Summary:
The company that sells the most robotic arms globally is losing more money the more it sells.
Phoenix Net Technology "Eye of the Storm" production
Having yet to shake off the impact of being publicly accused by its former COO, Yuexiang Technology is now facing a "heaven and hell" mid-term test.
On August 24, Yujiang Technology released its semi-annual report, with revenue of 316 million yuan in the first half of the year, doubling year-over-year; however, net losses expanded to 108 million yuan, with year-over-year increase of 163.8%. This company, which boasts the title of "world's first in collaborative robot sales", has accumulated losses of 376 million yuan over the past five years, with declining gross margin and a 30% drop in the price of its robotic arms over the past two years, and sales expenses that are twice those of its peers.
Capital markets have not applauded Yuejin's high growth. After the release of its half-year report, Yuejin's stock price has fallen for multiple days, with its current total market value at only HK$9.7 billion. More than a year ago, Yuejin Technology's stock price once reached HK$83.8, corresponding to a market value of HK$36.8 billion. From its peak, the decline has exceeded 73%.
Currently, the company that holds the title of "world's top collaborative robot sales" is stuck in a critical window of transitioning from Hong Kong stocks back to A-shares, having just passed the Shenzhen Stock Exchange's ChiNext listing committee review on July 22, with plans to raise 1.2 billion yuan. With the crown of being the global sales leader on its head, the loss-making financial statements are now laid out before investors. How will Uyida Technology win back the market's trust?
Nubia Unveils 'World's First' Apartment-Born Innovation
In July 2015, Liu Peichao, who had graduated with a master's degree a year earlier, founded Yuejiong with several fellow alumni from Shandong University in a less than 40-square-meter apartment in Shenzhen's Nanshan district. By day, he worked in research and development at a medical equipment company; by night, he and his team would cram into the living room to debug mechanical arm prototypes, often working until 3 or 4 am. The company's initial registered capital was 5 million yuan, with Liu Peichao holding a 75% stake and the other partners each holding 5%.
In October 2015, Liu Peichao and his team launched the first generation of desktop-level intelligent robotic arms on a crowdfunding platform, raising $620,000. The robotic arms, which originally cost hundreds of thousands of yuan per unit, were sold for just a few thousand yuan, allowing the company to break into the collaborative robot market.
In simple terms, collaborative robots are mechanical arms that work alongside factory workers without the need for isolation fences, equivalent to "electronic workers" in manufacturing workshops. Yujiang's early main battlefield was in schools, with education scenario revenue accounting for as high as 73.5% in 2021. However, the education market has a low ceiling and weak repurchase rates, so the company subsequently shifted its focus to industrial scenarios such as automobiles, 3C, and new energy, with its client list featuring over 80 Fortune 500 companies including BYD, BMW, and Geely.
In its early years, Yuejiang relied on financing to grow. From 2015 to 2022, the company completed multiple rounds of financing, with investors including Qianhai Fund, Shenzhen Capital Group, China Net Investment, and Songhe Capital. According to public reports, the company's valuation increased from 10 million yuan to approximately 3.531 billion yuan before 2022, a rise of about 352 times. On December 23, 2024, Yuejiang listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange at 18.8 Hong Kong dollars per share, raising 681 million Hong Kong dollars, earning it the media nickname "the first collaborative robot stock." On its first day of trading, the stock price fell below the issue price at one point, to a low of 18.78 Hong Kong dollars, and closed at 18.94 Hong Kong dollars, a slight increase of 0.74%.
Although its stock price has been lackluster, Yuejiang's products have been selling relatively well. According to a report by Zhisidian Consulting, based on 2025 sales, Yuejiang's collaborative robots ranked first in global shipments, with a market share of 13.2%, and cumulative installations exceeded 100,000 units, with products sold to over 100 countries and regions.
The 'Global Number One' That Keeps Losing Money the More It Sells
Looking at Yuexiang's financials over the past three years, from 2023 to 2025, revenue grew from 287 million yuan to 493 million yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 31.13%. However, net profit attributable to the parent company remained negative, at -103 million yuan, -95 million yuan, and -84 million yuan, respectively. Although losses have narrowed year by year, the cumulative loss over the past five years, including 2021 and 2022, totals 376 million yuan.
