From the frenzy on the dark market to the hard work on entering the main market: CREALITY (03388) is holding its ground in the horizontal market.

Hong Kong stocks' "first consumer-grade 3D printing stock" CREALITY (03388) is currently struggling to maintain its "entry" target price. On May 29, CREALITY officially commenced trading on the Hong Kong stock market. Its opening price was HK$33.88, subsequently rising to HK$34, an increase of over 80% from the HK$18.8 issue price. However, after reaching HK$34, its share price quickly dropped, showing a trend of fluctuating decline, closing at HK$22.80 per share, with a significantly reduced increase of 21.28%. In the following 13 trading days, although CREALITY's share price fell to a low of HK$19.10, with an increase of only about 1.6% from the issue price, it maintained an overall low-level fluctuation. As of the close on June 18, CREALITY was priced at HK$22.80 per share. As the market value cutoff date for the Hang Seng Index semi-annual review on June 30 approaches, the prospects of CREALITY's "entry" have become more uncertain. Although market calculations suggest that HK$22.07 is a safe line for CREALITY's "entry," the current stock price and market cap are not absolutely secure. In the last few trading days of June, "holding ground" is no longer just a slogan, but a crucial battle to determine whether it can obtain the "pass" for southbound capital. Significant capital inflows near the issue price The significant profit-taking by institutions on the first day of listing, forcing CREALITYs stock price to be suppressed and putting it into a lifeline defense battle for "entry," can be traced back to the IPO stage. Before the excess share allotment was exercised, CREALITY issued a total of 73.42755 million H shares in this IPO, accounting for approximately 15.73% of the total share capital of 466.84 million shares. The number of shares under public offering was 734.28 million H shares, accounting for 10% of the total shares issued; the number of shares under international placement was 6608.745 million H shares, accounting for 90% of the total shares issued. As CREALITY adopted the Mechanism B issuance, even though the oversubscription ratio for the public offering was as high as 3829.42 times, the clawback mechanism was not triggered, and 734.28 million H shares were still issued, resulting in a first-hand allocation rate suppressed to an extremely low level of 3%equivalent to only 1.57% of the total share capital of the company being contended by 25,000 retail investors. In the international placement, CREALITY introduced a total of 15 cornerstone investors, with a total subscription amount of approximately US$88 million (approximately HK$689 million), corresponding to 3663.9 million H shares, accounting for 49.90% of the total global issuance, approximately 7.85% of the total post-issuance share capital. This means that nearly half of the total issuance of shares has been locked up by cornerstone investors, reducing the available chips for subscription, allowing CREALITY's international placement to achieve an oversubscription of 26.80 times. Based on this, on the first day of listing, CREALITYs actual tradable H shares were only about 36.7886 million shares, accounting for approximately 7.88% of the total share capital, with a corresponding market value of only about HK$692 million at the issue price. Because the floating shares were relatively small, combined with the high market sentiment, during the gray market period, CREALITY's share price soared on all three major trading platforms, with Yecong's gray market price once surging to HK$60 (a 219% increase from the issue price). The primary force in selling on the market was the 9697 positions, while buying was concentrated in the 9633, 9617, 9640, and 9646 retail positions. On the first day of listing on May 29, the profit-taking effect in the gray market ignited the chasing sentiment of retail investors, directly opening at HK$33.88, surging by 80.21% compared to the issue price of HK$18.8, with a total market value briefly exceeding HK$16 billion. However, this was the highest point of the day, and after hitting a peak of HK$34, the global placement plus the group B floating profits being cashed out, combined with the accelerated exit of retail investors with rights, the funds available for sustenance were clearly insufficient, leading to a significant price fluctuation with an intraday fluctuation of nearly 70%. This was followed by four days of volatility, with a sharp drop of 9.37% on the sixth trading day, a continued decline in the early trading of the seventh trading day, dropping to nearly 9 points at the lowest, at HK$19.10 per share, close to the issue price. However, after the stock price quickly plummeted, buying continued flooding in for an upsurge, closing up by 6.22%, with an intraday fluctuation of nearly 15%. This form of "low-level precise sustainability + rapid recovery" operation, also known as maintaining the price, indicates that there is capital in the market willing to sustain it. For the next eight trading days, the stock price continued to fluctuate around HK$22, but since the current price was still close to the "entry" target price of HK$22.07, the uncertainty of whether it could successfully "breakthrough" still remains. Verification of hardware high-endization If institutional profit-taking at high levels is causing instability for CREALITY's "entry," then the quality of the company's fundamentals is what will ultimately determine whether CREALITY can truly win the "entry" battle. CREALITY's listing on the stock market paints a narrative of progression from "selling printers" to a three-tier story of "hardware entry + consumables extension + platform monetization." At the "hardware entry" level, CREALITY has built a diversified consumer-grade product matrix, being the only company to cover all three major categories of 3D printing, 3D scanning, and laser engraving in the infrastructure type platform space, and has already established a leading market share. By 2025, the company's consumer-grade 3D printers held a market share of 