The Easy Knowledge Blog

Market cap hit 444.9 billion yuan (roughly $62 billion) within minutes of the opening bell

🎧 Post Summary

If you invest in stocks, you’re probably used to seeing “up X% from the IPO price.” Today’s number, though, is a bit outside the norm. 629%. That’s the opening-day gain a Chinese robotics company posted on its trading debut. Here’s a story that should interest tech readers and investors alike.

A $31 Stock Became a $229 Stock the Moment It Opened

At 9:30 AM on the 19th, Unitree Robotics began official trading on the STAR Market, the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s dedicated venue for tech stocks. Its IPO price was 150.8 yuan (roughly $31), but buy orders flooded in the moment trading opened, and the share price immediately jumped to 1,100 yuan (roughly $229), a gain of 629.44% over the IPO price. At that point, market cap stood at 44.49 billion yuan (roughly $9.2 billion won equivalent). Worth noting: the STAR Market has no price limits for the first five trading days after a new listing, which is what made a swing this extreme possible.

PER Hit 1,200x — And Buyers Kept Coming

What’s striking is that buying pressure continued even at this level of overvaluation. According to the Financial Times, the price-to-earnings ratio (PER) briefly touched roughly 1,200x during the surge. Considering that even a growth stock trading around 100x PER is typically seen as significantly overvalued, 1,200x is a genuinely extraordinary number. Profit-taking gradually emerged after that, trimming the gains. By 10:06 AM, the price had eased to 898 yuan, up 495.6% from the IPO price, and shares ultimately closed the day at 845 yuan, roughly 460% above the IPO price. Even after giving back a substantial portion of its gains, that still comfortably exceeded what’s known in Chinese markets as a “double limit-up” debut.

The ‘Fastest-Ever’ IPO: Approved in Just 73 Days

Unitree’s path to listing was itself unusually fast. After filing its IPO application with the Shanghai Stock Exchange on March 20, the company cleared the listing review committee in just 73 days, on June 1, setting a record for speed. It secured approval from the China Securities Regulatory Commission roughly a month after that, becoming the first humanoid robot maker to list on mainland China’s stock exchanges. (Another major humanoid robot maker, UBTech, is listed in Hong Kong.) Founded in 2016, Unitree raised roughly 6.1 billion yuan (about $1.26 billion) through this IPO by newly issuing 40.446 million shares, 10% of its total share count, with the proceeds earmarked for robotics AI model research, new product development, and expanding production capacity.

Revenue Is Growing Fast, But Growth Is Cooling Somewhat

To be fair, Unitree’s underlying revenue growth is genuinely strong. Last year, revenue rose 335% year-over-year to 1.71 billion yuan, and net profit rose 204% to 287.6 million yuan. This year’s Q1 revenue, however, came in at 423 million yuan, up 68.49%, a noticeably slower pace than the 333% growth posted in Q1 of last year. Revenue itself is also still in the 300 million to 1.7 billion yuan range, which some observers note is quite a gap from the 44.49 billion yuan market cap the stock hit on its opening day.

Confident Despite a US Import Ban

By coincidence, this listing came amid rising US-China tension over AI and robotics technology. The US banned imports of foreign-made humanoid and quadruped robots this past July, effectively cutting off one of Unitree’s key markets. Even so, Unitree’s technology is widely regarded as ahead of major US names like Boston Dynamics and Tesla. The company recently showed off that edge with footage of one of its robots (“Robot Superman”) jumping more than 2 meters. This successful listing is also expected to give momentum to other Chinese robotics companies preparing to go public, including Deep Robotics, Reju Robotics, and AgiBot.

Things Worth Knowing

• The STAR Market has different price-limit rules: No upper or lower price limits apply for the first five trading days after a new listing, which is what allows swings this extreme. Worth noting this differs from Korea’s own KOSPI and KOSDAQ systems.
• A PER of 1,200x is exceptionally high: Valuations at this level carry the risk of a correction if future earnings don’t keep pace.
• The US import ban remains a live variable: With one of Unitree’s core markets currently blocked, it’s worth watching how this regulation evolves going forward.
• A wave of Chinese robotics IPOs looks likely: Unitree’s strong debut is expected to encourage listing attempts from other Chinese robotics companies too.

Taken together, Unitree’s trading debut was a day that’s hard to believe just from the numbers. A 629% opening-day gain and a 1,200x PER are both figures you rarely see. Behind this explosive reaction, though, many analysts point less to the company’s own earnings and more to strong government backing and the market’s intense enthusiasm for China’s robotics sector broadly. Whether future earnings can live up to that enthusiasm is the next thing worth watching.

Sources

• Investing.com — “Chinese Unitree Robotics Surges Over 600% on Shanghai Trading Debut” (kr.investing.com)
• YTN — “China’s Latest Robotics Star Surges 600%+ on Trading Debut” (ytn.co.kr)
• Financial News — “China’s Unitree Surges 7x on Debut, Overvaluation Concerns Follow” (fnnews.com)
• Asia Today — “China’s Leading Humanoid Maker Unitree Surges 629% on Trading Debut” (asiatoday.co.kr)
• Kyunghyang Shinmun — “Chinese Robotics Firm Unitree Shares Rise 629% on Trading Debut” (khan.co.kr)
• Dailian — “China’s Leading Humanoid Firm Unitree Surges 460% on Debut Day” (dailian.co.kr)