Hai Robotics IPO Filing Returns to Hong Kong, but Profitability Sets the Test

Hai Robotics returned to Hong Kong’s listing queue on September 13, one month after its first application expired without reaching an offering.

The new Hai Robotics IPO filing shows a larger business than the February application presented. Revenue reached RMB2.02 billion in 2025, up from RMB1.36 billion in 2024. Revenue for the first half of 2026 was RMB1.12 billion.

Yet the company still recorded losses of RMB828 million in 2025 and RMB431 million during the first half of 2026. The filing therefore frames a sharper question than whether warehouse automation demand exists.

Hai Robotics must show that its installed base, international growth, and improving economics can support a sustainable business. Market leadership alone will not settle that question.

The comparison is especially demanding because Geekplus, another Chinese warehouse robotics company, is already listed in Hong Kong. Geekplus reported positive adjusted net profit and operating cash flow for 2025.

That makes this second application more than an administrative restart. It places Hai Robotics before public investors after a close peer has already presented a clearer profitability milestone.

The Hai Robotics IPO Filing Restarts an Unfinished Process

The September application revives Hai Robotics’ listing effort, but it does not mean an offering has been approved or scheduled.

Hai Robotics submitted its first application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on February 13, 2026. Goldman Sachs and CITIC Securities served as joint sponsors.

That application expired on August 13 after remaining active for six months. Hai Robotics then returned with another application on September 13, according to the exchange disclosure reported in the September filing.

An application proof is a draft disclosure document, not a final prospectus. The exchange can accept, return, or reject an application, and the company has not announced final offer terms.

The sequence matters because the renewed filing follows a regulatory review process in mainland China. In July, the China Securities Regulatory Commission requested additional explanations about several aspects of the proposed overseas listing.

Those questions included the pricing of shares issued to new investors during the preceding 12 months. Regulators also asked why those investors entered at different prices and whether the transactions involved improper transfers of benefits.

The commission requested information about proposed full circulation arrangements, overseas investment procedures, foreign exchange registration, and the intended use of proceeds outside China. These are disclosure and compliance questions, not findings of misconduct.

The first application’s expiration also should not be interpreted as a rejection. Hong Kong listing applications routinely lapse when issuers do not complete the review within their validity period.

Refiling lets Hai Robotics refresh its financial record and continue the process. The company’s updated numbers now include full-year 2025 and first-half 2026 performance.

Those additions materially change the picture. The February draft covered only 2023, 2024, and the first nine months of 2025.

Hai Robotics reported revenue of RMB807 million in 2023 and RMB1.36 billion in 2024. Revenue then reached RMB2.02 billion in 2025 before totaling RMB1.12 billion during the first half of 2026.

The company’s planned fund allocation covers technology development, software, algorithms, manufacturing capacity, supply-chain resilience, international service capabilities, talent, and general working capital.

Those broad priorities reveal what management believes the next phase requires. Hai Robotics is not presenting the listing simply as funding for more robot production.

It wants capital for a larger operating system around those machines. That includes manufacturing, implementation, software, service, and support across several markets.

The filing therefore restarts two processes at once. One is the formal path toward a Hong Kong listing. The other is the effort to prove that fast deployment growth can become durable economic value.

Why Warehouse Automation Scale Matters Now

Hai Robotics has established commercial scale, but public investors will judge the quality and cost of that scale.

The company develops autonomous case-handling robots, commonly called ACRs. These systems retrieve individual totes or cartons and move them to workstations where people or other equipment process orders.

That design differs from systems that move entire shelving units. It can increase storage density because cases occupy vertical racks while robots access them directly.

Warehouses use these systems for picking, replenishment, sorting, and production-side material movement. Relevant customers include retailers, manufacturers, logistics providers, and e-commerce operators.

The business is broader than selling standalone machines. A deployment combines robots, workstations, storage equipment, control software, installation, commissioning, and continuing technical support.

That complexity creates a valuable position inside a customer’s operations. It also creates long sales cycles, project execution risk, and significant service requirements.

Hai Robotics says it introduced its HaiPick case-to-person system in 2017. Its February draft application described the company as the largest global ACR provider by 2024 revenue and shipments.

