2025 promises to be a year of celebration for the Hong Kong stock market.

According to statistics, in the first five months alone, the Hong Kong stock market witnessed the listing of 28 new shares, raising a cumulative initial public offering (IPO) of approximately HK$77.36 billion. Both figures surpass those of the same period last year, and the momentum is growing month by month. In May, the number of newly listed shares and the amount of funds raised continued to outperform the previous four months.

Continuing this trend, as June began, another high-quality technology manufacturing enterprise announced its intention to list in Hong Kong. On June 4, Nanjing-based A-share listed company Estun (002747.SZ) revealed its plan to issue shares overseas and list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. This move aims to deepen its global strategic layout, accelerate the development of overseas business, enhance its international brand image, and strengthen its core competitiveness. KPMG serves as the auditing institution for this issuance and listing.

As a leading enterprise in China's industrial robot sector, Estun experienced its first substantial loss in ten years after its listing in 2024, with a net loss of RMB 810 million. However, in the first quarter of 2025, it reclaimed the top spot in China's robot market shipments.

Amidst China's rapid evolution in high-end manufacturing and the accelerating intelligence and innovation of the robot industry, Estun, as a frontrunner in A-share subdivisions, continues to be valued for its investment potential.

Through a combination of internal R&D and external procurement, Estun has topped the list of domestic industrial robots for seven consecutive years.

Founded in 1993, Estun's core strengths stem from its long-standing commitment to the strategy of "full-link independent research and development." By adhering to the "ALL Made by ESTUN" technical path, the company has achieved complete autonomy in the three core technologies of robot controllers, operating systems, and servo systems. With a localization rate of robot core components reaching 90%, Estun has significantly reduced the production cost of robot bodies.

Currently, its business spans the entire industrial chain, from automation core components, industrial robots, robot workstations, to intelligent manufacturing systems. This vertical integration capability is exceptionally rare among domestic peers.

Yin Chenggang, Vice President of Nanjing Estun Automation Co., Ltd., explained, "Innovation is Estun's DNA and its core competency."

As a provider of core technologies for intelligent manufacturing, Estun has consistently prioritized technological innovation, with R&D investment maintaining at around 10% of sales revenue for many years. In 2024, approximately RMB 503 million was invested in R&D expenses, accounting for 12.55% of sales revenue.

In addition to endogenous R&D, Estun's technological moat has also achieved "accelerated overtaking" through precise international mergers and acquisitions:

Since 2016, Estun has successively acquired multiple enterprises, including Euclid, Trio, and Barrett in terms of core components and technologies for industrial robots, as well as Praxair, M.A.i, Yangzhou Shuguang, and CLOOS in terms of integrated applications for industrial robots.

Among them, the UK-based TRIO company, wholly acquired by Estun in 2017, has nearly 30 years of experience in industrial automation and motion control, enabling Estun to quickly address its shortcomings in precision control. Euclid Labs SRL possesses internationally leading robot 3D vision technology, offline programming, and intelligent operation technology. The acquisition of German welding robot giant CLOOS in 2020 allowed Estun to seamlessly enter high-barrier fields such as automobiles and aerospace.

Relying on the strategic thinking of "strengthening core technologies through foreign mergers and acquisitions and integrating industry channels through domestic acquisitions," Estun has continuously refined its industrial chain layout.

Estun has successfully emerged as the first autonomous brand in China's robot industry to establish a full industrial chain of "core components + main body + applications." Its technological advantages are also evident in high-precision, high-reliability motion control algorithms and robot body design. For instance, in high-end applications like welding and handling, Estun robots achieve a repeated positioning accuracy of ±0.02mm at their peak.

Backed by robust supply chain security, according to MIR data, in 2024, Estun once again became the domestic brand with the highest shipments of industrial robots and domestic multi-joint industrial robots. It ranked first in domestic brand shipments in the Chinese market for seven consecutive years and second in China's overall industrial robot market shipments, second only to Japan's Fanuc.

Entering 2025, Estun topped the Chinese industrial robot market for the first time in the first quarter, becoming the first domestic robot brand to achieve this milestone.

Rising from Fluctuations: A Successful Turnaround in 2025 Q1 After a Decade's First Loss of RMB 800 Million

In line with the continuous improvement of the company's industrial chain layout and the general trend towards industrial intelligence and digitization, since its listing on the A-share market in 2015, Estun's performance has generally exhibited a fluctuating upward trend. In 2022, it achieved its highest level of profitability since listing, with annual revenue and net profit reaching RMB 3.881 billion and RMB 166 million, respectively.

