On the afternoon of September 9, a video showing a nude man walking through a workshop piled with battery cells rapidly circulated on social media, with someone following behind him. The clip went viral almost instantly, with captions pointing fingers at the Yibin facility of battery titan CATL, claiming a "shift leader prohibited workers from using restrooms, and an employee lost control after an incontinence incident." CATL denied the allegations that same day, stating the footage did not originate from its plant and that the claims were malicious rumors, adding that it had filed a police report. Yibin authorities subsequently set up a joint task force to investigate.
The actual protagonist only emerged on the evening of September 10, when REPT BATTERO Energy Co., Ltd. belatedly claimed responsibility for the video. Through its official WeChat account, the company issued a statement confirming the incident occurred at its Jiashan base in Zhejiang, while apologizing to "industry peers affected by this event." According to the statement, the employee involved had voluntarily submitted a resignation request and demanded immediate processing, but the company said procedures required a certain timeframe. The two sides failed to reach an agreement on timing, after which the employee lost composure and acted rashly. The company denied rumors of "restricting employee bathroom access," stated it had reported the matter to public security authorities, and noted the incident had already been resolved on the day it occurred under police supervision.
The capital market responded swiftly. On September 10, REPT BATTERO closed at HK$9.43 per share, down 5.13%, with a total market value of HK$22.037 billion. The following day, shares settled at HK$9.31, down another 1.27%, bringing the market cap to HK$21.8 billion. Compared to the IPO price of HK$18.3 per share set on December 18, 2023, the stock has nearly halved.
Curiously, just two weeks prior, the company had released its strongest half-year results since listing. On one hand, record profits; on the other, uncontrolled scenes inside the workshop—the public's questions about this Hong Kong-listed company extend far beyond a single resignation form.
A dispute over resignation paperwork escalated into a widely watched online controversy. Roughly two weeks passed between the late-August workshop incident and the September 10 admission. Media outlets have since questioned: if the matter was already resolved on the day under police witness, why didn't the company acknowledge it immediately, waiting instead until a peer had filed a police report and public outrage had reached a fever pitch before responding? The company's statement framed the event as a matter of "personal reasons" and "emotional loss of control," but disclosed no details on how long resignation procedures require, where the two sides diverged, or whether timely communication and counseling interventions were provided.
"As a major new energy manufacturer listed in Hong Kong, REPT BATTERO showed obvious delays in its crisis response," said Bai Wenxi, vice chairman of the China Enterprise Capital Alliance. He noted that rumors spread on the 9th while the company only spoke out on the 10th, and this information window amplified the effect of "making CATL the scapegoat." The misfortune suffered by the so-called "CATL King" was truly unwarranted.
Backed by the Tsingshan conglomerate, with related-party transaction contracts worth 26.4 billion yuan, REPT BATTERO represents the Tsingshan system's first foray into new energy and its first listed entity in that sector. The system's helmsman, Xiang Guangda, was born in 1958 in Longwan, Wenzhou, Zhejiang. He resigned from a state-owned enterprise in 1988 to go into business and registered Tsingshan Holding Group in 2003. During the 2008 financial crisis when mineral prices were depressed, he made a counter-cyclical move into Indonesia, securing extensive laterite nickel mining rights and building a full "nickel ore-nickel pig iron-stainless steel" industrial chain, earning the moniker "World Nickel King." In 2022, Tsingshan faced a short squeeze on its London Metal Exchange positions, which ultimately led the LME to suspend nickel trading. According to public rankings, Tsingshan Holding reported 2025 revenue of 406.64 billion yuan and has been listed among the Fortune Global 500 for several consecutive years.
Leveraging the parent group's Indonesian nickel resources, REPT BATTERO has established a supporting industrial chain spanning "mining-smelting-battery manufacturing-recycling," with its Indonesian manufacturing base located inside Tsingshan Holding's Weda Bay Industrial Park. On December 18, 2023, REPT BATTERO listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange's main board at an issue price of HK$18.3 per share, raising net proceeds of HK$2.013 billion. On its first trading day, its market value exceeded HK$42 billion, briefly making it the most valuable lithium battery company listed in Hong Kong.
In terms of shareholding structure, Yongqing Technology Group Co., Ltd. directly holds 46.62% of the equity, while Tsingshan Holding Group owns 51% of Yongqing Technology. Adding the shares held by Wenzhou Jingli partnership, controlled by Yongqing Technology's wholly-owned subsidiary Ritu Energy as general partner, the controlling shareholder group collectively commands approximately 57.92% of voting rights. Xiang Guangda serves as the actual controller.
