New Stock Preview | Gross margin continues to rise, operating cash flow turns positivehow is Orbbec's growth logic evolving?

Title context: New Stock Preview | Gross margin continues to rise, operating cash flow turns positivehow is Orbbec's growth logic evolving? Text: As AI begins to move from screens into the real world, Siasun Robot&Automation is becoming an increasingly important deployment vehicle. And as the core bridge connecting physical space with AI algorithms, 3D visual perception technology gives machines the key capabilities to perceive depth, understand spatial geometry, and make autonomous decisions. Recently, Orbbec Technology Group Co., Ltd., which has already successfully listed on the A-share STAR Market, officially submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, taking a step forward in advancing its "A+H" dual capital platform layout. Data disclosed in the prospectus shows that, based on 2025 revenue, Orbbec ranks first globally in the global Siasun Robot&Automation 3D visual perception market with a 29.0% market share, demonstrating its position as an industry leader. In the prospectus, the company positions itself as a "world-leading physical AI infrastructure platform," with its core business centered on 3D visual perception, including visual sensors, 3D scanning, data collection, and Siasun Robot&Automation and AIoT-related solutions. So why is a company that started with 3D visual sensors able to extend its business into physical AI and embodied intelligence? How deep are its technical barriers? After rapid revenue growth and achieving profitability in 2025, what stage of growth is the company in? From 3D visual sensors to physical AI, seeking a second growth curve It is understood that Orbbec's core competitiveness is first and foremost built on 3D vision technology. Compared with traditional 2D vision, 3D vision can further obtain depth and spatial information of objects, and therefore has strong application value in scenarios such as Siasun Robot&Automation navigation, grasping, obstacle avoidance, and human-robot interaction. According to the prospectus, the company has now developed multiple 3D vision technology routes, including active stereo, passive stereo, ToF, and structured light, and possesses full-stack technical capabilities covering optics, chips, algorithms, systems, and software. For hard-tech products such as 3D vision, merely having a certain algorithm or a certain hardware link does not necessarily create long-term competitiveness. However, collaborative research and development from underlying chips and optical components to algorithms and software toolchains can give the company greater room for adjustment in product performance, cost control, and adaptation to different application scenarios. At present, the company's business is mainly divided into two major segments: sensors and complete machines and solutions. Among them, sensor products cover the Gemini, Astra, Femto, Physis and other series, while complete machines and solutions include 3D scanners, biometric payment terminals, and data collection devices for physical AI and embodied intelligence. From the perspective of business structure, Orbbec is no longer satisfied with simply expanding sales of 3D visual sensors, but is instead seeking more application scenarios around the core technology of "visual perception." Especially against the backdrop of the rapid development of embodied intelligence, Siasun Robot&Automation's demand for real-world data continues to rise. The company has begun launching data collection products such as EGO, UMI, and WristCam, and provides capabilities including 3D modeling, multimodal data integration, calibration alignment, and hardware-level synchronization. In essence, it is moving from hardware perception further into the data collection link of the physical world. It is worth mentioning that if the Siasun Robot&Automation industry further moves from simple industrial automation toward more complex embodied intelligence in the future, then Siasun Robot&Automation's demand for 3D vision may also gradually shift from "purchasing a sensor" to "obtaining a complete set of visual perception capabilities." For Orbbec, its technical system covering chips, optics, algorithms, sensors, and software can in theory provide a certain foundation for this change in demand. As of the end of June 2026, the company had served more than 7,000 customers, including more than 1,000 Siasun Robot&Automation companies, meaning that the company has at least completed the initial commercialization process from technology research and development and product validation to large-scale customer coverage. In terms of research and development, the company's R&D expenses from 2023 to 2025 reached RMB 301 million, RMB 204 million, and RMB 203 million, respectively, while R&D expenses in the first half of 2026 were RMB 111 million, accounting for 25.5% of revenue in the same period. The company had 509 R&D personnel, accounting for about 46.4% of the total workforce. For a technology-intensive industry such as 3D vision, this kind of R&D investment will suppress profits in the short term, but if it can continue to product performance improvements and customer expansion, it may also become an important foundation for the company to expand market share in the future. Reflected in revenue, the company's revenue grew from RMB 360 million in 2023 to RMB 564 million in 2024, and further reached RMB 941 million in 2025, a year-on-year increase of about 66.7%. After entering 2026, revenue growth slowed compared with the previous two years. Revenue in the first half of 2026 was RMB 438 million, basically flat compared with RMB 435 million in the same period of 2025, but the gross margin in the same period rose from about 40.3% to 46.3%. Behind this is the improvement in the company's product mix, scale effects, and operating efficiency. From 2023 to 2025, the company's selling and marketing expense ratio was 19.1%, 13.0%, and 7.3%, respectively, the administrative expense ratio fell from 37.5% to 10.7%, and the R&D expense ratio fell from 83.6% to 21.5%. As revenue scale expands, the expenses that previously required large investments to support business development