On June 28, the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) STAR Market officially accepted the IPO application of Leadintrolight Optoelectronic Equipment Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Leadintrolight").

Founded in 2006 by an overseas-returnee technical team, this national-level specialized, sophisticated, unique, and innovative 'little giant' enterprise plans to publicly issue no more than 60,784,751 shares, raising 1.8 billion yuan to invest in the construction of production and R&D centers in Wuhan and Zhaoqing, as well as to supplement working capital.

From a business perspective, Leadintrolight exhibits a distinct 'one superpower, one strong sector' pattern (translated as 'one dominant, one strong' pattern): flat panel display inspection is currently the absolute mainstay, while semiconductor wafer inspection is rapidly emerging as the 'second growth curve.' Behind its listing on the STAR Market lies both the era's expectation for domestic substitution and the dual challenge of technological breakthroughs and commercial realization.

Flat panel display inspection equipment remains the company's primary revenue driver. In 2025, this segment contributed 393 million yuan in revenue, accounting for 88.11% of total revenue. Leadintrolight's products cover the full range of G2 to G11 generation lines, with detection sensitivity reaching sub-micron levels. Its clients include domestic leading panel manufacturers such as BOE, TCL CSOT, Tianma Microelectronics, HKC Corporation, and Visionox.

Public data shows that based on 2025 revenue, Leadintrolight held a 9.3% market share in China's flat panel display full-process inspection equipment market, ranking fourth; in the more technically demanding front-end process (Array) inspection equipment market, its market share reached 20.1%, ranking first in the industry.

In 2025, the company's flat panel display inspection equipment sales increased from 29 units in 2023 to 83 units, with the average unit price rising from 2.3053 million yuan to 4.7391 million yuan. This simultaneous growth in volume and price was driven by increased demand for mid-to-high-generation equipment due to technological upgrades in downstream panel manufacturers' production lines.

While consolidating its core business, Leadintrolight is actively cultivating its semiconductor wafer inspection business. In 2024, this segment achieved its first shipment sales, contributing 21 million yuan in revenue; in 2025, it rapidly grew to 50 million yuan, with its proportion of total revenue increasing from 7.28% to 11.18%.

The company adopts a differentiated competition strategy, focusing on nanoscale patterned wafer defect inspection equipment—a market with large scale, high technical difficulty, and less than 5% localization rate. Its mass-produced first-generation NanoPro-1XX series has been successfully integrated into the production lines of power device manufacturers such as Innoscience and continues to receive repeat orders; the second-generation NanoPro-2XX series officially shipped in 2025, supporting up to the 45nm process node, is currently undergoing customer production line verification. This marks a crucial step for the company to expand into broader markets such as logic chips and memory chips.

The gross profit margin for this segment remains high at over 60%, reflecting the pricing power derived from high technical barriers while also indicating the reality of its current small scale and insufficient economies of scale.

Over the past three years, the company's financial data has shown rapid growth. From 2023 to 2025, revenue reached 73.7881 million yuan, 291 million yuan, and 446 million yuan, respectively, with a compound annual growth rate of 145.99%; net profit attributable to shareholders turned from a loss of 10.2955 million yuan in 2023 to a profit of 39.8894 million yuan in 2024, further increasing to 91.0195 million yuan in 2025.

However, this rapid growth comes with concerns. The company's main business gross profit margin declined from 46.04% in 2023 to 34.09% in 2024, slightly rebounding to 36.6% in 2025; specifically, the gross profit margin for flat panel display inspection equipment fell from 43.7% to 31.19% before rebounding to 33.19%.

The company attributes this primarily to cost-reduction pressures from downstream panel manufacturers, exposing potential risks such as high customer concentration and limited bargaining power dependent on downstream market conditions. Additionally, the semiconductor business is still in its early stages, requiring sustained R&D investment and long customer verification cycles, with limited profit contributions in the short term.

Currently, Leadintrolight operates in a sector experiencing a golden opportunity for domestic substitution. According to GIR data, global revenue from semiconductor inspection and metrology equipment reached approximately $16.857 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach $20.75 billion by 2031.

However, this market has long been dominated by international giants. Leadintrolight's core competitiveness lies in its long-term accumulation of optical inspection technology, with over 100 domestic and international intellectual property rights, constructing a detection technology system ranging from nanoscale to sub-micron levels.

Recently, the company successfully won a bid for a 0.4μm high-precision AOI inspection equipment project for the front-end Array process from a leading panel manufacturer, marking a key breakthrough for domestic equipment in this niche field and further narrowing the gap with international leading levels.

If the IPO is successfully completed, the 1.8 billion yuan in raised funds will primarily be used to expand production capacity for Micro-LED inspection equipment, 3D packaging metrology equipment, and unpatterned wafer defect inspection equipment—all areas with extremely high technical barriers and extremely low localization rates. Whether Leadintrolight can transform from an 'invisible champion' in flat panel display inspection into a 'pioneer of domestic substitution' in the semiconductor inspection and metrology field depends on the race between its technological iteration speed and commercialization capabilities.

For this company celebrating its 20th anniversary, the STAR Market may be just the starting point of a new journey. The real test lies in how to convert R&D advantages into sustained and stable market share in the high-end equipment market dominated by giants, while maintaining patience and resilience through the lengthy verification cycles of the semiconductor business. OFweek Optoelectronics will continue to provide follow-up coverage.