Unitree, China's leading humanoid robot company, is moving toward an initial public offering at a valuation of about 10 trillion won, putting the Big Tech firms and venture capital investors holding stakes in line for a windfall. Sequoia Capital, which joined as an early investor seven years ago, is expected to reap a roughly 30-fold return on its cumulative investment.
According to Caijing and other Chinese media outlets on the 27th, the Shanghai Stock Exchange's listing review committee is scheduled to review Unitree's plan to list on the STAR Market, the bourse's tech-focused board, on the 1st of next month. The review comes 66 days after Unitree formally filed its listing application on March 20. The timeline beats by more than 20 days the previous record of 88 days set by graphics processing unit (GPU) maker Moore Threads.
Unitree plans to raise 4.202 billion yuan (about 850 billion won) through the IPO. The public offering will account for more than 10 percent of total shares, implying a corporate valuation of at least 42 billion yuan (about 9.3 trillion won). The largest shareholder is Wang Xingxing, the 1990-born founder of Unitree, who holds a 34.76 percent stake. Wang, who earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical and control engineering from Zhejiang Sci-Tech University and a master's degree in mechanical engineering from Shanghai University, founded Unitree Robotics in Hangzhou in 2016 and currently serves as both chief executive officer and chief technology officer.
The shareholder roster features a long list of prominent Big Tech firms and venture capital investors. The second-largest shareholder is Meituan, often referred to as China's answer to Baedal Minjok, with a 9.65 percent stake. Other major shareholders include Xiaomi affiliate Shunwei Capital, Tencent, Alibaba and Ant Group.
The shareholder drawing the most attention is Sequoia Capital China. In 2019, when Unitree was valued at just 150 million yuan, Sequoia invested 15 million yuan, and its cumulative investment now stands at 102 million yuan, equivalent to a 7.1149 percent stake. Based on Unitree's Series C valuation of 12.7 billion yuan, its current stake is worth well over 900 million yuan. If the post-IPO valuation reaches 42 billion yuan, the stake would be worth about 3 billion yuan. The book return amounts to roughly 30 times the cumulative investment, and around 200 times when measured against the initial investment alone.
Founded in 2016, Unitree has grown into a company with revenue of 1.7 billion yuan (376.1 billion won) and net profit of 600 million yuan (132.7 billion won) last year. Producing more than 90 percent of its core components in-house, which has dramatically lowered costs, is cited as the key to its high profitability. However, first-quarter revenue this year rose 68.49 percent year-on-year to 423 million yuan (about 93.8 billion won), a slowdown from the 332.64 percent gain a year earlier. Net profit fell 52.55 percent year-on-year to 40.25 million yuan (about 8.9 billion won).