are beginning to be diluted by a larger revenue base, and the company's operating efficiency is improving. For a hard-tech company that had been loss-making for a long time, the importance of this change is no less than revenue growth itself, meaning the company is beginning to transition from the stage of "relying on continuous investment to exchange for revenue growth" to the stage of "profit release." Profitability inflection point appears, can Orbbec open up greater growth space? Judging from past financial performance, the most obvious change for Orbbec in recent years is that profitability is gradually improving. In 2023, the company's pre-tax loss was about RMB 269 million, which narrowed to about RMB 65.42 million in 2024. In 2025, it achieved pre-tax profit of about RMB 119 million, with full-year net profit of about RMB 128 million. In the first half of 2026, the company continued to remain profitable, with pre-tax profit of about RMB 39.29 million and net profit of about RMB 40.81 million. At the same time, the company's gross margin rose from 38.9% in 2024 to 41.8% in 2025, and further reached 46.3% in the first half of 2026. If a favorable product mix and scale effects can continue to be maintained going forward, the company's profit growth DRIVE will no longer rely entirely on rapid revenue expansion. Gross margin improvement and declining expense ratios are also expected to become important sources of profit release. However, the appearance of a profitability inflection point does not mean the company's business model has fully matured. For Orbbec, which is still in an expansion stage, customer structure is a factor that needs continuous observation. According to the prospectus, the revenue share of the company's top five customers was 37.6% in 2023, 51.5% in 2024, 63.9% in 2025, and 46.6% in the first half of 2026, while the revenue share of the largest customer in the same periods was 17.3%, 28.3%, 30.0%, and 27.3%, respectively. From the trend perspective, customer concentration in the first half of 2026 has declined compared with 2025, but it remains at a relatively high level overall. For growth-stage companies, large customer orders can help the company quickly achieve product scale and can also create a strong product validation effect. But if future revenue remains highly dependent on a small number of customers, changes in a single customer's procurement pace may still affect the company's short-term operating performance. Cash flow is another indicator worth watching. It is understood that Orbbec's net cash flow from operating activities in 2023 and 2024 was negative RMB 160 million and negative RMB 86.34 million, respectively, before turning positive to about RMB 82.73 million in 2025. In the first half of 2026, it remained positive at about RMB 13.91 million, meaning the company has gradually begun to shift toward the stage of generating cash flow from operating activities. However, operating cash flow in the first half of 2026 was affected by factors such as an increase in inventory of about RMB 80.23 million, so it remains necessary to observe whether profit can be converted into cash more steadily. Especially for hardware manufacturing companies, revenue growth is often accompanied by changes in inventory, accounts receivable, and supply chain capital occupation. Whether growth on the income statement can ultimately be reflected in the cash flow statement remains important for judging the quality of business operations. It is worth mentioning that overseas markets may become an important growth variable for Orbbec in the next stage. At present, the company's revenue is still highly concentrated in mainland China. In 2025, mainland China revenue accounted for 90.8%, but in the first half of 2026 this proportion had fallen to 84.6%, while revenue from other countries and regions rose to 15.4%. In absolute terms, overseas revenue is still not large, but its share has begun to increase. At the same time, the company is advancing the construction of an overseas manufacturing base in Vietnam, aiming to improve international delivery efficiency through overseas production capacity and enhance supply chain flexibility. For products such as 3D vision that have global application attributes, if the company can further open up overseas markets for Siasun Robot&Automation, industrial automation, and other intelligent equipment customers, then an increase in the share of overseas revenue is expected to become an incremental source beyond the existing business. Overall, Orbbec is undergoing a relatively important stage transition. In the past few years, the company's main task was to prove that 3D vision technology could be commercialized and to expand revenue scale through continuous R&D and customer development. After achieving profitability in 2025 and continuing to remain profitable in the first half of 2026, what the company needs to prove next is whether profitability can be sustained and whether its existing 3D vision business can further extend into larger markets such as Siasun Robot&Automation and physical AI. From the perspective of industrial logic, as Siasun Robot&Automation becomes increasingly intelligent, demand for spatial perception and real-world data will increase accordingly, providing Orbbec with a relatively clear direction for business expansion. From the company's own perspective, it already has a certain technical accumulation, customer base, R&D capability, and manufacturing capability, all of which form the foundation for continuing to extend upstream and downstream in the industrial chain. At the same time, however, technological iteration, industry competition, customer concentration, R&D investment, and overseas market expansion will still affect the company's future operating performance. Therefore, for Orbbec, revenue growth from RMB 360 million to RMB 941 million has already proven the results of its commercialization expansion over the past few years. In the next stage, what is more worth watching is whether the customer structure can continue to improve, whether overseas business can continue to grow, whether gross margin can continue to improve, and whether profit can continue to be converted into stable operating cash flow.