New stock preview | Good performance hides concerns, how should Qijie Electronics, which has become the industry leader, be valued?

In recent years, the market for automotive wireless sensor SoCs has experienced significant growth, driven by three major trends in the core DRIVE: the rapid popularization of smart electric vehicles, which directly drives the demand for functions such as wireless battery management and tire pressure monitoring; the continuous tightening of global automotive safety and energy efficiency regulations, such as the mandatory installation of TPMS and the implementation of new battery safety standards, providing a clear path for technological application; and the accelerating evolution of automotive electronic architecture towards centralization and lightweight, highlighting the advantages of wireless sensing in system simplification and reliability enhancement. Driven by these multiple forces, automotive wireless sensor SoCs have steadily positioned themselves at the forefront of industry development, becoming a golden track in the field of automotive electronics with high certainty and growth potential. Against this background, the largest automotive wireless sensor SoC company in China has begun to accelerate its push into the capital market. Following its initial filing on September 5, 2025, Jiangsu Jicky Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. (referred to as Jicky Electronics) submitted a second application for listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange Main Board on March 6, with CICC and GUOTAI JUNAN I as joint sponsors. According to Frost & Sullivan report, Jicky Electronics ranked as the third largest global and the largest Chinese automotive wireless sensor SoC company in 2024. While leading in market share, the company's performance has also shown a steady improvement. The prospectus shows that from 2023 to 2025, the company's revenue increased from 223 million yuan to 478 million yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 46.39%; although the adjusted net profit has not turned positive during the same period, the loss has significantly narrowed from -187 million yuan to -31.876 million yuan, showing a clear trend of reduction. In addition, the strong lineup of shareholders is also a plus for Jicky Electronics, with a shareholder structure characterized by "founder holding + guidance from national funds + deep integration with industrial capital + diversified financial investment," showing a luxurious and highly strategic synergy. Based on these factors, Jicky Electronics, positioned in a high-growth track with a strong market position, growth momentum, and strong shareholder support, raises the question of what valuation level it should receive, which has become a highly watched issue in the new stock market and semiconductor industry. Behind the industry leader: dual-driving forces and luxury capital support The rise of Jicky Electronics is a typical slice of China's chip industry's independent breakthrough. The key turning point in the story came in 2018 - after nearly five years of industry accumulation, Jicky Electronics took the lead in launching the first domestically produced TPMS (tire pressure monitoring) sensor chip for automotive pre-installation in the industry reshuffle, breaking the foreign monopoly and establishing itself as a leader in the field of automotive sensor chips. Starting from this breakthrough, Jicky Electronics embarked on a chapter of rapid growth. In 2021, the company entered a new stage of dual expansion of products and platforms: while the TPMS chip achieved mass application, its USI (Universal Sensor Interface) chip began mass production, and the world's first BPS (Battery Pressure Sensor) chip was introduced, successfully extending its business from traditional automotive to the thriving new energy field, and initially building a diversified product matrix. The expansion of the product line directly drove the acceleration of scale application and the rise in market position. In 2022, the cumulative shipment of its vehicle-grade TPMS chips exceeded 5 million units, and the USI chip reached the million-level. With the launch of more advanced BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) TPMS chips and ultrasonic sensor chips in 2024, the annual shipment of automotive chips had soared to 70 million units in that year, significantly enhancing scale effects. Continuous technological iteration and production capacity finally bore fruit in 2025: the company successfully launched the wBMS (wireless Battery Management System) chip for the next generation of battery management, and fully entered the mass production phase of ultrasonic sensor chips, further consolidating its system-level solution capability in the intelligent driving perception layer. By this time, Jicky Electronics had built a strong product portfolio centered around intelligent tire chips, BMS chips, USI chips, and ultrasonic sensor chips. In 2025, the revenue contribution from these product lines was 60.9%, 14.0%, 24.0%, and 1.1% respectively, demonstrating the synergy and growth potential of its diversified product matrix. In parallel with product innovation, the company has also established a balanced channel system covering both direct sales and distribution: the direct sales system is deeply integrated with first-tier suppliers in the automotive industry, enabling the integration of domestically produced chips into multiple mainstream brands; while the distribution network effectively expands market coverage. In 2025, the revenue proportions of direct sales and distribution channels were 52.3% and 47.7% respectively, forming a healthy and stable dual-driving pattern. The combined effect of solid product capabilities and efficient channel network has been reflected in its market share. In 2025, with a revenue of 291 million yuan, Jicky Electronics ranked third in the global market for wireless automotive sensor chips, holding an 8.5% market share. In the Chinese market, its leading position is even more significant, with a 21.6% share making it the largest local supplier in the field. Of course, behind the company's industry leadership is the support of various capital players in the primary market. According to the prospectus, from its establishment in 2015 to the submission of the prospectus, Jicky Electronics has completed 8 rounds of financing, with its post-investment valuation reaching 3.635 billion yuan after the completion of the D+ round of financing in 2024. Currently, the shareholder structure of Jicky Electronics features a clear characteristic of "founder holding + guidance from national funds + deep integration with industrial capital + diversified financial investment." The founder controls approximately 