The claim relied on research commissioned from China Insights Industry Consultancy. The September coverage says Hai Robotics retained that position in 2025, with more than 30% market share by revenue and shipments.

Commissioned market research can help define a specialized category. However, the result depends on where the category’s boundaries are drawn.

ACR systems compete for budgets against several other automation approaches. Those include autonomous mobile robots, goods-to-person systems, conveyors, shuttles, and dense cube-storage platforms.

A customer does not necessarily begin with a commitment to buy ACR technology. It begins with a throughput, labor, space, reliability, and payback problem.

Hai Robotics must therefore win within its category and against alternative system designs. Category leadership strengthens its sales pitch, but it does not eliminate substitution risk.

The company’s revenue trajectory indicates that customers are making substantial commitments. Revenue grew 68.6% between 2023 and 2024, then reached RMB2.02 billion in 2025.

Project businesses can produce uneven recognition between reporting periods. Installation schedules, customer acceptance, and equipment delivery can move revenue across quarters.

That makes orders, backlog conversion, project completion, and repeat business important alongside reported revenue. The updated public summaries do not provide enough detail to evaluate every one of those measures.

The installed base creates another opportunity. After deployment, customers need maintenance, software updates, spare parts, system optimization, and sometimes additional robots.

Those services can turn a project relationship into recurring revenue. They can also improve margins if support revenue expands faster than field-service costs.

Hai Robotics has said international customers often demand higher service standards across a project’s lifecycle. That demand can support higher-value services and recurring revenue.

International work also brings additional burdens. The company must manage local integration, labor, parts availability, data rules, safety requirements, and response times.

A robot that performs well in a demonstration is not enough. Warehouse buyers require systems that remain available during seasonal peaks and integrate with existing operational software.

That operational standard explains why scale matters now. Hai Robotics has moved beyond proving that ACR systems can attract buyers.

Its next test is proving that each new deployment strengthens the economics of the wider business instead of adding equivalent complexity and cost.

Growth Is Improving the Story, Not Yet Closing the Loss

Hai Robotics’ revenue has expanded substantially, but accumulated losses keep profitability at the center of the listing case.

The company recorded losses of RMB1.01 billion in 2023 and RMB1.26 billion in 2024. Its loss narrowed to RMB828 million in 2025.

Hai Robotics then reported a RMB431 million loss for the first half of 2026. That remains large relative to the RMB1.12 billion of revenue recorded during the same period.

These figures should be interpreted carefully. Private-company accounting around preferred shares can create finance costs or fair-value changes that disappear after an initial public offering.

Those items can make a statutory loss look worse than the underlying operating result. They do not, however, make operating expenses or cash requirements irrelevant.

The earlier application showed that sales and marketing costs were a substantial burden. Those expenses totaled RMB424 million in 2023 and RMB489 million in 2024.

For the first nine months of 2025, sales and marketing spending reached RMB386 million. It represented 30.5% of revenue, down from 52.7% in 2023.

Research spending also declined as a percentage of revenue during that earlier reporting period. The ratio fell from 38.3% in 2023 to 20.4% for the first nine months of 2025.

Falling expense ratios can indicate operating leverage, which occurs when revenue grows faster than operating costs. It can also reflect timing, hiring decisions, or project mix.

Gross margin improved from 16% in 2023 to 26.3% in 2024. It reached 28.9% during the first nine months of 2025, according to the earlier application.

The geographic split helped. Revenue from markets outside mainland China carried gross margins above 40% during each period covered by that draft.

Mainland projects produced materially lower margins. Customers there were described as more price-sensitive, while international projects included more services and more favorable commercial terms.

This creates a credible route toward better economics. A higher international mix can lift consolidated margins without requiring the company to abandon its home market.

It also creates a tradeoff. International expansion requires local sales teams, implementation specialists, service coverage, spare-parts networks, and regulatory expertise.

The company must spend ahead of demand to build that infrastructure. If new revenue arrives too slowly, overseas expansion can increase losses before it improves margins.

Inventory adds another pressure point. The earlier draft showed inventories rising from RMB689 million to RMB1.14 billion across the disclosed reporting dates.

Inventory growth can support future orders, shorten delivery times, and protect against supply constraints. It can also tie up cash or lead to write-downs when products change.

