Will investors embrace China’s humanoid robot champion?

{"text":[[{"start":7.7,"text":"The forthcoming IPO of the world’s largest humanoid robot producer will offer investors a rare chance to evaluate the health of the android industry on public markets."}],[{"start":18,"text":"Unitree, which has impressed audiences with an increasingly advanced range of humanoid robots, applied in March to list on Shanghai’s tech-heavy Star market and is likely to make its debut in the second half of this year."}],[{"start":30.75,"text":"The planned listing for the Hangzhou-based group comes as investors enthusiastically assess a range of Chinese technology companies spanning AI, robotics, biotech and smart manufacturing."}],[{"start":43.6,"text":"“Humanoid robots have been a hot investment area,” said Ethan Qi, associate director at Counterpoint Research. “If Unitree finally goes public . . . this will definitely further boost investors’ confidence.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":55.900000000000006,"text":"Unitree, founded by engineer Wang Xingxing in 2016, has become a champion in the Chinese robotics industry thanks to its robots’ dancing, flipping and boxing displays at lunar new year galas. Last year, the company’s success earned Wang a front-row seat at a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping."}],[{"start":74.9,"text":"Unitree shipped 5,500 humanoid robots last year. In the first nine months, 74 per cent of android revenue came from research and education orders, 13 per cent from consumer customers and 9 per cent from industrial demand. "}],[{"start":90.35000000000001,"text":"More than half of those industrial orders were for robots used in tours of commercial spaces. Unitree made a gross margin of 59.8 per cent over the same period — considerably higher than Shenzhen-based competitors UBTech and Dobot."}],[{"start":107.95000000000002,"text":"Analysts estimate the listing implies a valuation of about Rmb40bn ($5.9bn). That level would give it a price-to-sales ratio of 21.1 — a premium level they say is underpinned by high hopes that use cases for robots will expand. "}],[{"start":124.20000000000002,"text":"UBTech, another listed Chinese humanoid robot producer, trades at a price-to-sales ratio of 21.2, according to a Bloomberg poll of analysts. It shipped about 1,000 bots last year, while Shanghai-based AgiBot shipped more than 5,000. "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":139.60000000000002,"text":"While Unitree’s figures would make it the world’s largest android maker, analysts say convincing investors that it can apply robots in more commercial, large-scale use cases will be key to sustaining its valuation. "}],[{"start":153.95000000000002,"text":"“I think a key thing is that this is not the ultimate case,” said Kelvin Lau, an analyst at Daiwa Capital Markets. “After maybe three years . . . I do expect they can do much, much more.”"}],[{"start":165.45000000000002,"text":"Unitree made adjusted net profits of Rmb600mn on revenues of Rmb1.7bn in 2025, according to its prospectus. In the first nine months of last year, about 42 per cent of revenue came from its quadruped robot dogs, which are used in safety inspections and logistics, with most of the rest derived from humanoid sales. The company has reduced costs of both humanoid and quadruped robots in recent years partly by building many components in-house."}],[{"start":195.8,"text":"The company has earmarked almost half of the Rmb2bn it hopes to raise in the listing for research into “intelligent robotics models” — the software “brain” that will power future androids. Doing so will help accelerate deployment across a wider range of use cases, Unitree argued in its prospectus."}],[{"start":213.60000000000002,"text":"Marco Wang, a researcher at Interact Analysis, estimated that just 9 per cent of Unitree’s shipments went to “real-world” uses such as logistics or industrial settings. While Unitree lists the average price of its humanoids as Rmb167,600 in its prospectus, revenue figures for each segment suggest the robots used in those cases are more expensive, he said."}],[{"start":238.15000000000003,"text":"Orders from universities and research centres were usually small and did not drive repeated purchases, Wang said. Both research orders and entertainment sales have also been helped by government demand, with local authorities setting up state-backed robot training centres across China. "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":256.90000000000003,"text":"Tourism authorities, local governments and state-owned enterprises have also invested heavily in display robots, a use case that analysts argue is less sustainable than applying androids in commercial settings."}],[{"start":269.40000000000003,"text":"“At the end of the day they would need to shift to a solution provider because that’s a market that has high potential and that is a larger market,” said Wang."}],[{"start":279.55,"text":"Deepak Jayaraj, vice-president of hardware engineering and manufacturing at US-based agricultural robotmaker Four Growers, said Unitree’s ability to cut costs while increasing net revenue was rare, but the company had yet to prove the existence of the industrial use cases driving its targeted valuation."}],[{"start":298.25,"text":"There were compelling reasons to suggest humanoid robots could be useful in industries such as elderly care, but the idea that androids would completely replace factory labour or more traditional machines like robotic arms was more far-fetched, Jayaraj said. "}],[{"start":313.85,"text":"“Unitree is basically a hardware success story,” he added. “They’ve built the robotics system, but there’s not too much that they have proven in terms of ‘could this be an industrial labour replacement play?’” "}],[{"start":324.55,"text":"In February, Unitree was included on the US Department of Defense’s list of “Chinese military companies”, but the list has been deleted by the Pentagon without explanation. "}],[{"start":343.1,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1778575086_8819.mp3"}