IPO Preview | Revenue and gross margin trending upward, while profitability and cash flow trend downward: Why is Siasun Robot&Automation's "single-product champion" Chenxing Technology struggling to generate cash?

Title context: IPO Preview | Revenue and gross margin trending upward, while profitability and cash flow trend downward: Why is Siasun Robot&Automation's "single-product champion" Chenxing Technology struggling to generate cash? Text: A niche track can produce a single-product champion, but for a single-product champion to grow into a platform-based enterprise, it must always surmount three great mountains: scale, product categories, and profitability. In August, Chenxing Technology (formerly known as "Atom Siasun Robot&Automation") knocked on the door of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange's Chapter 18C for the second time. This company, which emerged from Tianjin University's parallel Siasun Robot&Automation R&D system, established a foothold in the industrial automation circle in its early years under the name "Atom." After changing its name in June this year, it is trying to tear off the label of "a single parallel manufacturer" and move toward a broader narrative of a high-speed Siasun Robot&Automation platform. Judging from market share data, it can indeed be called a rare top performer in a domestic niche trackbased on 2025 shipment volume statistics, its domestic parallel Siasun Robot&Automation market share was 20.4%, ranking first, and its global share was 7.7%, ranking second. But opening the prospectus reveals that the other side of high growth is the reality of repeatedly fluctuating profitability, sustained pressure on operating cash flow, and long-term losses in new products. For hard-tech IPOs, can the halo of a "single-product champion" be smoothly transmitted to a multi-category platform? This is the most core question Chenxing Technology leaves to the capital market. Revenue and gross margin up VS profitability and cash flow down GMTEight observed that Chenxing Technology is a high-speed industrial Siasun Robot&Automation company dedicated to the research and development, production, sales, and service of high-speed, high-reliability Siasun Robot&Automation. Its product matrix covers four major series: parallel Siasun Robot&Automation, high-speed selective compliance assembly robot arm (SCARA) Siasun Robot&Automation, heavy-load collaborative Siasun Robot&Automation (collaborative Siasun Robot&Automation), and embodied intelligence Siasun Robot&Automation. (Image source: Chenxing Technology prospectus) Looking through core financial indicators, as the "single-product champion" in the Siasun Robot&Automation track, Chenxing Technology's upward slope in revenue and gross margin is worth anticipating, but the "foundation" of profitability has still not been solidified. According to the prospectus, from 2023 to 2025, Chenxing Technology's revenue increased from 93 million yuan to 253 million yuan, an increase of about 172% over two years, with a compound annual growth rate of 64.4%; gross margin rose from 17.0% to 30.5%. In the first half of 2026, revenue was 135 million yuan, up another 42.79% year over year. Looking at this curve alone, it is hard not to be amazed by its slope. But the rhythm of the income statement is differenta loss of 39.253 million yuan in 2023, an expanded loss of 47.068 million yuan in 2024, a barely achieved turnaround to a profit of 739,000 yuan in 2025, and another loss of 28.802 million yuan in the first half of 2026. Two years of losses, one year of thin profit, and half a year of renewed bleeding form a standard "roller-coaster curve." Among this, the quality of that 739,000 yuan profit in 2025 largely came from 8.884 million yuan in government subsidies obtained that year. After excluding subsidies, the operating level was still loss-making. In response, Chenxing Technology also admitted in the prospectus that it expects to still record a net loss of about 21.4 million yuan for the full year of 2026. What is more worth penetrating than book profit is the change in cash flow and receivables. From 2023 to the first half of 2026, net cash flow from operating activities was -14.862 million yuan, -6.592 million yuan, -23.156 million yuan, and -28.564 million yuan, respectively, showing an accelerating outflow trend. At the same time, trade receivables and bills receivable expanded from 13.376 million yuan in 2024 to 71.707 million yuan in the first half of 2026, growing far faster than revenue. Book revenue is getting larger and larger, while the money in its pocket is getting smaller and smaller. This is the most dangerous signal in Chenxing Technology's financial data. So where did Chenxing Technology's profits go? The answer is hidden in the product structure. As the base business, parallel Siasun Robot&Automation has always been a stable source of profit, and its revenue scale has continued to rise; but its share of total revenue fell from 64.2% in 2023 to 43.0% in the first half of 2026, indicating that growth is increasingly coming from new products still in the cultivation period. Among them, high-speed SCARA Siasun Robot&Automation is in a stage of "trading losses for share," with gross margin remaining negative for a long time from 2024 to the first half of 2026; heavy-load collaborative Siasun Robot&Automation's gross margin was as low as -198.9% in 2023 and only turned positive in 2024. Embodied intelligence Siasun Robot&Automation currently contributes weakly to revenue and is still in the cultivation period. It can be seen that along with the differentiation of the product structure, Chenxing Technology has also laid the cost of expansion out in the open. From the above, it can be seen that Chenxing Technology's growth story is clearly like a cross-section of the high-growth narrative in China's Siasun Robot&Automation track: revenue and gross margin up, profitability and cash flow down; the product matrix is spreading wider and