HKEX Insight

In a market as diverse as Hong Kong’s, that begins with recognising how differently value creation can look across sectors and stages of development.

We are home to one of the most varied issuer bases in Asia, where AI and biotech firms sit alongside consumer and financial companies.

That diversification is one of our greatest competitive advantages. It also creates a challenge: How should users of a market with companies spanning dozens of industries and varying stages of development consider corporate value?

A mature financial institution distributing dividends and a pre revenue biotech firm reinvesting in its pipeline may have valuation and return metrics that differ sharply – but both can still have shareholders’ best interests in mind.

The Healthcare sector, for instance, includes some early-stage biotech companies that have yet to commercialise their core products and generate revenue.

That sector, in 2025, carried some of the highest weighted average price-to-book ratios on our markets, reflecting investors’ long-term growth expectations for biotech companies in Hong Kong.

Conversely, the Telecommunications sector presents an inverse profile: a weighted average price-to-book ratio barely above 1, but the highest weighted average dividend payout ratio and dividend yield of any sector in 2025.

With that in mind, how do we prescribe a method to gauge valuation that is fair and substantive across all these sectors?

The answer is simple – we don’t.

Instead, to navigate nuances in corporate valuation and performance, HKEX has developed Shareholder Value in Focus – a data repository providing eight key metrics, including total shareholder return, dividend measures and return based indicators, for all listed companies in Hong Kong.

Our approach is to guide, not prescribe, and we do so by improving the accessibility and comparability of shareholder value data to enable informed engagement by market participants.

Crucially, the data available through Shareholder Value in Focus can be viewed through more than one lens.

Repository users can step back to observe market wide trends over the last four years or narrow the frame to compare different issuers; they can focus on constituents of major indexes or look within specific industries to see how sector dynamics shape performance.

This flexibility takes into account the diversity of Hong Kong’s market and provides the context to more meaningfully evaluate companies’ shareholder value delivery.

The repository also enables every listed issuer in Hong Kong to be sorted from highest to lowest (and vice versa) across each metric, making it possible to see not just where a company sits today, but how its position has shifted over time relative to others.

Taken together, these features create a depth of perspective that hasn’t previously been available in one place for Hong Kong.

And by making that data easy to access and compare, the repository supports more informed conversations about how companies create value, and how that value is sustained over the long term.

 Clear, comparable data can facilitate deeper dialogue between companies and their boards and investors on strategy, capital discipline and sustainable growth.

When performance metrics are readily accessible and benchmarked against relevant peers, boards are better positioned to explain strategic choices, justify capital allocation and demonstrate accountability for long-term outcomes.

For instance, a director deciding how much dividend to recommend can now see, at a glance, what comparable companies in the same sector are paying – in 2025, weighted average dividend yield ranged from 0.84% in Information Technology to 5.96% in Telecommunications.

Comparability doesn’t tell companies what decisions to make. But it does help ensure that those decisions are visible, intelligible and open to challenge.

To that end, we encourage boards and management teams to use the repository as a starting point for longer-term strategic reflection.

Drawing on the data, boards can assess whether their companies’ returns, valuations and distributions – viewed against peers – align with their stage of development and stated priorities, and where adjustments may be needed.

At the same time, we invite investors to draw on this data as a foundation for more informed engagement with the companies they invest in – grounded in a clear understanding of how different businesses and sectors create value over time.

Transparency is integral to how a market sustains trust and safeguards quality, and this repository is part of a broader effort to strengthen Hong Kong's competitiveness as a global listing and capital-raising venue.

Our recent consultation on the listing framework, covering enhancements to weighted voting rights, streamlined pathways for overseas listed issuers and other reforms, reflects the same underlying philosophy: that regulation should not only set standards, but actively support market development.

Alongside reforms to IPO price discovery, board lot requirements and the ongoing transition towards a shorter settlement cycle under T+1, these initiatives form a coherent programme to enhance the attractiveness of Hong Kong's markets for issuers, investors and the broader financial community.

When companies can benchmark their performance against peers, they are better equipped to allocate capital wisely, engage with investors and build sustainable businesses. And when investors can access clear, comparable data, they can direct capital with greater confidence.

This in turn creates a virtuous cycle, one that reinforces Hong Kong's strength as a market where governance, transparency and long-term value creation go hand in hand.