New Stock Outlook | Extreme Flight Technology Reapplies: Agricultural drones' growth rate drops sharply to single digits Why is the second growth curve still not materializing?

Under the dual drivers of structural shortage of global agricultural labor force and the wave of "machines replacing humans," Jiangsu Nonghua Intelligent Agriculture Technology is transitioning from concept to large-scale implementation. On March 26, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange disclosed information indicating that Guangzhou Jifei Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Jifei Technology) has once again submitted an application for listing on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with Huatai International serving as the sole sponsor. This comes after the company, a leading player in the agricultural Siasun Robot & Automation sector, made its first attempt to enter the capital market in September 2025, reflecting a crucial transformation from "continuous investment" to "initial profit" for a technology-driven company, as well as a deep bet on the global agricultural intelligence race. According to Frost & Sullivan data, Jifei Technology ranked second in the global agricultural Siasun Robot & Automation and agricultural unmanned aerial vehicles industries in 2024 with market shares of 10.7% and 17.1% respectively, only behind DJI. More notably is the "qualitative change" in its financial performance: from a loss of 133 million yuan in 2023, the company turned profitable in 2024 with a net profit of 70.407 million yuan, which further increased to 124 million yuan in 2025. Behind this transformation is the company's expansion from a single crop protection drone to an "aerial-ground integrated" agricultural Siasun Robot & Automation ecosystem, as well as strong growth in overseas markets (accounting for over 34% of revenue) - where the gross profit margin reaches 59.3%, becoming a core driver of profitability. With the global agricultural Siasun Robot & Automation market expected to exceed 70 billion yuan by 2029, can Jifei Technology tell a new story of "machines replacing humans" in the capital market based on its technological barriers and first-mover advantage? Profit appearance can't hide growth deceleration R&D "lean" sets hidden risks It may seem like a cause for celebration that Jifei Technology turned its losses into profits in 2024 and further expanded its net profit to 124 million yuan in 2025, positioning itself as a hot contender in the capital markets as the "number one stock in the agricultural drone industry." However, a closer look at its revenue structure, profit sources, and cash flow reveals that the company's profit foundation remains fragile, with growth concerns and structural challenges intertwined. Behind the narrative of being the "leader in agricultural Siasun Robot & Automation" lies a deep reliance on a single product market and short-term cost advantages. From the revenue perspective, Jifei Technology's revenue from 2023 to 2025 was 614 million yuan, 1.066 billion yuan, and 1.166 billion yuan, respectively. While the apparent three-year compound growth rate was 36.5% in 2025, the true situation of that year is far from impressive. After a significant year-on-year revenue growth of 73.4% in 2024, the growth rate plummeted to just 9.4% in 2025, showcasing a drastic shift from "high-speed growth" to "basic stagnation" within three quarters. This cliff-like slowdown reflects the fact that the ceiling for the company's core business of agricultural drones has been reached. In 2025, agricultural drone revenue accounted for a high proportion of 87.6%, compared to 81.2% in 2023, further increasing product concentration. This highly single-stream revenue structure means that the company's overall performance is heavily reliant on the prosperity of a single product sector. More alarming is the significant concern in the agricultural drone business. While the revenue from this business surged by 87.5% in 2024, the growth rate dropped to just 9.2% in 2025. This rapid decline from "double-digit growth" to "single-digit growth" in just one year indicates that Jifei's penetration in the domestic market is approaching a bottleneck, with the marginal returns on its pricing strategy diminishing rapidly. The supposedly "impressive" performance on the profit front also fails to hold up under close scrutiny. Although the overall gross margin increased from 18.9% in 2023 to 35.7% in 2025, and the net profit margin improved from -21.6% to 10.6%, this enhancement heavily relies on the pull of high-margin overseas business. In 2025, the company's overseas revenue was 419 million yuan, accounting for 35.9% of total revenue, with a gross margin of 59.3% - far surpassing the 22.4% gross margin from domestic markets. In other words, although the overseas