughly a 7× reaction per unit of stake actually disposed of. Headlines read “chairman sells down stake”; the filing says one of his vehicles did.
- The instalment provision kills the forced-seller story. Announcement No. 21 (2026), issued 24 July by the Ministry of Finance and the State Taxation Administration, applies a flat 20% across an offshore trust’s life, taxes contribution on market value over original cost, and gave existing trusts a 90-day filing window that closed 22 October. It also lets filers who cannot pay on time settle in equal instalments over five years. A founder facing a five-year instalment plan does not need to print a HK$251m block into the market on the deadline. Inference, clearly labelled: the date coincidence is striking and I am not able to rule the tax motive out — but the instalment clause removes the mechanism that would make it compulsory.
- The “wave” is a sample of two. The reporting that frames this as founders queuing to fund tax bills rests on this trade and on Shu Ping’s 259m-share Haidilao placement through SP NP Ltd. — which was dated 8 September 2026, six weeks before the window closed, at a 6.7% discount for about HK$2.751bn. One trade inside the window and one outside it is not a wave, and neither company linked its sale to tax.
What would falsify me
Zhu’s other vehicles file further disposals in the next month, taking the ~52% control stake down materially. That would retire the “one vehicle, 3% trim” framing and make the market’s reaction prescient rather than excessive.
Or: Bloks fails to recover any of the 21.4% over the next several weeks while peers hold. A genuine overreaction leaves a trace; a correct repricing does not.
Or: three or more further HK-listed founders’ offshore vehicles are shown to have printed blocks in the 20–22 October window, which would convert “sample of two” into a real pattern and restore the tax-deadline reading.
Pattern — vs his own history Not established. I could not find a prior on-market disposal by Smart Bloks or by Zhu’s other vehicles, and absence of a finding is not evidence of absence — HKEX disclosure of interests filings for 0325 were not reachable from this scan. The vehicle itself has existed since 15 July 2021, well before the January 2025 listing, so the container predates the disposition by more than five years. That much is on the face of the announcement. The claim that this is his first sale is not made here.