More pain for China as home sales crash for one of its largest developers and tech earnings growth falls to lowest since 2022

Neither real estate nor China’s equity market is helping the country climb out of its economic slump.

While one of its leading property developers is fending off liquidation, stock market investors have a new reason for disappointment.

A steep plunge in Chinese home sales is hurting Country Garden, one of the nation’s leading real estate developers.

According to Bloomberg, contracted sales in August dropped 57% from a year ago, compounding woes after a 72% drop in July.

The country’s real estate sector has been navigating a crisis for years now, as declining demand and little stimulus from the government have overburdened indebted property firms. In August, new home sales among the 100 largest developers dropped 26.8%, Bloomberg reported.

Improving sales would have been welcome news for Country Garden, as it fights off a liquidation scare. The outlet said the firm is now considering a new restructuring for its yuan-denominated bonds instead, having struggled to fund delayed repayments on its debt.

Bloomberg said that since the firm invests in smaller cities, Country Garden’s downturn has been especially vicious compared to its peers: its sales plummet has more than doubled the average among top builders in the first seven months of this year.

JPMorgan chief China economist Haibin Zhu told CNBC that home prices won’t stabilize until 2025, if not later. The “housing market crash is still not over yet,” he said.

China’s stock market has offered no reprieve either.

Bloomberg separately reported that the latest earnings-per-share on the MSCI China Index contracted 4.5% from a year ago — the worst performance in five quarters. Meanwhile, 19% EPS growth among China’s leading eight tech firms marked the slowest quarter since 2022.

Tech earnings have plunged amid dwindling sector consumption, and analysts told the outlet that a turnaround requires greater support from Beijing.

In one telling example, gloomy consumer outlooks caused the Temu parent company PDD Holdings to tank 29% last week. Baidu and Kuaishou Technology have also slumped amid warning signs from Chinese consumers.

Outside of tech, the real estate and consumer staple sectors were the leading stragglers in the latest earnings season, Bloomberg said. Consensus EPS growth for MSCI China has now declined to 11%.