Unitree: Chinese Robot Maker Jumps Over 500% on IPO
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Chinese robot maker Unitree has just pulled off one of the most spectacular stock market debuts of the year. Shares in the company, officially named Hangzhou Yushu Technology, rose as much as 629 percent above their issue price of 150.80 yuan on their first trading day in Shanghai, before easing back to a gain of just under 500 percent. Unitree raised around 6.1 billion yuan in the offering, the equivalent of roughly 904 million dollars or 783 million euros, Bloomberg reports.
The company issued 40.45 million new shares. It was valued at about nine billion dollars ahead of the debut, and once trading began its market capitalisation briefly climbed above 400 billion yuan, or some 59 billion dollars. That temporarily placed Unitree among China’s most valuable listed companies. Following the jump, its trailing twelve-month price-to-earnings ratio stood at almost 1,200.
Retail investors piled into the offering
Interest from private investors was particularly striking. The tranche reserved for retail buyers was oversubscribed more than 5,500 times according to the Financial Times, while the company itself told Reuters it had been oversubscribed more than 8,000 times. Kenny Ng, a strategist at Everbright Securities International, attributes this in part to the strength of the brand: Unitree robots appear regularly at the lunar new year gala on Chinese television, where they dance, perform flips and box.
The listing is the latest in a run of Chinese technology flotations buoyed by state support and pronounced investor appetite. The memory chip maker CXMT gained 466 percent on its own trading debut only recently. How strongly capital markets are currently reacting to Chinese tech names is also apparent in the AI listings of MiniMax and Zhipu AI.
From four legs to humanoids
Unitree was founded in 2016 and initially built four-legged robots, which today are used in disaster response and industrial applications, among other fields. The company became known internationally for its humanoid models, which can walk, dance and perform martial arts routines. Price is a key factor here: the entry-level G1 started at around 16,000 dollars, well below what Western suppliers charge for comparable machines. Its most important investors include the food delivery service Meituan, the games developer Tencent and the online retailer Alibaba.
Measured by revenue, Unitree is considered the world’s largest supplier of humanoid robots. It shipped 5,500 humanoid robots in the past financial year. It is also one of the few listed companies in the humanoid robotics field. Its largest competitor, AgiBot, remains privately held, while rival UBTech is listed in Hong Kong.
International business remains a risk factor. The US regulator FCC recently banned imports of humanoid robots, a step widely read as aimed at Chinese products. According to Unitree, more than 40 percent of its revenue comes from outside China, with the US accounting for between 13.3 and 18.4 percent depending on the year.