Starting in 2023, its performance once again entered an adjustment phase. In 2024, its annual revenue was RMB 4.009 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 13.83%; the net profit attributable to shareholders was a loss of RMB 810 million, marking Estun's first loss in ten years since its listing, and a relatively significant one at that.

Estun provided a detailed explanation for this performance decline in its annual report.

From the revenue perspective, the company's 2024 revenue fell short of expectations, and its gross profit margin declined to a certain extent, resulting in a notable decrease in gross profit compared to the same period last year. In terms of market conditions, global economic growth slowed down, and demand in some downstream industries was weak, particularly in the photovoltaic industry, where Estun's sales revenue declined significantly compared to the previous year.

At the same time, market competition intensified, with many domestic and foreign enterprises increasing their investments in the industrial robot field to capture market share. This put certain pressure on Estun's product sales prices and market share.

From the cost and expense perspective, period expenses increased, particularly personnel expenses, which surged compared to the same period last year.

On one hand, Estun adheres to long-termism, consistently maintaining high R&D investment, continuously introducing outstanding personnel, and focusing on talent echelon construction to bolster the company's technological innovation capability and market competitiveness.

On the other hand, the significant gap between sales and expectations led to an increase in the expense ratio, further exacerbating operating losses.

Additionally, impacted by factors such as overall industry market changes, the operating performance of Estun's subsidiaries, including Praxair, Yangzhou Shuguang, Trio (UK), and CLOOS (Germany), deviated significantly from expectations, with a corresponding decrease in non-operating gains and losses. All these factors negatively impacted the company's net profit.

The good news is that as 2025 dawned, Estun's performance began to rebound.

Benefiting from the rapid growth of industries such as automotive, electronics, and lithium batteries, market demand for industrial automation significantly recovered in the first quarter of this year. The company's revenue during this period increased by 24.03% year-on-year to RMB 1.244 billion; the net profit attributable to shareholders surged by 93.43% year-on-year to RMB 12.63 million; the non-deductible net profit was RMB 4.1674 million, up 132.2% year-on-year; and the net operating cash flow was RMB 47.5225 million, up 112.95% year-on-year. Concurrently, the combined rate of the four fees was 28.33%, a decrease of 5.14 percentage points year-on-year and 10.4 percentage points compared to 2024.

This series of data indicates that after experiencing a trough in 2024, Estun has achieved initial results through a series of adjustments to its business strategy.

Capitalizing on the Trend: Accelerating Globalization through Hong Kong Listing

Looking ahead, the company's management holds high confidence in future market demand. Based on the long-term trends of machines replacing humans and domestic substitution, as well as the increasing demand for automation and intelligent development in downstream industries, Estun believes that the industrial robot market still has considerable room for growth in 2025.

Internally, to fully achieve a turnaround in profitability for the entire year, in 2025, Estun decided to comprehensively formulate a business improvement plan guided by the strategy of "global layout - strategic focus - technological breakthrough - operational efficiency improvement."

This aligns well with the broader trend of China's intelligent manufacturing industry collectively expanding overseas with its industrial chain.

Specifically, in terms of expanding overseas markets, Estun will continue to penetrate markets in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, etc. It will also focus on the overseas expansion opportunities of leading domestic customers, such as new energy vehicle and lithium battery equipment manufacturers, expecting the overseas market to become a significant growth driver for the company's business.

Among these, the European market is the focus of resource investment this year. Estun hopes to establish a global production capacity layout and supply chain system by building an overseas manufacturing base in Poland through its overseas subsidiaries, laying a solid foundation for realizing global development.

The Hong Kong listing this time is both expected and a crucial move for Estun to break the deadlock. According to the prospectus, Estun highlighted that the core intention of planning to list in Hong Kong is to deepen its global strategic layout, accelerate the development of overseas business, enhance the company's international brand image, and further boost its core competitiveness.

Furthermore, Estun stated that this year the company will further tighten control over sales prices and invest more resources in high-quality orders to maintain stable gross profit margins.

In the capital market, the performance of this mature business model of a leading technology enterprise in subdivisions is likely to exhibit dual characteristics of "fundamental repair" and "capital flow game" in the second half of 2025. Substantial progress in order volume increase and debt ratio decrease will be key considerations influencing its valuation pricing in the short to medium term. In the long term, it is essential to track the progress of humanoid robot commercialization, as well as the process of domestic substitution and the verification of the company's globalization capabilities.

On the cusp of the golden opportunity in the intelligent robot industry, Estun, with its self-developed technological barriers and vertical integration ecology as its moat, remains worthy of continuous attention from investors and the industry.