The question: which U.S. registrants have sunk lots of money into China operations, and are those companies now trying to reduce those investments as trade war frictions increase? 

One way analysts can explore the answer to that question is to look at a company’s disclosures for property, plant, and equipment (PP&E) specifically in China — a number that dozens of companies do disclose every year, typically tucked away somewhere in the PP&E footnote. Our Segments, Rollforwards, and Breakouts database lets you pull that disclosure out, so you can see how large it is and how it changes over time. 

For example, we used the Segments database to search for all U.S. registrants who reported PP&E in China in their 2024 annual reports. We found 131 firms, which altogether disclosed $71.7 billion in China-based PP&E —  12.8 percent of the $559 billion in total PP&E those same firms reported. 

Figure 1, below, shows some of the firms reporting the largest amounts of China-based PP&E. 

Please note that we excluded two firms from Table 1 that did have extensive China PP&E (AerCap Holdings and Linde) because while they are listed in the United States, they’re headquartered overseas (in the Netherlands and the U.K., respectively). 

Understanding a company’s China PP&E can be helpful to financial analysis in several ways. For example, the Trump Administration might impose heavy import duties on goods from that country. A global manufacturer with operations in China might then want to move those operations to another, un-tariffed country, which might require more capital expenditures in the future as the company expands its PP&E elsewhere. (Think of all those manufacturers announcing lately that they plan to spend zillions on infrastructure investments in the United States.) 

Plus, if a company does decide to move more of its operations away from China, what happens to those Chinese assets? Could they be sold for cash? Will they need some sort of impairment or accelerated depreciation sometime in the future? If any of those things happen, is the China PP&E number large enough to be a material item? 

That’s why knowing the PP&E number matters. You can find it in Calcbench by… 

1. Going to our Segments database; 

2. Selecting geographic segments as the segment you want to investigate;

3. Entering “China” in the standardized geographic segment field; and

4. Seeing which firms report China-based PP&E.

More PP&E Details

You can also track segment-level PP&E disclosures over time. For example, Figure 2, below, shows Apple’s China PP&E for the last several years. Note that Apple ($AAPL) has been reporting less PP&E there, reflecting the company’s efforts to move away from China and the risk of tying its manufacturing operations too closely to one country. 

Now come our warnings. As we’ve said before about geographic disclosures, this analysis will give you a good glimpse into China exposure, but not a complete one. Some firms might report an “Asia-Pacific” segment that includes China among other countries, and there’s no easy way to identify China alone from the rest of that group. Others might not report any geographic segments at all, even though they have operations there. 

Analysts should beware a few more caveats, too. For example, that $4.5 billion in China PP&E reported by Starbucks ($SBUX) is specifically reported as long-lived assets — which definitely does include PP&E, but can also include other goodies such as long-lived intangible assets. Starbucks itself says the assets disclosure in its geographic segments can include “cash and cash equivalents, ROU assets, net property, plant and equipment, equity method and other equity investments, goodwill, and other intangible assets.” 

So if you’re assessing PP&E assets and their possible fate in a trade war, you absolutely should read the underlying footnote for more detail. As always, you can find that footnote simply by clicking on the PP&E number in the Segments database, and Calcbench will whisk you over to the appropriate footnote disclosure for further reading.