New Stock Outlook | From Scale Expansion to Quality Leap: The Cash Flow Hidden Concerns and Ecological Closed-loop Dilemma behind LianTai Technology's Financial "V-shaped" Reversal

As the consumer-level 3D printing craze sweeps through the capital market, the industrial-grade track with higher technological barriers and closer to the industrial core has also reached a critical juncture of breakthrough. On June 26, Shanghai United Imaging Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as United Imaging), which has been deeply rooted in the industry for more than 20 years, officially submitted its listing application to the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with HAITONG INT'L as the sole sponsor, striving to become the "first industrial-grade 3D printing stock in Hong Kong". As a leading provider of industrial-grade 3D printing comprehensive solutions in China, United Imaging not only ranks first in the local shipment volume of industrial-grade 3D printing equipment by Chinese companies in 2025 with a market share of about 25%, but also ranks fourth in global comprehensive solution revenue. The company has broken through the limitations of single equipment sales, established a full industry chain closed loop of "equipment + materials + services", and has created a distributed manufacturing network connecting over 1,800 devices with its self-developed Unionfab Cloud platform and AI technology, promoting the transition of 3D printing from prototype verification to scale customization production. However, behind the grand narrative of domestic substitution accelerating the breakthrough, the prospectus also reveals the realistic challenges it faces: from 2023 to 2025, although the company's revenue steadily climbed to 563 million yuan, the cumulative net loss for three years still reached 145 million yuan, and the operating cash flow showed a "roller coaster" type of fluctuation. Lukewarm Revenue and Roller-Coaster Losses 3D Printing Leader's Profitability Model Faces a Major Test From 2023 to 2025, United Imaging's revenue increased from 515 million yuan to 563 million yuan, with a decent compound growth rate, indicating that the downstream industrial-grade 3D printing market still maintains certain demand resilience. However, a deeper analysis of the profit and cash flow statements reveals multiple layers of deep contradictions behind this growth, including the quality of profitability, cost structure, stability of cash flow, and capital structure, which together pose a severe test to the company's financial health. One of the most striking contradictions lies in the sustained divergence between revenue growth and profitability. The annual losses recorded were 29.08 million yuan, 84.77 million yuan, and 31.39 million yuan, respectively. More severe was that, in 2024, the company's revenue almost stagnated at 5.21 billion yuan, only a slight increase of 1.2% compared to 2023, while the losses expanded significantly, showing a typical pattern of "minimal growth, massive losses". This kind of loss is not entirely due to insufficient gross profit at the operational level - the company's gross profit margin was 29.7% in 2023, although it briefly dropped to 23.2% in 2024, it rebounded to 29.2% in 2025, maintaining a relatively high level in the manufacturing industry. The real profit killer is the rigid expansion of period expenses and the heavy burden of special non-operating items. The total sales, administrative, and R&D expenses accounted for more than 30% of the revenue throughout the period, with R&D spending increasing from 47.65 million yuan in 2023 to 51.38 million yuan in 2025, accounting for over 9% of revenue. While necessary in a technology-intensive industry, it continues to erode profits. Particularly alarming is the item of "redemption of debt interest," totaling around 420 million yuan annually. The V-shaped reversal of the gross margin reveals the subtle changes in the company's product structure and competitive strategy. The sudden 6.5 percentage point drop in the gross margin in 2024 is not simply explained by rising costs, but more reasonably attributed to the company's aggressive pricing strategy - whether to gain market share through price reductions or to passively respond to price wars. When equipment revenue dropped by 10.9% in that year, it indicates that price reductions did not effectively drive sales, instead seriously eroding profits. The rebound of the gross margin to 29.2% in 2025 was mainly due to the commercialization of metal 3D printing equipment and the increase in sales in overseas markets, leading to an optimization of product structure. Although this profit margin level is medium in the manufacturing industry, it still has a distance from real technological premium. The drastic fluctuations in cash flow also expose the company's financial vulnerability. The net cash flow from operating activities was a net inflow of 31.53 million yuan in 2023, suddenly reversing to a net outflow of 69.395 million yuan in 2024, and miraculously turning positive again to 58.575 million yuan in 2025. This roller-coaster type of volatility is not only due to operating losses but also directly related to the deterioration of accounts receivable quality. The "net amount of financial and contract asset impairment losses" surged from 14.24 million yuan in 2023 to nearly 120 million yuan in 2024, as the company explained that it was due to provisioning for long-term historical receivables and optimizing its customer base. This reveals a harsh business reality - in order to scale up, the company may have relaxed its credit policy in the early stages, resulting in a large amount of accounts receivable not being collected on time. In the end, the company had to pay a large amount of impairment losses in one go. This means that some of the "income" accumulated in the past few years did not actually turn into real cash inflows but became bad debts on paper, severely distorting the quality of profits. Although the impairment loss decreased to 36.58 million yuan in 