Long implementation cycles create similar working-capital tension. Equipment manufacturers often pay suppliers before projects reach final customer acceptance and full collection.

Hai Robotics says customer advances and supplier credit finance a substantial part of its operations. Investors will still want evidence that cash conversion improves as revenue scales.

The new filing therefore strengthens the growth argument without completing the profitability argument. Revenue reached a new level, and annual losses narrowed in 2025.

Still, the first-half 2026 loss shows that scale has not yet delivered a statutory profit. The distance between those two facts is the central tension in the offering.

Geekplus Has Raised the Profitability Benchmark

The most relevant pressure comes from Geekplus, which has already shown public investors a warehouse robotics business with positive adjusted earnings.

Geekplus listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2025 under stock code 2590. It sells autonomous mobile robot systems for warehouse fulfillment and other logistics applications.

The two companies do not offer identical architectures. Hai Robotics emphasizes case handling, while Geekplus operates across broader shelf-to-person and mobile-robot workflows.

They still compete for many of the same automation budgets. Both target warehouses seeking higher throughput, better space use, and reduced dependence on manual movement.

Geekplus reported RMB3.17 billion in 2025 revenue, an increase of 31.6%. Gross profit reached RMB1.13 billion, producing a gross margin of 35.5%.

Its 2025 results also showed positive adjusted net profit and positive operating cash flow. Orders increased to RMB4.14 billion.

Revenue from outside mainland China represented 75.3% of Geekplus’ total. That international business generated a 46.6% gross margin, according to the company.

The comparison does not prove that Hai Robotics should produce the same margins. Product architecture, customer industries, revenue recognition, and service scope can differ substantially.

However, Geekplus gives investors a nearby public benchmark. It shows what scaled warehouse robotics economics can look like after international expansion matures.

That benchmark shifts the question facing Hai Robotics. Investors no longer need to value its financial model without a listed Chinese peer.

They can compare revenue scale, international exposure, gross margin, order growth, operating cash flow, and the time required to reach adjusted profitability.

Hai Robotics can answer with specialization. ACR systems access individual cases across tall storage structures, which can suit facilities with diverse inventory and limited floor space.

The company can also argue that its more than 30% share of the defined ACR market reflects a defensible technical and commercial position.

Yet specialization must translate into better project economics. A leading category share has limited value if customer acquisition, customization, and service consume the resulting gross profit.

AutoStore provides a different benchmark. Its cube-storage model uses robots moving across a grid above densely packed bins.

AutoStore reported $538.6 million in 2025 revenue and other operating income. Its gross margin was 72.4%, while profit for the year was $81.8 million.

The company’s annual report shows an economics profile unlike that of project-heavy Chinese vendors. Its partner-led model and intellectual property position affect the comparison.

AutoStore’s 2025 revenue fell 10.4%, despite those high margins. That illustrates another tradeoff: mature profitability does not guarantee uninterrupted growth.

Together, these peers define the pressure around the Hai Robotics IPO filing. Geekplus sets a regional commercialization benchmark, while AutoStore shows the value of high-margin system economics.

Hai Robotics occupies a different position. It offers rapid growth and leadership in ACR deployments, but it still carries the expenses and risks of building global scale.

Customer Concentration and Global Execution Remain the Hard Tests

Hai Robotics must prove that its growth rests on repeatable demand, not a limited number of large and costly projects.

The earlier application disclosed meaningful customer concentration. Its largest customer contributed 30.4% of revenue during the first nine months of 2025.

That customer was described as a global, design-led online fashion retailer. Hai Robotics did not identify the company in the public draft.

Revenue from the customer rose from RMB143 million in 2024 to RMB384 million during the first nine months of 2025. The relationship began in 2022.

A fast-growing anchor account can validate a technology under real operating conditions. It can also create procurement leverage and revenue volatility.

Large customers can delay projects, renegotiate terms, change warehouse strategies, or divide orders among several vendors. Any of those actions can affect a supplier’s growth.

Concentration becomes more consequential when the supplier remains unprofitable. Losing one large project can leave sales, engineering, and service capacity underused.

