New stock outlook | Increase in revenue without increase in profit, what is the investment value of the leading company Wensi Information with the "ink flat panel"?

On January 16th, according to the official website of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Guangzhou Onyx Information Technology Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Onyx Information"), with its main product being "e-ink tablets," submitted an application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for listing on the main board. According to Frost & Sullivan data, based on retail revenue in 2024, the company is the world's second-largest and China's largest knowledge-focused productivity tool brand. Its product portfolio includes high-speed e-readers, productivity tablets, and other products and services, mainly accessories for knowledge-focused productivity tools, external e-ink displays, the StarNote application, and revenue sharing with publishers. In this era of endless learning, with the increasing demand for paperless office and study, the public is willing to pay for knowledge-focused productivity tool brands. As a leading domestic brand, Onyx Information's listing in Hong Kong provides the market with a good observation window - how does the company's investment value stand and whether the market is willing to pay for its fundamentals? Increased revenue but no increase in profit vs. global user base Founded in 2008, Onyx Information is a brand dedicated to empowering global knowledge workers to efficiently gain deep insights from textual information through a combination of software and hardware tools. Specifically, the company focuses on the processing needs of text information generated from listening, memorizing, reading, and writing, providing consumer-grade eye-protecting reading and writing smart terminals, a self-developed open-source operating system BOOX OS combined with AI and cloud services, and specialized reading and writing vertical applications for users to enhance their reading and writing experience. Looking at the product structure, Onyx Information's product line is diverse and somewhat technology-oriented - the company's product displays cover screen sizes from 6 inches to 25.3 inches, catering to various scenarios from reading to professional note-taking. Its operating system focuses on optimizing the display and refresh performance of e-ink screens, showing strong technological specificity. As of September 30, 2025, the company serves customers in over 100 countries and regions, with nearly a million monthly active users on BOOX OS, providing a broad global user base. At the same time, among the early BOOX OS seed registered users who bound their devices to their accounts, approximately 38.5% remained active after nearly nine years, indicating a strong user retention rate. With a broad user base, Onyx Information has also accumulated a certain scale effect in revenue, but it also shows a clear characteristic of increased revenue without increased profit. According to the prospectus data, in the first three quarters of 2023 to 2025, the company achieved revenues of 8.04 billion yuan, 10.18 billion yuan (a 26.62% year-on-year increase), and 7.99 billion yuan (a 10.21% year-on-year increase). Although revenue is growing year by year, the momentum has slowed down. At the same time, the company's net profit has shown a downward trend - in the first three quarters of 2023 to 2025, the company achieved net profits of 1.24 billion yuan, 1.21 billion yuan (a 2.42% year-on-year decline), and 1.03 billion yuan (a 3.74% year-on-year decline), indicating two years of increased revenue but no increased profit. As net profit continues to decline, Onyx Information's operating cash flow has also turned negative, facing pressure on working capital. According to the prospectus data, in the first nine months of 2025, the company's net cash flow from operating activities was -410 million yuan. The prospectus explains that this is mainly due to factors such as an increase in inventory and changes in working capital. By the end of September 2025, inventory had increased significantly to 435 million yuan, compared to 242 million yuan at the end of 2023. Based on the above, it can be seen that Onyx Information Technology is a technology company that occupies a leading position in a niche field and has the ability to combine software and hardware. The core focus of its listing lies in whether it can use capital market resources to address the current profit and cash flow pressures and transform its ecological advantages into more stable profitability and growth. Positioning in a high-potential competition track, or facing reliance on overseas business "When AI meets the e-ink screen, static words begin to flow." Currently, the global knowledge-focused productivity tool market is at a turning point, transitioning from pure reading scenarios to a broader productivity-oriented direction. Growth in Beijing Dynamic Power is driven by a combination of increased demand rigidity, deepening closed-loop scenarios, increasing product value density, and expanding service ecology. From the demand side, increasing awareness of visual health and structural demand for high-density information processing are laying a solid foundation for reflective display terminals. On the supply side, a richer content ecosystem, breakthroughs in color display technology, and deeper AI empowerment are collectively driving improvements in user experience and reassessment of commercial value. Benefiting from the continuously expanding demand, this track also shows characteristics of high growth and high potential. According to Frost & Sullivan data, the penetration rate of knowledge-based productivity tools reached 51.2% in 2024 and is expected to increase to 71.0% by 2030. With the growth of AI and cloud services, the knowledge-focused productivity tools market is expected to experience significant expansion, with the market size projected to increase from 291 billion yuan in 2024 to 821 billion yuan in 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 15.6% from 2025 to 2030. Being part of this market, Onyx Information, with its leading advantages, has also established certain technological barriers - it has developed an open-source operating system BOOX OS and a note-taking application StarNote, forming a moat that distinguishes it from pure hardware manufacturers and undoubtedly provides significant support for the company to anchor industry development dividends. However, looking further, some potential risks and challenges also bring uncertainties to Onyx Information's future growth. Firstly, market competition is intensifying, and the company not only needs to face competition from hardware manufacturers like Amazon (Kindle Scribe), Hanwang, Iflytek Co., Ltd, in terms of hardware and content ecosystems but also faces the risk of squeezed market share, as these giants may press its survival space through bundled content, price wars, or technological advantages. Therefore, Onyx Information must carve out a "small and beautiful" path between giants and miscellaneous troops. Secondly, Onyx Information's income is highly dependent on overseas regions, and the overall deterioration of economic conditions due to factors such as trade tensions may negatively impact the company's business. According to the prospectus, about 60% of the company's revenue comes from overseas, with the US market accounting for about 20%. Measures such as increased tariffs implemented by the US may have a negative impact on competition in the US market, ultimately affecting the company's revenue and profitability. In conclusion, Onyx Information Technology is a leading company positioned in a high-growth track but carrying short-term financial pressure and operational risks. Its fundamental contradiction lies in the sharp contrast between the long-term narrative of market prospects (ecological and global) and the short-term reality of declining profitability and tight cash flow. Inventory and supply chain issues have exposed its operational capabilities as a hardware manufacturer to the test in terms of accurate forecasting and inventory management. For investors, this is more like a choice of "coexisting growth and risk": recognizing the long-term potential brought by its ecological layout and leading position in the niche market, but also facing the significant short-term financial and operational risks.