In terms of revenue structure, Yuexiang's mainstay remains collaborative robots. In 2025, revenue from six-axis collaborative robots reached 302 million yuan, accounting for 61.69%; four-axis collaborative robots generated 92.95 million yuan, accounting for 18.98%; and composite robots brought in 67.61 million yuan, accounting for 13.80%, with the three combined accounting for over 94%. Embodied intelligence, which has high expectations, only started generating revenue in 2024, with 3.8628 million yuan, and increased to 20.0417 million yuan in 2025, accounting for 4.09%.
However, the unit price of collaborative robots is falling. The financial report shows that the average price of Yuexiang's six-axis collaborative robots dropped from 566,000 yuan per unit in 2023 to 382,000 yuan per unit in 2025, a decline of 32.5% over two years. The company attributes this to changes in product structure, with the lower-priced Nova series and E6 series accounting for a higher proportion of sales. The overall gross margin fell from 48.47% to 46.49%, and the gross margin for collaborative robots decreased from 49.25% to 47.09%. In simple terms, the more Yuexiang sells, the lower the unit price, and the company is trading price for volume to stay competitive.
In addition, a review of the financial reports reveals that Yuexiang's costs have been rising year by year. From 2023 to 2025, Yuexiang's total operating expenses increased from 243 million yuan to 338 million yuan, with the proportion of revenue decreasing from 84.68% to 68.43%. The largest component of this is research and development expenses, which rose from 70.52 million yuan to 115 million yuan, representing a year-on-year increase of 59.7% in 2025, with a research and development expense ratio of 23.23%.
In the first half of 2026, Yuexiang's costs continued to rise. As the robotics industry is in a stage of rapid development and intense competition, companies are vying fiercely for core technical talent and core technologies, causing Yuexiang's research and development expenses to account for 32.1% of its revenue. The company forecasts that its annual research and development expenses will exceed 200 million yuan, and its sales expenses will also exceed 200 million yuan, with the two items totaling over 400 million yuan, approaching 90% of its total revenue for 2025.
With lower prices and higher costs, the inevitable consequence is excessive blood loss. Xinjiang's operating cash flow has gradually deteriorated. From 2023 to 2025, the net cash flow from operating activities was -158 million yuan, -92 million yuan, and -43 million yuan, respectively. Adding 2022, the cumulative net outflow over four years is approximately 374 million yuan. In the first quarter of 2026, the net cash flow from operating activities was -131 million yuan, a year-over-year decrease of 294.38%.
A company that continues to lose money can only survive by financing. In December 2024, Yuexiang's Hong Kong IPO raised a net of HK$681 million; in July 2025, the first share placement raised a net of HK$1.022 billion; in November 2025, the second share placement of 16.66 million shares was priced at HK$46.8, a discount of approximately 10.3% to the previous closing price, raising a net of HK$771 million. Including the IPO, the net financing from the three rounds of financing is close to HK$2.5 billion. As of the end of June 2026, Yuexiang still had RMB 618 million in cash and cash equivalents, and RMB 100 million in bank loans. In this context, Yuexiang still submitted a plan to list on the A-share market, with a proposed financing of RMB 1.2 billion.
In its IPO prospectus on the ChiNext board, Yuexiang pledged to turn a profit by 2028, based on three bold assumptions. Firstly, Yuexiang forecasts 2028 revenue of 1.723 billion yuan, with its collaborative robot business maintaining a 34.17% compound annual growth rate, higher than the current 28.44%. Secondly, the revenue from its new track of wearable intelligent products is expected to increase from 20.04 million yuan in 2025 to over 30% of total revenue and over 500 million yuan by 2028, equivalent to a 25-fold increase in three years. Lastly, the gross margin is expected to remain stable at 40% to 45%, with sales and administrative expense ratios compressed to 35% to 40%. According to Yuexiang's own estimates, research and development and sales expenses alone will exceed 400 million yuan in 2026. Therefore, in its sensitivity analysis, Yuexiang acknowledges that if the gross margin is 3 percentage points lower than expected, the profitability timeline will be delayed to 2029.