business contributed less than 40% of the revenue, it generated over 60% of the gross profit, creating a "top-heavy" profit structure. This structural imbalance highlights Jifei's deep reliance on the dividends of the overseas markets. Most critically, Jifei Technology's profitability does not stem from a qualitative transformation in product capabilities or business model, but rather from short-term cost-cutting measures. From 2023 to 2025, the company's R&D expenses were 160 million yuan, 159 million yuan, and 176 million yuan, respectively, with the R&D expense ratio plummeting from 26% in 2023 to approximately 15% in 2025. For a high-tech company with a core narrative of being "technology-driven," such a sharp reduction in R&D intensity is a dangerous signal. In the high-tech manufacturing industry, R&D is the fundamental safeguard of competitiveness. If Jifei Technology's profit growth primarily results from cutting back on investments in future technologies rather than gains in market share or product value, this "profitability" becomes nothing more than borrowing from the future for short-term gains showcased in current financial reports. Missing the second curve: New business struggles in hardware sales bottleneck Besides the exhaustion shown by the core business in the quagmire of "quantity increase, price decrease," Jifei Technology's much-anticipated "second growth curve" remains in an embarrassing situation of "early to rise, late to gather," as the company's growth logic faces a structural question of being "big but not strong." A closer examination of the widening gap between sales volume and average price reveals the fragility of the quality of growth in the agricultural drone business. Between 2023 and 2025, Jifei's agricultural drone sales volume increased from over 10,000 units to 26,000 units, achieving a doubling of sales; however, during the same period, the average selling price of the products dropped from 48,000 yuan to 39,000 yuan, a decrease of nearly 20%. In the competitive market battle, Jifei failed to maintain pricing power through technological premium, instead getting pulled into a vortex of price wars. This model of "quantity increase, price decrease" essentially entails sacrificing profit margins for market share. Meanwhile, the "all-scenario agricultural Siasun Robot & Automation" narrative that Jifei Technology has been telling to the capital markets for years appears feeble in the face of financial data. While the company's long-established agricultural unmanned vehicle, agricultural machinery autopilot, and smart farm IoT products seem to form a comprehensive product portfolio, their revenue contributions are negligible. In 2025, revenue from agricultural unmanned vehicles was only 17.09 million yuan, despite a nearly tenfold increase in sales volume, the average price plummeted to 29,000 yuan, raising questions about whether the surge in sales stems from genuine demand for productivity replacement or merely a spike in curiosity-driven purchases due to low prices. If it's the latter, once the price dividend diminishes, sales may experience a steep decline. The agricultural machinery autopilot business is equally uninspiring, with declining revenue and a continued downward trend in average price, showing that this business has yet to find a stable commercial anchor. Among the three new business ventures, the only one showing positive growth is the smart farm IoT products, with revenue in 2025 growing by over 200% year-on-year. However, behind this impressive growth rate lies a very low unit price (average of only 513 yuan) and a hardware-oriented form mainly focused on sensors. This indicates that Jifei's IoT business is still in the early stages of low-dimensional hardware deployment, far from the high-stickiness, high-margin "data service" model. In essence, Jifei Technology's business predicament reflects a fundamental commercial logic paradox in the agricultural Siasun Robot & Automation track: agricultural drones are essentially low-frequency hardware devices, with a replacement purchase cycle lasting three to five years. A growth model solely dependent on hardware sales inherently comes with a phased ceiling. Jifei's core product has shown signs of exhaustion, new business ventures have yet to take off, and revenue from software services remains minuscule. Faced with mounting pressures from intensifying competition and a slowdown in hardware sales growth, the company's product structure imbalance is evolving from a financial "risk" to a "hard injury" in its growth narrative. If it fails to truly transition from "selling devices" to "selling services" to achieve a complete business loop, Jifei Technology's IPO this time may not mark the beginning of a new growth cycle but a challenging breakout in the existing market competition.