wider, yet operating cash generation has still not been opened up. For it, the real moat is not only preserving the profits of parallel Siasun Robot&Automation, but also enabling SCARA, collaborative, and embodied intelligence to move from "trading losses for share" to "trading technology for profit," bringing accounts receivable back to cash, and returning scale growth to a positive operating cycle. The track is growing at double-digit rates, but red-ocean involution + cyclical fluctuations suppress growth space Combined with the industry situation, the high-speed industrial Siasun Robot&Automation track in which Chenxing Technology operates is itself a composite of opportunities and challengeson one side are the long-term possibilities brought by flexible manufacturing transformation, domestic substitution, and AI + embodied intelligence; on the other side are the realistic constraints of a niche with an inherent ceiling, fierce competition, and a strongly cyclical downstream. First, look at the base business, parallel Siasun Robot&Automation. In 2025, China's parallel Siasun Robot&Automation shipment value was about 1,319.2 million yuan, and it is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 12.5% to 2,376.8 million yuan by 2030. It is not a super-large track, but a niche category precisely focused on specific scenarios such as high-speed picking, sorting, and boxing. Benefiting from rising automation penetration in industries such as food and beverages, pharmaceuticals, lithium batteries, and photovoltaics, the domestic market has maintained steady double-digit growth. But the pie itself is limited. If it remains only here, long-term growth will gradually hit a ceiling. This is also the underlying logic behind Chenxing's proactive expansion outward into SCARA, collaborative, and embodied intelligence product lines: a single niche is not enough to support the long-term growth narrative of a listed company. When extending outward, however, Chenxing Technology steps into a red ocean. Although both the SCARA track and the collaborative Siasun Robot&Automation track maintain strong growthin 2025, China's SCARA market was 3.6 billion yuan and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 13.5% to 6.8 billion yuan by 2030; China's collaborative Siasun Robot&Automation shipment value was 3.8 billion yuan and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 33.4% to 16 billion yuanthe SCARA track is already a position heavily guarded by domestic and overseas players such as Inovance, Estun Automation, and Epson, and leading manufacturers have accumulated years of experience in supply chains, costs, channels, and customer case studies; collaborative Siasun Robot&Automation is likewise crowded with players, and price wars occur from time to time. Then look at the longer-term story: the wave of embodied intelligence has added new option value to high-speed Siasun Robot&Automation. Iterations in AI vision, motion planning, and multi-machine collaboration are expected to open new scenarios such as precision assembly and flexible workstations; but a clear distinction must be made between trends and performancetechnology routes are still evolving rapidly, and prototype validation, scenario refinement, and large-scale mass production all require a long time, making it difficult to contribute substantial revenue and profit in the short term. Looking further, the prospects and risks of the track in which Chenxing Technology operates are also very clear. The industry-level dividends lie in the fact that the general direction of flexible upgrading in domestic manufacturing is certain, and many traditional production lines are switching from rigid fixed equipment to high-speed Siasun Robot&Automation solutions that can be quickly adjusted; the maturity of the domestic supply chain continues to improve, and local manufacturers have natural advantages in rapid iteration, proximity to customers, and customized adaptation; policy support for intelligent manufacturing and independent controllability of high-end equipment also provides long-term environmental support for the industry. Industry-level risks lie in the fact that manufacturing capital expenditure has strong cyclicality. Once the pace of capacity expansion slows in downstream industries such as new energy, 3C, and food, Siasun Robot&Automation orders will come under direct pressure; the body track is prone to product convergence, and new entrants continue to pour in, easily suppressing the industry's overall gross margin center; embodied and humanoid-related directions involve high R&D investment and unclear commercialization timing, making it easy for companies to fall into the investment trap of "continuous cash burning and uncertain returns." The Siasun Robot&Automation track never lacks stories, but what is truly valuable is the ability to turn stories into stable orders and then turn orders into real cash flow. Therefore, for a company like Chenxing that starts from a niche leader and breaks out outward, what it has obtained is an admission ticket to a larger market, not a ticket to certain victory. Conclusion In summary, it is not difficult to see that Chenxing Technology is a company with a technological foundationoriginating from Tianjin University's parallel Siasun Robot&Automation team, with R&D expenses maintained at around 10%-20% year-round, and having achieved the number one shipment volume in a niche track, with a product matrix covering multiple categories from parallel to embodied intelligence. But the capital market never rewards those "with a foundation"; it only rewards those who can turn that foundation into profit. Chenxing Technology's IPO is essentially a validation question of "whether a niche track leader can cross category boundaries." The Chapter 18C rules provide a listing channel, but whether it can run through a profit model in new categories after financing is the watershed that determines the long-term value of this stock.