32.25% of the shares directly and indirectly, ensuring stable control. In addition, state-owned mixed-ownership reform funds, national funds such as China Venture Capital, and industrial capital such as SAIC Motor Corporation's Shangqi Capital, Geely Auto's Geely Joint Venture No. 5 Investment, Shanghai Baolong Automotive Technology Co., Ltd., and GAC Capital hold approximately 6.05%, 4.33%, 3.91%, 2.09%, and 1.48% of shares respectively, enriching the company's shareholder structure with deep business synergy. The shareholder structure also includes several well-known VC/PE institutions. According to the prospectus, Haifeng Investment Co., Ltd. holds 6.44% of the shares, making it the second largest shareholder, while leading VC/PE firms such as Sequoia Capital, Morning Venture Capital, Source Code Capital, Qingdao Huaxin Chuang Original Venture Investment Center, and the brokerage private equity fund Guangfa Xinde hold approximately 6%, 4.88%, 3.03%, 3.7%, and 2.23% of Jicky Electronics shares. In summary, the shareholder structure of Jicky Electronics forms a strong "four-in-one" combination of control power, strategic resources, industrial synergy, and capital wisdom, creating a high-level strategic synergy that provides comprehensive support for the company's long-term development and market competition. Multiple factors drive profit improvement, with high growth prospects and multiple challenges From a performance perspective, Jicky Electronics has shown a clear trend of continuous improvement in recent years. According to the prospectus, from 2024 to 2025, the company's revenue was approximately 223 million, 348 million, and 478 million yuan, showing steady and healthy growth. Specifically, the outstanding performance on the revenue side is mainly due to the increasing demand in downstream markets, driving overall revenue growth across all product lines. Among them, the performance of the smart tire SoC product is particularly outstanding, with the product's share of the company's revenue jumping from 38.6% in 2023 to 60.9% in 2025, becoming the core driver of the company's growth. In terms of sales channels, Jicky Electronics has developed a balanced and coordinated pattern of distribution and direct sales. From 2023 to 2025, both channels have jointly driven revenue growth, showing a significant "dual-driving" effect. With the continuous growth in revenue scale, Jicky Electronics' gross profit margin has increased rapidly. From 2023 to 2025, the company's gross profit margins were 16.6%, 20.3%, and 28%, steadily rising. This is mainly due to two reasons. First, the mass application of the smart tire SoC has led to economies of scale, with the product's gross profit margin continuously increasing from -9.6% in 2023 to 20.3% in 2025, becoming the core driver of the rise in gross profit margin. Second, the gross profit margin of the USI SoC chip has steadily increased due to the decrease in wafer costs, also contributing to the growth of the company's overall gross profit margin. With the simultaneous increase in revenue and gross profit margins, Jicky Electronics has further improved its profitability through effective cost reduction and efficiency improvement strategies. The prospectus shows that since 2023, the proportion of various expenses to revenue has shown a downward trend, with the operating expense ratio dropping significantly from 66.3% in 2023 to 39% in 2025. This clearly demonstrates that while expanding business scale, continuous optimization of cost structure and operational efficiency has become a key driving factor in narrowing losses for the company. From an industry development perspective, Jicky Electronics still has plenty of room for growth. Frost & Sullivan predicts that the global wireless sensor SoC industry will reach a market size of 50.7 billion yuan by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 48.7% from 2025 to 2030, and China will be the largest market globally, with an even higher compound growth rate of 60.2% during the same period, reaching a market size of 26.6 billion yuan by 2030. The continuous high-speed growth of the industry provides fertile ground for Jicky Electronics' development, and the company is expected to further seize market opportunities with its leading technology and scale advantages, demonstrating strong growth certainty. However, this does not mean that Jicky Electronics can rest easy. The company's business operations still face multiple potential risks and challenges. First and foremost is the relatively high concentration of market and customer. Currently, Jicky Electronics' top five customers account for over 50% of its revenue, with the largest single customer contributing approximately one-third of revenue. Additionally, its business is highly focused on the automotive industry, which has strong cyclical fluctuations. Therefore, the ability to accelerate expansion into other sectors such as industrial and consumer electronics, promote diversification of application industries, reduce dependence on a single large customer and a single industry, is crucial not only for the company's risk resistance and operational stability but also for unlocking broader growth opportunities and enhancing long-term valuation. Secondly, market competition and technological iteration pose another significant pressure. The global automotive wireless sensor SoC market has long been dominated by international giants such as Infineon and NXP, with a concentrated and fiercely competitive landscape. At the same time, the rapid evolution of automotive-grade chip technology requires companies to continuously invest in high-intensity research and development. However, Jicky Electronics' R&D expenditure growth has slowed significantly since 2023, perhaps in an effort to optimize profit performance before going public. If this strategy causes the company to miss crucial technological positioning opportunities and weaken its product competitiveness, it may erode the company's long-term core competitiveness and present a difficult trade-off between market share and technological leadership. Furthermore, Jicky Electronics operates in a Fabless (without a wafer fab) model, with its chip production entirely dependent on third-party wafer foundries and packaging and testing partners. This model makes the company's product delivery, cost control, and supply chain stability directly dependent on the capacity, prices, and cooperation of upstream manufacturers. Especially in the current industry context of tight wafer capacity and rising outsourcing costs, the company's ability to effectively pass on cost increases to downstream customers will directly test its bargaining power in the supply chain and pose a key challenge to the stability of its future profit space.