Two robot companies failed in their A-share IPOs

In terms of innovation capabilities, JERSEY is also questioned.

Although the company's main products, such as 3C electronic product testing equipment, new energy lithium battery production lines and semiconductor testing and sorting equipment, cover several popular industry fields, the products are highly single and homogeneous. Faced with increasingly fierce competition in the same industry, JRS does not have an advantage in terms of technological innovation and product strength.

According to the prospectus, as of the end of June 2023, the company only owned 20 invention patents, and more than 80% of its research and development expenses during the reporting period were used to pay employee salaries, and the proportion of direct material expenditures was extremely low, far lower than the level of its peers.

Ice and Fire

On March 15, the China Securities Regulatory Commission released four important documents, including "Opinions on Strictly Controlling the Access to Issuance and Listing to Improve the Quality of Listed Companies from the Source (Trial)", aiming to fundamentally improve the quality of listed companies. The Shenzhen Stock Exchange also made it clear in its draft for soliciting opinions on the new listing rules for the Growth Enterprise Market that the net profit index for the Growth Enterprise Market in the past two years will be increased from 50 million yuan to 100 million yuan, and a new requirement of no less than 60 million yuan in the net profit in the past year has been added.

This new regulation undoubtedly blocked many companies that were planning to go public, including Weiben Intelligent and Jie Rui Si. Therefore, many companies that were rejected in the A-share market have turned to the Hong Kong stock market with lower barriers, and have also harvested many "first stocks" titles, such as UBTECH and RoboSense.

In addition to poor profitability, robot companies are also facing tremendous pressure on gross profit margins.

Data shows that in the first half of 2023, the gross profit margin of Jie Rui Si's sales was 34.18%, a year-on-year decline of nearly 6 percentage points; while the gross profit margin of Weiben Intelligent's industrial robot business in the first half of the year was only 3.07%, a year-on-year drop of nearly 10 percentage points.

The sharp decline in gross profit margin is largely due to vicious price competition within the industry. At present, the domestic robot market is facing multiple problems such as inventory backlogs and serious homogeneity. In order to expand market share, some companies resort to low-price competition, "increasing prices externally and suppliers internally", which makes them lose money and weakens their profitability.

With the increase in listing standards, the road to listing will become more difficult for companies with smaller scale, poor performance and lack of core competitiveness. To successfully go public, robot companies must improve their overall strength, and small and medium-sized enterprises will also face the disadvantages of the "Matthew effect" becoming more and more significant and gradually being marginalized by the market.

Compared with the difficult secondary market, the primary market remains hot, and the concept of "humanoid robots" is leading the way, successfully bringing a large number of related companies in the industrial chain into the spotlight.

Perhaps for companies at this stage, if they simply want to seek financing, the primary market may be a better choice. But in the long run, listing is still the only way for most industry leaders. Although there are difficulties ahead, they will be overcome. We look forward to more listed leaders in the robotics industry.