Equity Risks and New Battlegrounds
Uyghur-related troubles are not just on the balance sheet.
On July 17, 2026, just five days before the ChiNext board's review, Song Tao, who claims to be the "de facto No. 2 co-founder of Yuexiang", made a public accusation against the company and its founder, Liu Peichao, through his WeChat public account, stating that the prospectus contains "false statements throughout and deliberately conceals disputes over equity ownership worth hundreds of millions of yuan". Public reports show that Song Tao is a co-founder of Yuexiang, former executive vice president and COO, who joined the company in September 2015 after leaving Huawei, and left in March 2021.
The focal point of the dispute between the two parties is a "Letter of Commitment to Change" issued by Yuanjiang Partnership, an employee stock ownership platform, on January 28, 2023. Song Tao claimed that the letter confirmed he should hold 69.7373% of the property rights of Yuanjiang Partnership, but the prospectus only registered 22.455%. The remaining 47.2823% of the shares, corresponding to approximately 1.3541% of the equity of Yuanjiang Technology, are still registered under Liu Peichao's name. In December 2022, Liu Peichao, as the executive partner, unilaterally decided to transfer some of the shares held by Yuanjiang Partnership to two new shareholding platforms, resulting in Yuanjiang Partnership's shareholding ratio decreasing from 10.8697% to 3.5%, and Song Tao's indirect shareholding was diluted accordingly.
On the day of the report, Yuexiang's Hong Kong stocks plummeted by more than 14% at one point during trading. The company responded, saying "the allegations are untrue and seriously misleading," and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange's intermediary agency investigation found that the company's business change procedures were compliant and the IPO prospectus disclosures were accurate. The equity dispute remains unresolved, and Song Tao stated that he has filed a formal complaint with the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and initiated arbitration and civil litigation.
The test is also direct in terms of operations. The collaborative robot market is not particularly large, with a global market size of approximately 10.66 billion yuan in 2025 and expected to reach 37.69 billion yuan in 2030, according to data from Zhiyan Consulting. The market ceiling is clear, and there are many players: Denmark's UR is the pioneer of collaborative robots, Japan's Fanuc is a giant in traditional industrial robots, and domestic companies such as Jekay and Yuanda are also eyeing the market.
Yuejiang has pinned its second growth curve on embodied intelligence. In the first half of 2026, revenue from embodied intelligence robots reached 45.2 million yuan, up 2052.4% year-over-year, accounting for 14.3% of total revenue. As of the end of June, embodied intelligence had orders and framework agreements in hand worth over 60 million yuan, with a total of 231 customers, including nearly 100 industrial manufacturing clients such as Faurecia and Leapmotor. Additionally, Yuejiang won the bid for Guangdong's embodied intelligence training ground project, signed a three-year strategic cooperation agreement with JD.com in May 2026, and launched its "one brain, multiple bodies" embodied intelligence platform at the World Robot Conference in August, where its humanoid robot, Lvmeng, made its public debut.
In comparison to collaborative robots, embodied intelligence is not yet a mature track. USTech, the "humanoid robot leader" in A-shares, reported 2025 revenue of 16.99 billion yuan and non-net profit of 5.91 billion yuan, with a non-net profit margin of 34.77%, making it the only company in this track to achieve scale and profitability; UBTech, the "first humanoid robot stock," reported 2025 revenue of 20.01 billion yuan. VueReal's embodied intelligence revenue of 45.2 million yuan in the first half of the year is negligible compared to these competitors. The investment in embodied intelligence is the driving force behind VueReal's doubling of R&D expenses and expanding losses, which may be the company's future, but for now, it is the most cash-burning area and the biggest gamble.
From its humble beginnings in Nanshan apartments, YuJiang has become the global leader in collaborative robot sales, with its achievements readily available online. However, behind the high sales volume, the company faces pressing operational challenges, including declining product prices, high costs, and persistent losses. The company plans to leverage its A-share listing to increase investment in its embodied intelligence business, an area where YuJiang is still in the large-scale investment phase. The imagination and potential of the robotics sector will not automatically translate into corporate profits, and being the global leader in collaborative robot sales is only the starting point - commercialization and profitability are the real hurdles that YuJiang Technology must overcome.