Research on development characteristics of China's environmental protection industry based on 2015 annual reports of listed companies

As one of the main strategic emerging industries, environmental protection industry has become a new economic growth point of China's economy under the new normal. Based on the data from 2015 annual reports, 55 listed environmental protection companies were classified into six industries, i.e. water treatment, air pollution control, comprehensive environmental services, resource recycling, environmental monitoring, and ecological restoration. The development characteristics of environmental protection industry were studied from the listing location, registration location, company size, specialization degree, profitability, R&D efficiency and other aspects, the industrial concentration of environmental protection industry assessed, and some suggestions for further development of environmental protection industry put forward. The results show that China's environmental protection companies' listed sites are more concentrated in the Small and Medium-sized Enterprise Board (SME) and Growth Enterprise Market (GEM), and eastern regions (especially Jiangsu, Guangdong, Zhejiang and Beijing) have significant geographical concentration advantages. Listed environmental protection companies are still in relatively small scale, but the specialization degree is constantly improving. There is a big difference in the gross profit margins among six major industry segments, the air pollution control industry has the lowest gross profit margin and highest operating income, while the monitoring industry has the highest gross profit margin but lower operating income. Water treatment industry has the highest R&D efficiency, but the R&D efficiency of environmental monitoring industry and ecological restoration industry is relatively low. The environmental industry market is between the competitive and low concentration oligopoly, whose industry concentration is low and market competition is quite active.