"If you don't have a good story, you won't go far." Confucius said it implicitly, but translated into the context of contemporary finance, it means that you have to have a story before capital will listen to you. Once upon a time, mergers and acquisitions were the most fascinating "script tool" for A-shares: talking about industrial synergy with the left hand and drawing high growth expectations with the right hand. A few parallelisms and a few PPTs can ignite investors' FOMO emotions and push stock prices to the sky.
But since 2024, all this seems to have changed.
When talking about AI, the market says "Are you riding on the hot spot?" When talking about new energy, investors roll their eyes and say "Here we go again"; when talking about going overseas, fund managers only ask "Are you profitable?"; even the "cross-border transformation" that mergers and acquisitions love the most has begun to fail. The stock price did not rise but fell on the day the announcement was released. "Storytelling" is becoming "unable to tell."
In the practice of front-line M&A operations, Goheal has felt this "failure moment" more and more frequently: even if the story structure is reasonable, the financial data is beautiful, and the counterparty is reliable, it still cannot impress the regulators, infect investors, and revitalize the stock price. If you can't tell it, it's not that you don't work hard, but that the "narrative engine" of the entire market has stalled.
American Goheal M&A Group
So, when the stories of listed companies begin to "fail", how should mergers and acquisitions and restructuring be told so that they will no longer be self-satisfied and no longer fail? Goheal decided to talk to you today: The golden age of storytelling is over, what will we rely on to impress the market next?
Let's take a look at several typical "story failure" scenes since 2024.
A listed company announced that it will acquire a startup that specializes in AI model optimization, and the two parties plan to create a cross-border closed loop of "AI+biopharmaceuticals". Does it sound very imaginative? But the market didn't buy it at all. On the day the announcement was released, the stock price fell by 6%. The media also mocked that "this is not a closed loop, but a pie in the sky."
Another company chose to tell a big story about "energy transformation": it plans to acquire a hydrogen energy equipment company with an annual revenue of 2 billion, and announced that it will gradually transform its original chemical industry into "green manufacturing". The plan structure is reasonable, the target company's profitability is not weak, and the counterparty is also compliant. But the market response is still cold - investors only care about one thing: can you make money after you transform?
Goheal found a core commonality when reviewing these "unspeakable" projects: the story only falls on the concept level, not the value level.
In other words, everyone is still circling around the "trend", but has not figured out what specific and feasible returns they can create for the market. A set of PPT can explain the vision clearly, but if it can't explain the financial model, and can't explain the improvement path of cash flow and ROE, it is equivalent to talking about loneliness.
So, Goheal began to advocate another "story writing method": not talking about concepts, but about paths; not showing hot spots, but showing abilities.
We once assisted a traditional equipment manufacturing company in restructuring a carbon footprint management technology company. At the beginning, the client wanted to talk about industrial integration around "dual carbon + AI". We suggested that they should not rush to start the topic, but return to a simple question: How many percentage points can this merger and acquisition increase the gross profit margin of your existing business?
In the end, in the reconstructed plan, the transaction logic is no longer "I want to enter the dual carbon industry", but "I optimize the data algorithm of the technical target to achieve a 6% reduction in energy consumption of my own production line, and can be monetized as a carbon disclosure service." After the announcement was issued, the market reaction was stable, but the first quarter financial report confirmed this logic, and the stock price doubled in three months.
The story does not fail, but the narrative that is separated from value fails.
Of course, today's capital market is also much smarter and more demanding than in the past. It doesn't matter what you say, who will say it, how to say it, and how to fulfill it after saying it, which is the real "core script".
In the past, you only needed to "write", but now you also have to "act" and "control the scene". Goheal calls it the "M&A trilogy": value anchoring, narrative design, and realization path.
First, anchor the value: Who can this transaction benefit? Which dimension can be improved in cash flow, return on net assets, cost structure, and organizational efficiency? Without this anchor, everything you say is empty.
Then design the narrative: How to tell the market about this value? Is it to let the CEO personally go live, or to release it in advance through investor roadshows? Is it to take the technical route to write a white paper, or to take the user route to release real data? All narrative forms must return to the core: what you want to tell is a story that others can verify.
Finally, the realization path: How to integrate after the merger and acquisition? Is there a "bimonthly account for integration", a "collaborative KPI", or a "prediction of cultural friction"? There is actually a mountain of management ability between telling stories and acting stories.
In M&A services, Goheal increasingly emphasizes the "story checklist": every sentence to be told to the market must have an empirical path, or prepare a package of questions to answer regulators. For example, "industry collaboration" must have an order conversion rate model, "market value management" must have a growth decomposition path, and "resource grafting" must have an organizational design change plan.
When others are still shouting slogans, our customers are already writing landing SOPs.
Now the question is: if the market really enters the era of "story failure", does it mean that mergers and acquisitions and restructuring will fail?
Of course not.
Story failure does not mean that the story is invalid, but that the requirements are upgraded. From talking about concepts to talking about paths, from drawing cakes to cashing tickets, from entertaining PPT to scientific IR system - truly high-quality mergers and acquisitions can penetrate the market's "weak filter" in this era and reap certainty premiums.
Goheal believes that mergers and acquisitions are moving from "marketing driven" to "value realization driven", from "telling a good story" to "making real changes". You no longer need a PPT expert with good writing skills, but a structural designer who understands finance and can run with you.
This also explains why the "plan realization rate" in the market has been getting lower and lower in the past two years - not because everyone is unwilling to merge, but because most mergers and acquisitions are not well explained or fulfilled, and investors are "tired of hearing". Only those merger and acquisition stories that are truly written into the performance table, the KPI of the report, and the ROE improvement chart are worthy of the applause of the secondary market.
Having written here, Goheal wants to discuss a question with you:
In this era of "story fatigue", what real chips does your company have to impress the market?
Is it the exclusive position in the supply chain? Is it the leading right of a certain algorithm? Is it your ultimate execution of financial control? Or is it a complete set of industrial capital tactics of "merger first, then control, and then integration"?
If you don't have these, and only rely on the four words "mergers and acquisitions + AI" to touch the valuation, I am afraid you can only get one word after the announcement: fall.
But if you have realized that the game has changed, then we suggest that you talk to Goheal as soon as possible - because we can help you redefine the story that can't be told into a performance script.
Goheal Group
Welcome to share the most "unspeakable" M&A stories you have seen, or the project logic you are hesitating about in the comment area.
Goheal, let's talk about something useful and do something fruitful.
[About Goheal] Goheal is a leading investment holding company focusing on global M&A holdings. It is deeply engaged in the three core business areas of listed company control acquisition, listed company M&A and restructuring, and listed company capital operation. With its deep professional strength and rich experience, it provides enterprises with full life cycle services from M&A to restructuring to capital operation, aiming to maximize corporate value and achieve long-term benefit growth.