Backed by the Tsingshan tree, the company's performance hit an inflection point in 2026. In 2025, REPT BATTERO generated revenue of 24.334 billion yuan, up 36.74% year-on-year, with net profit of 681 million yuan and net profit attributable to parent of 623 million yuan, achieving its first annual profit since listing. In the first half of 2026, revenue reached 14.916 billion yuan, up 57.2% year-on-year, with net profit of 778 million yuan and attributable net profit of 704 million yuan—already exceeding the full-year 2025 figure.
However, another set of numbers is equally striking. As of June 30, 2026, the company's asset-liability ratio had risen to 77.1%, up slightly from 74.5% at the end of 2025. Interest-bearing bank and other borrowings reached 12.418 billion yuan, an increase of approximately 2.7 billion yuan from the end of 2025. Inventories grew from 3.322 billion yuan to 5.343 billion yuan, a 60.8% jump in six months.
Related-party transactions with the Tsingshan system remain a long-standing focus of market attention. On April 30, 2026, the company signed four framework agreements for continuing related-party transactions with Tsingshan entities at once, with a combined three-year transaction cap of 26.39 billion yuan. In the first half of 2026, related-party procurement from controlling shareholder associates reached 875 million yuan, up approximately 271% year-on-year, while related-party sales totaled 836 million yuan, up roughly 287%. The interim report also noted that Tsingshan entities, as the sole service provider for the Weda Bay park, supply industrial energy and supporting services to the Indonesian manufacturing base.
The high degree of upstream-downstream synergy presents a governance challenge: proving the fairness of related-party transaction pricing and demonstrating independent market-based bargaining power—questions the company must continuously address.
Supporting this performance is a manufacturing system still expanding rapidly. REPT BATTERO has production bases in Wenzhou, Jiashan, Liuzhou, Foshan, Chongqing, and Indonesia, with planned total capacity exceeding 90GWh and a workforce exceeding 12,000 employees. The Jiashan base where the incident occurred involves a total investment of approximately 19.1 billion yuan, built in three phases, with total capacity reaching 79GWh upon full completion. Its operating entity, Lanjun New Energy Technology Co., Ltd., is a subsidiary of the company, and Xiang Guangda's son-in-law Feng Ting has served as its chairman since 2024, also taking over as president of REPT BATTERO in the same year.
Whether people management can keep pace with scale expansion is another test. The company's 2025 ESG report shows global headcount of 12,685 employees as of the end of 2025, up 13.63% year-on-year. The employee attrition rate stood at 39.75%, compared to 44.34% in 2023 and 42.17% in 2024. For reference, according to Beisen's "2026 Workforce Management Trends Report," the average annual attrition rate for frontline manufacturing workers is approximately 32.7%.
The same ESG report also contains an improving curve: employee satisfaction survey scores rose from 6.97 in 2023 to 7.28 in 2024 and 7.49 in 2025. In 2025, there were no workplace fatalities or fire incidents, and all four production bases achieved 100% coverage of ISO 45001 occupational health and safety management system certification.
Nevertheless, a resignation conversation escalating to the point of an employee losing control and stripping naked in the workshop seems to add a discordant note to the ESG narrative. Bai Wenxi pointed out that when a company rapidly expands from a thousand-person factory to a ten-thousand-person, multi-site operation, there is a high risk of disconnect between headquarters standards and workshop-level execution. In the ESG evaluation frameworks used by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and foreign institutions, labor relations and internal grievance channels are core assessment dimensions. If systematic weaknesses in workshop working hours, shift leader management, or psychological counseling emerge, foreign ESG due diligence could categorize them under "S risks," potentially affecting long-term ratings and institutional allocation intentions.
At the industry level, Wang Jianxin, vice chairman and executive secretary-general of the China Battery Industry Association, has previously told media that industrial competition is shifting from pure cost and capacity battles to comprehensive compliance capabilities encompassing ESG, carbon footprint, and full lifecycle traceability. Each breakdown in workshop-level communication could potentially be factored into future orders and valuations.
Looking back at this nudity controversy, as of the time of writing, public security authorities have yet to release a public conclusion on the investigation into the online claims. REPT BATTERO's promised improvements to "employee communication mechanisms" have also not yet materialized into verifiable metrics. But regardless of the outcome, a single resigned employee's explosive outburst has brought outside attention to this ten-thousand-person company. The incident may also serve as a catalyst for this HK$20 billion listed company—and the 400-billion-yuan Tsingshan system behind it—to place greater emphasis on management practices and means, as well as corporate governance issues such as information disclosure.