2025, and cash flow improved, it is still necessary to continuously observe whether a long-term mechanism for managing accounts receivable has truly been established. The capital structure and liquidity pressure cannot be ignored either. By the end of 2025, the company had cash and cash equivalents of 149 million yuan, seemingly with a certain reserve. However, the net amount of current liabilities remained negative, reaching -225 million yuan in 2025, indicating significant short-term debt repayment pressure. V-shaped Rebound in Equipment Sales Difficulties in Hiding Decline in Material Business According to observations, from a revenue structure perspective, equipment sales have always been the company's core pillar. In 2023, it contributed 230 million yuan in revenue, accounting for 44.7%, in 2024, it slightly fell to 205 million yuan, with a share of 39.4%, but in 2025, it rebounded strongly to 266 million yuan, accounting for 47.3%. This V-shaped trend is highly consistent with the overall revenue trend of the company, but its rebound strength far exceeds the overall, indicating a substantial recovery in the market demand for equipment in 2025. The printing service sector presents a completely different growth curve, with revenues of 177 million yuan, 188 million yuan, and 190 million yuan over the three years, showing moderate growth in absolute amounts but a decline in share from 34.4% to 33.7%, indicating that while this business may have resilience, it lacks explosive potential. The material sales sector's fluctuations were the most dramatic, with revenues of 108 million yuan in 2023, rising against the trend to 128 million yuan in 2024, accounting for 24.5%, becoming an important force in stabilizing revenue that year, but falling back to 107 million yuan in 2025, with a share of 19.0%. This volatility suggests that the material business has not yet established stable customer stickiness and repeat purchase patterns. The differentiation in gross profit margins is even more intriguing. The gross profit margin of equipment sales was 32.6% in 2023, dropping sharply to 27.3% in 2024, and rebounding to 32.7% in 2025, almost replicating the V-shaped trajectory of the overall gross margin. The drastic drop in the equipment gross profit margin in 2024 cannot be explained simply by rising costs; it is more reasonable to infer that the company took aggressive pricing strategies that year - either to gain market share through price reductions or reactively responding to price wars. In 2025, with a 5.4 percentage point jump in the equipment gross profit margin to 32.7% and a substantial 29.7% increase in revenue, the buoyant trend is inspiring, likely due to the commercialization of metal 3D printing equipment leading to an upgrade in product structure, raising the average price and profit level, indicating that the company has made phased progress in technology iteration and product matrix expansion. The trend of the gross profit margin in the printing service sector is more alarming. Maintaining a 24.8% gross profit level in 2023, it plummeted by 7.4 percentage points to 17.4% in 2024, becoming the weakest profitability sector among the three, and a major contributor to the overall decline in gross profit margin of the company. Printing services essentially belong to the manufacturing service sector, with a higher proportion of fixed costs in its cost structure. If equipment utilization is inadequate or order fulfillment is not sufficient, unit costs will be significantly raised. The 6.4% growth in printing service revenue in 2024 but a larger drop in the gross profit margin suggests that the scale effect of the service was not released, and unit costs may have been significantly pressured due to rapid capacity expansion or intensified competition, combined with rising fixed costs like depreciation, forming a typical dilemma of "increasing revenue but not profit". The gross profit margin of printing services recovered to 25.2% in 2025, with a slight increase in revenue of 0.9%, almost staying stable. This indicates that the company may have adjusted prices or optimized costs for the service business, rather than diluting costs by scaling up. This "improving quality without increasing quantity" path is effective but also indicates a clear ceiling. The gross performance of the material sales business reveals another dimension of commercial logic. The gross margin of this sector decreased from 31.3% in 2023 to 25.0% in 2024, and slightly rose to 27.9% in 2025. The striking point is that while material revenue surged by 18.2% to 128 million yuan in 2024, setting a new high for three years, the gross margin dropped significantly by 6.3 percentage points. This is a typical product of the "price for volume" strategy - the company may have lowered material prices to tie in with equipment customers or offered discounts to gain market share or clear inventory. However, in 2025, material revenue plummeted by 16.3% to 107 million yuan, and while the gross margin slightly rebounded, the absolute level was still lower than in 2023, indicating that the price strategy did not establish long-term customer loyalty, causing sales to decline once prices returned to normal. As a consumable business, material sales should theoretically have higher customer stickiness and repurchase rates, but United Imaging's data has not validated this logic, instead suggesting that its material business may face competition from alternative products or squeeze from customer-developed materials, indicating that its "consumable moat" is not yet solid. In conclusion, the fluctuating financial data of United Imaging repeatedly reminds the market: scale does not equal barriers, shipment volume does not equal customer lock-in. After the pulse-like growth in equipment sales recedes, whether the capacity utilization of printing services can be improved and whether the customer stickiness of material sales can be established will be the key leap for the company to evolve from a "product manufacturer" into an "ecosystem service provider".