SF EXPRESS, the fourth-largest delivery company in the world, got listed on the mainland through reverse merger deals Feb. 23.

    Maanshan Dingtai Rare Earth & New Materials Co. was officially renamed as S.F. Holding Co. Ltd. on Feb. 24, marking the delivery giant’s successful backdoor listing on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

    Shares of S.F. Holding Co. swung wildly the day before yesterday as profit-taking emerged in late afternoon trading following a sharp rise in share prices over the past several sessions.

    S.F. Holding closed up 4.79 percent in its seventh session of gains, surging as much as 83.5 percent in just seven trading days and briefly making its founder Wang Wei the country’s second-richest person, only behind Dalian Wanda’s Wang Jianlin.

    Wang Wei, chairman and founder of SF Express who holds about 65 percent of the firm, saw his personal wealth swelled to nearly 164.3 billion yuan on the stock debut by Feb. 26, according to the real-time world’s billionaires list compiled by Forbes.

    The entrepreneur said the biggest aim of SF Express’ listing was to raise more funds in order to improve its services.

    S.F. Holding has raised approximately 8 billion yuan through the listing and plans to invest it in aviation materials and other transport equipment, information platforms and logistic technology.

    Founded in 1993, SF Express’ services cover more than 200 countries and regions with 34 airplanes and about 15,000 vehicles.

    Last year was a significant period for SF Express, as Wang made it onto Forbes’ list of tycoons in October, ranked among the top five on the Chinese mainland.

    Wang surprisingly jumped from 32nd place on the 2015 list to fourth place last year with a total fortune of US$18.5 billion, following Pony Ma, cofounder and CEO of Tencent.

    According to cyzone.cn, a magazine focusing on entrepreneurship and startups, Jack Ma, CEO of Alibaba, most admired Wang’s extraordinary competence in managing the 70,000 staff members at SF Express.

    Wang originally comes from Shanghai and has only a high school degree. He came to Guangdong Province in 1993 at the age of 22 and started doing business in dyeing and printing in Shunde.

    While working in Shunde, Wang noticed that the cities around the Pearl River Delta region were in great need of products and goods exported from Hong Kong, which made him wonder if the “delivery business” could offer him business opportunities.

    Wang borrowed 100,000 yuan from his father as the initial capital to found the company named SF and rented an office in Hong Kong.

    With the huge demand for delivery services, Wang rapidly set up branches and delivery locations all across Guangdong.

    At the beginning of the booming age of logistics, setting up delivery locations was fundamental for express companies to expand their “territory.”

    In only a few years, SF Express had rapidly expanded and basically gained control over all express deliveries to and from Hong Kong by 1997.

    However, since every branch company was responsible for its own business as a separately registered company, these branches appeared to be uncontrollable and some even became involved in smuggling.

    Thus, Wang started to reclaim his authority over the branch companies in 1999 and successfully turned the franchise system into a direct sales model. The CEO then moved the headquarters to Shenzhen in 2002.(Zhang Qian)