New Stock Prospects | From License Big Players to "Channelization" Dilemma: The Profit Paradox of Shengwei Era

In the background of fierce competition in the travel track and the difficulty in finding a turning point in profitability, domestic comprehensive travel service provider Shengwei Era once again launched an attack on the capital market. According to the latest disclosure from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Shengwei Era officially submitted an application for listing on the main board on June 29, with Guoyin International as the sole sponsor. This is the company's third submission since November 2024, and after the failure of the previous two applications, the insistence on changing the sponsor "challenging the Hong Kong stock market three times" reflects the company's urgent need for capitalization. As a company deeply rooted in the travel sector, Shengwei Era occupies a place with 207 online car-hailing licenses and ranking first in the road passenger information service market. However, faced with the reality that the online car-hailing business is highly dependent on platforms such as Gaode, accumulated losses exceed 2.1 billion yuan, and the gross profit margin has been in a long-term downturn, whether it can successfully break through and achieve self-sufficiency in the highly competitive travel market becomes the core suspense of this IPO that is highly anticipated by the market. Under the "bloated" revenue is structural hemorrhage The prospectus shows that Shengwei Era's revenue scale has continued to rise over the past three years, reaching 1.206 billion yuan in 2023, 1.594 billion yuan in 2024, and 1.833 billion yuan in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 23.2%. However, this expansion trend took a turning point in 2026 - with revenue of 5.57 billion yuan in the first four months, a year-on-year decrease of 5.7%. Beneath the fluctuation in revenue figures is a more severe profitability dilemma: during this period, the net losses were 482 million yuan, 426 million yuan, 127 million yuan, and 21 million yuan respectively, and the accumulated operating losses have exceeded 2.1 billion yuan. Behind the "face" of revenue growth is the continuous "bleeding" of profitability. The root cause of the problem lies in the serious imbalance of the business structure. The online car-hailing business contributes more than 90% of the company's revenue, with the proportion continuously rising - from 85.3% in 2023 to 91.9% in the first four months of 2026. However, the gross profit margin of this core business has been below 3% for a long time, dropping to -0.2% in 2024, leading to a period of gross loss. Although it slightly rebounded to 2.4% in the first four months of 2026, this level of profitability is far from enough to cover the huge operating costs. The real blood-making capabilities lie in the other two businesses - digital solutions and passenger support services, with gross profit margins ranging from 15% to 68%, serving as the company's high-quality source of cash flow. However, the combined revenue share of the two is less than 10%: in 2025, revenue from online ticketing and customized passenger transport was only 62 million yuan, accounting for 3.4%; and revenue from digital solutions was 106 million yuan, accounting for 5.8%. The thin volume of high-margin business and the continuous loss in the low-margin core business, the structural contradiction of "big but not strong, growing but not profitable", has become the fundamental obstacle in front of the profitability goals. The pressure on the cost side is equally undeniable. The ratio of driver service fees to revenue has increased from 78.4% in 2023 to the latest 82.3%, and the channel commission paid to aggregation platforms has also increased from 10% to 11.5%. With both ends of costs rising simultaneously, it means that the company lacks bargaining power on both the driver and traffic channel sides, and the profit space is squeezed on both sides. The company itself admits in the prospectus that it expects to start generating pure profits from 2028 - which means it will take a full 16 years from establishment to profitability. The "invisible capacity" at the bottom of the value chain The financial imbalance is rooted in Shengwei Era's weak position in the online car-hailing track. The current domestic online car-hailing market has formed a solidified pattern of "one super and four strong". According to Frost & Sullivan data, the top five platforms collectively hold more than 89% of the market share by 2025. Didi firmly occupies the leading position with 72.1% share, CAOCAO INC and T3 Travel account for 6.9% and 5.6% respectively. The remaining hundreds of small and medium-sized platforms can only share less than 11% of the remaining market. According to GTV in 2025, Shengwei Era ranks only 13th, with a market share of 0.5%, placing it among the bottom players in the small and medium-sized players. Shengwei Era holds 207 "Network-based Taxi Operation Permits", covering a large number of lower-tier cities and ranking high in the number of licenses in the industry. However, the license advantage has not been translated into market share. The core weakness lies in the lack of an independent self-owned traffic ecosystem. Although the company has self-operated products such as "Travel 365" and "365 Car-hailing", online car-hailing orders are highly dependent on Gaode aggregation platform. From 2023 to the first four months of 2026, the share of GTV from Gaode continued to rise, reaching 89.5%, 93.9%, 94.7%, and 95.5%, respectively. The transaction volume from self-operated channels has been compressed to less than 5%. The cost of such high dependency is heavy. Consumers recognize the Gaode brand when taking a taxi, almost oblivious to the existence of "365 Car-hailing". Shengwei Era has essentially become an offline force executor in the Gaode ecosystem - responsible for vehicle dispatch, driver management, and other heavy asset operation processes, but relinquishing brand awareness and user stickiness to the aggregation platform. The company openly admits in its risk factors: "Our online car-hailing service business relies on our cooperation with a limited number of aggregation platforms." As the company's largest institutional shareholder with a 27.01% stake, Alibaba Travel and its ecosystem resources such as Gaode and Fliggy continue to drive traffic for the company, but this "transfusion-like" synergy inadvertently reinforces the company's dependence. The awkward position of "having many licenses but weak, and hidden capacity" has kept Shengwei Era at the bottom of the value chain. Under the dual constraints of lacking a self-owned traffic moat and bargaining power at both ends, the company, despite having a leading reserve of operating licenses in the industry, is struggling to achieve independent profitability in the fierce competition. The three times submission to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for an IPO is not only a practical appeal for the company to seek capital infusion but also the ultimate test of whether the "invisible capacity" can break through. However, the biggest story and hope for Shengwei Era lies in building an integrated urban and intercity travel platform. The huge flow of the online car-hailing business and its users can be diverted to its high-margin, high-barrier intercity digital business. In other words, the strategic losses of the online car-hailing business can be seen as customer acquisition costs, as long as it can successfully convert users to other profitable segments of the entire travel ecosystem, then these losses are valuable. Listing financing can provide valuable cash for the company to continue expanding its business, research and development of technology, and support it through the loss period until the turning point of profitability comes. In addition to supplementing operational blood, going public also provides funds and market credibility, creating the most crucial time window for the company to achieve "ecological synergy" and ultimately make its business model work.