The AI service provider for a wide range of business customers will raise $41 million on the Hong Kong listing, allowing them to increase even more with secondary stock sales in the coming months.
By Doug Young
Unisound AI Technology Co. Ltd. (9678.hk) made its Hong Kong trading debut on Monday, offering investors a new AI (AI) option with fully integrated products boasting a diverse customer base, addressing a wide range of potential business users.
company It was raised $156 million ($26 million) sold 1.56 million shares (1.56 million shares) for HK $205, about a third of which was sent to three Cornerstone investors. The stocks on sale represent a relatively low 2.2% of stock capital, suggesting that if Unisound is in strong demand, more shares can be sold to one or more secondary fallings within a month.
The stock opened flat at HK$205 when trading began, valued the company at HK$14.5 billion.
Unisound is one of the older players in the Chinese AI scene, founded in 2012 by Huang Wei and Liang Jia'en more than a decade ago, both of which come from a scientific background. Supported by powerful technical capabilities and accumulated research on speech recognition and cognitive intelligence, the company has developed dozens of vertically integrated AI products and solutions. These are primarily sold to corporate clients in the sectors such as healthcare, insurance, daily living services, and transportation.
Supporting AI services that help customers execute business processes more efficiently is Unisound's Atlas infrastructure, which began construction in 2016. This is the foundation of Unigpt, a large-scale language model (LLM) with 60 billion parameters released in 2023.
Unisound's revenues rose 29% last year to 939 million yuan ($131 million) from 727 million yuan in 2023. The numbers fall into two categories: healthcare and daily life. The Daily Life segment accounts for around 80% of last year's revenue, covering enterprise clients in the smart mobility and smart living sectors.
In particular, the company's top five customers account for about a quarter of its revenue last year, a relatively low figure. This indicates that you have a large customer base. This is relatively unusual among Chinese AI companies, where most businesses often rely on a small number of clients.
The company's gross profit margin last year was a relatively high of 38.8%. However, due to R&D spending, which is very common in AI space companies, adjusted net losses increased by 22% last year from 137 million yuan in 2023. The company's cash had fallen to 156 million yuan by the end of last year.
At IPO prices, the company trades at a 14 ratio in price and sales (P/S) ratio. In comparison, the larger the Sensetime (0200.hk) and The fourth paradigm (6682.hk) Trading at P/S multiples of 12 and 4.3.
Bamboo Works offers a wide mix of coverage for US and Hong Kong-listed Chinese companies, including select sponsored content. Click to contact us for additional queries that include questions about individual articles here
Click to sign up for our free weekly newsletter for Bamboo Works here