11.2% globally, ranking second; consumer-grade 3D scanners accounted for 45.3% of the global market share, ranking first; and consumer-grade laser engravers had a market share of 4.8%, ranking fourth globally. At the "consumables extension" level, this business is key to turning "one-time customers" into "continuous cash flow." The uniqueness of 3D printing lies in the fact that after selling a machine, users must consume a certain amount of consumables for each model printed, with a predictable repurchase cycle and conversion costs increasing gradually with special agreements. To maximize this advantage, CREALITY adopted a dual strategy of "expanding SKU across all scenarios + binding technical agreements" on one hand, providing over 1400 types of specialized consumables covering the needs from entry-level to industrial-grade, and on the other hand, significantly increasing the conversion costs and friction experience for users switching to third-party consumables by combining RFID chips with the CFS multi-color system. This strategy has effectively turned the consumables business into the company's second growth curve. At the "platform monetization" level, CREALITY leverages the Ideaworks community to accumulate users and models, integrates with Tencent's Hybrid 3D model to launch MakeNow to lower the barrier to creation, connects with the Nexbie overseas e-commerce platform to facilitate transactions and monetization of finished products, and incentivizes creators to activate the UGC cycle. This establishes a platform loop of "community aggregation AI expansion e-commerce monetization incentive self-circulation," ensuring that every step of the creative process, from generation to monetization, remains within the company's ecosystem and elevates the company's valuation to a platform level. In CREALITY's three-tiered business model, the "hardware entry" serves as the foundation of the ecosystem. By reaching a wide range of users through a massive deployment of hardware, this creates a flow base for consumable repurchases and injects source liquidity for platform monetization, supporting the business loop foundation. However, during a period of pressure on the "hardware entry" cornerstone business, the printer products are facing operational challenges. Although the average selling price of printer products is projected to increase rapidly from 1612 yuan in 2023 to 2404 yuan in 2025, there has not been a corresponding improvement in gross profit margins. On the contrary, the gross profit margin continues to decline, from 30.9% in 2023 to 28.4% in 2025. CREALITY attributed this decline to the strategic lowering of pricing for newly launched products to expand market share, while promotional activities led to an increase in sales of older models with lower profit margins, thus suppressing gross profit margin levels. Clearly, while CREALITY aims to drive revenue growth through high-end product strategies, the continued decrease in gross profit margins suggests that the high-end strategy in printer products has not been effectively implemented within the current competitive landscape. From 2023 to 2025, CREALITY's printer sales volume was 870,700, 720,600, and 742,400 units respectively. Although there was a slight recovery in 2025, it has not returned to the level of 2023. However, as the "hardware entry" faces temporary pressure, the "consumables extension" strategy has already entered the realization phase. Data shows that CREALITY's consumables revenue has shown a high compound annual growth rate of 75.3% over three years, with revenue reaching 418 million yuan in 2025, accounting for 13.4%, and gross profit margin increasing from 30.0% to 35.5%, surpassing the printer itself at 28.4%; consumables/device ratio from 10% to 23%. With its high revenue growth and a gross profit margin surpassing that of hardware, consumables have become the most promising growth driver in the current three-tier business. However, the upstream PLA price war has intensified, approaching cost lines, severely compressing the premium space for official consumables; coupled with the erosion of third-party low-priced goods, user willingness to pay for RFID convenience is currently being suppressed. Fortunately, the ratio of consumables/device is rapidly increasing, and the negative feedback caused by this discrepancy has not yet become prominent. While the "platform monetization" shoulders the responsibility of elevating the company's valuation anchor, it is currently still in its infancy. In 2025, the revenue from 3D printing finished products and services, including Nexbie, was only 6.284 million yuan, accounting for 0.2% of total revenue, which can be almost neglected. Nexbie, the core overseas e-commerce platform in the ecosystem, offers only 124 SKUs, and its format remains in the primitive stage of "Ideaworks' 3D printing shoes, toys, accessories, and custom items direct store," far from the thriving ecosystem of a "creator market." As the "first consumer-grade 3D printing stock" in the Hong Kong stock market lacks direct comparability, the loss of an "valuation anchor" has led to significant divergence in institutional pricing, which may be one of the reasons why international institutional investors opted to cash out profits in the gray market and on the first day of listing. In the absence of a recognized value center, the true value of CREALITY still needs market contention between bulls and bears before it becomes clear. However, one thing is certain: with the solid cash base built by the consumables business, 2026 has become a crucial "key point" in determining the direction of CREALITY's stock price. The sales performance of the K2 series and the market performance of the SPARKX i7 as the first AI multi-color entry machine from the all-new sub-brand will be the strongest variable to trigger stock price fluctuations in the short to medium term; looking at the medium to long term, only with the accelerated monetization of the platform ecosystem can the company truly break through the valuation ceiling, completing the transition from "selling devices" to "selling services" in terms of valuation leap.