New stock preview | When capital falls in love with 9.9 yuan hand-made dolls: How long can Sunnisendi's "sink miracle" last?

The Hong Kong Stock Exchange Main Board recently welcomed another "small and beautiful" player in the toy industry. On January 8th, the affordable IP toy company, Sunnysendy, officially submitted its application for listing, with Goldman Sachs and CICC serving as joint sponsors. This company, founded just ten years ago, has quickly captured the top spot in low-priced toy sales nationwide by targeting the mass consumer market with prices below 20 yuan, using officially licensed IP figures priced at an average of 9.9 yuan to enter the sinking market. Despite the significant revenue expansion and profit improvement shown in Sunnysendy's financial data provided, a deeper analysis of its financial statements reveals several noteworthy potential risks and challenges. Firstly, the company's growth relies on scale expansion, and profitability fluctuates. Although the revenue saw explosive growth from 2023 to 2025 (with an annual compound growth rate exceeding 100%), the company recorded net losses in 2023 and 2024, only turning a profit in the first nine months of 2025. This pattern of "loss in the early stages, profit in the later stages" demonstrates the company's sensitivity to profit with respect to scale. If growth slows down or market competition intensifies, the sustainability of profitability will be tested. Secondly, gross profit margins fluctuate significantly, indicating unstable cost control. The company's gross profit margin increased from 16.9% in 2023 to 35.3% in the first nine months of 2025, showing an improvement in cost structure but with significant fluctuations. Particularly, in the nine months ending September 30, 2024, the gross profit margin dropped to 14.7%, indicating that the company may face external impacts on raw materials, production, or pricing strategies, requiring time to verify profitability stability. Additionally, the company's operating expenses remain high, and operational efficiency improvement is questionable. Despite a decrease in the percentage of sales, research and development, and administrative expenses as a proportion of revenue, the sales and distribution costs in the first nine months of 2025 still accounted for 9.5%, administrative expenses for 8.7%, leading to an overall period expense ratio of over 20%. With a market positioning focused on "affordability", the relatively high cost structure may continue to squeeze long-term profit margins, especially in a context where industry growth may slow down in the future. In summary, Sunnysendy's financial performance, although showing high growth and a turning point in profits on the surface, still needs to be observed over a longer period and more complete financial disclosures to assess the stability of profitability, the sustainability of cost control, and the ability to resist risks in the growth model. IP dependence, fragile model, and high capital maturating risks linger Based on observations of its business composition, IP dependence, capital path, and governance structure analysis, Sunnysendy's business model sustainability and risk resistance are under significant scrutiny despite its high growth. Firstly, the company's business model underwent a drastic transformation, exposing single-point revenue risks. Within a short span of three years, Sunnysendy's business focus underwent a dramatic shift: in 2023, the "IP toys+" business model (where toys serve as promotional items for fast-moving consumer goods like food and beverages) contributed to 72% of revenue; in 2024, this business and the consumer-oriented "IP toy products" business each accounted for 50%; by the first nine months of 2025, the latter surged to 78.3%, becoming the absolute mainstay. This transformation, on the surface, reflects an upgrade from OEM to branding, but it actually reveals the fragility of the business foundation. The company's growth in 2025 was driven almost entirely by two blockbuster animated IPs, "Nezha: The Devil Child" and "Lang Lang Mountain Little Ghost," contributing approximately 200 million yuan to current total revenue, over half of total revenue. This growth model dependent on a single or a few IPs not only ties the company's performance to the high uncertainties of the film and television industry but also reveals a lack of self-owned product matrix and brand influence. If the subsequent IPs lose popularity or fail to renew authorization, the risk of a sharp decline in revenue will drastically increase. Secondly, short IP authorization periods and uncertain renewals constitute continuous operational constraints. The company acknowledges in its prospectus that the IP authorization agreements it obtains typically last only 1 to 2 years and do not guarantee automatic renewal. This creates a dual vulnerability at legal and commercial levels: on one hand, short-term authorizations make it challenging to support long-term product planning and channel cultivation, pushing the company into a cycle of constantly seeking new blockbusters; on the other hand, the IP holders often increase profit-sharing demands or transfer agreements to competitors after the expiry, putting the company in a passive position. Compared to companies like LEGO and Bandai, which have built moats through long-term self-owned IPs or deep strategic cooperation, Sunnysendy's IP strategy is more akin to "traffic business," making it difficult to solidify lasting brand value. Thirdly, high valuations resulting from capital maturating, while the profit foundation remains unstable. In 2025, the company completed two consecutive rounds of high-valuation financing in a short period: after receiving investment from Hillhouse Capital in October, its valuation reached 3.4 billion yuan; and after another financing round in December, the valuation rose to 4 billion yuan, approximately 80 times the valuation in 2019. The capital enthusiasm is clearly based on the short-term validation of its "fast supply chain response + IP affordable realization" abilities but has also placed the company under high expectations. More importantly, the narrow moat formed by the low-price strategy makes the first-mover advantage susceptible to erosion. While Sunnysendy has captured the top spot in the "under 20 yuan price range sales," the competition in the affordable toy market fundamentally comes down to supply chain efficiency and cost control. It has a low barrier to entry, making its products easily imitable, and with consumers being price-sensitive and brand loyalty limited. Although the company currently benefits from some scale and channel network advantages in terms of costs, this advantage is highly vulnerable to erosion by newcomers or existing competitors via price wars and imitation products. Especially as channels like MNSO and trendy toy stores extend towards upstream, the company's advantage in retail points may face pressure. In conclusion, Sunnysendy's growth is essentially driven by short-term blockbusters and accelerated by capital, yet it has not established a lasting competitive advantage core around self-owned IPs, brand influence, or technological barriers. Faced with multiple pressures from industry fluctuations, a increasingly complex authorization environment, and fierce competition in the affordable market, the company's ability to transform current scale advantages into sustainable profit models and brand assets will be a severe test it must face after going public.