The September filing’s expanded record should help investors assess whether that concentration declined during full-year 2025 and the first half of 2026.

They will also need updated data on repeat purchases. A customer adding robots or sites can signal that the original deployment met operational targets.

Contracted customers alone provide an incomplete measure. Channel partners can sign agreements before an end customer commits to a large commercial rollout.

Deployment quality matters because warehouse automation becomes part of daily operations. Downtime can disrupt picking, replenishment, packing, and production supply.

International projects add logistical exposure. Hai Robotics must keep replacement parts available and technical personnel close enough to restore service promptly.

The company also faces product-cycle risk. Faster robots, taller systems, better grippers, and improved scheduling software can make older configurations less attractive.

Customers expect vendors to preserve compatibility as those systems evolve. Supporting several generations can increase engineering and inventory costs.

Currency movements can change reported revenue and local expenses. Trade restrictions or import requirements can also affect hardware deliveries across markets.

The Chinese regulatory process presents a separate uncertainty. The commission’s regulatory questions show that an overseas offering requires more than Hong Kong exchange review.

Hai Robotics must address shareholding, compliance, overseas investment, and full circulation issues. The available public material does not establish when each review will conclude.

There is also no announced offering size, price range, listing date, or valuation. Any assessment based on those terms would therefore be premature.

Investors should distinguish company claims from independently confirmed outcomes. Market-share statements come from commissioned industry research referenced in the filing.

Margin improvements and reported revenue are financial disclosures, but their durability depends on future customer mix, service costs, and project execution.

The skeptical case is straightforward. Hai Robotics has grown by accepting the expense and complexity required to establish an international warehouse robotics platform.

The unresolved question is whether that platform now lowers the cost of each additional project. If it does not, revenue growth alone will not close the loss.

Three Signals Will Decide What Comes Next

The next phase should be judged through regulatory progress, operating economics, and evidence of diversified customer demand.

The first signal is progress through the Hong Kong and mainland regulatory processes. A hearing, an updated application proof, or registered prospectus would move the transaction closer to an offering.

Final offer terms would reveal how public investors value Hai Robotics relative to its revenue, losses, market position, and listed peers.

Another six-month lapse would weaken the current momentum. It would not prove the business case failed, but it would extend uncertainty around funding and disclosure.

The second signal is the relationship between gross profit and operating expenses. Revenue growth matters only when each additional unit contributes enough to fund sales, engineering, and administration.

Investors should watch updated gross margin, sales expense ratios, operating cash flow, and inventory. Improvement across those measures would support the operating-leverage argument.

A narrower statutory loss can help, but its composition matters. Reductions driven mainly by preferred-share accounting would say less about core operations.

Stronger gross profit and positive operating cash flow would provide firmer evidence. They would show that customer collections and project economics are improving together.

The third signal is customer diversification. Hai Robotics needs growth beyond one major account and beyond a small group of complex installations.

Updated concentration figures, repeat orders, new end customers, and expansion across existing sites would make revenue quality easier to assess.

International growth deserves particular attention because it has carried higher margins. The company must show that those margins remain attractive after local service costs.

A rising overseas revenue share would strengthen the profitability thesis if gross margin and cash conversion improve. Growth accompanied by heavier losses would weaken it.

Competitive responses also matter within these signals. Geekplus will continue reporting orders, international mix, margins, and cash flow as a listed company.

AutoStore will provide another view of automation demand across Europe and North America. Their results can help separate company-specific execution from broader warehouse spending conditions.

The Hai Robotics IPO filing gives buyers, partners, and investors an unusually detailed look at a major private robotics vendor. It also exposes the limits of market-share headlines.

For enterprise buyers, financial health matters because warehouse systems remain in service for years. Vendor support, software maintenance, parts availability, and upgrade paths outlast the initial installation.

Teams comparing vendors should preserve filings, technical specifications, deployment reports, and contract assumptions in a searchable record. A structured knowledge base helps keep those changing claims connected.

The immediate event is a renewed application. The larger story is whether Hai Robotics can convert category leadership into an investable, self-sustaining operating model.

Watch the next filing update, the next set of margin and cash-flow figures, and the next customer breakdown. Together, those disclosures will answer the question revenue growth cannot settle alone.