Yushu Is Not Worth Its Current Price

Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author | jk

On the evening of August 6, Yushu Technology announced its issuance price on the STAR Market, set at 150.80 yuan per share, corresponding to an issuance market value of 60.993 billion yuan. On August 10, the day of online subscription, 9.78 million retail investors flooded in, with the initial effective subscription multiple reaching 8288.82 times, creating a historically low winning rate for the STAR Market. On the perpetual contract platform Hyperliquid, Yushu's pre-market quote once surged to 90 USD, translating to a market value exceeding 240 billion yuan, four times its issuance market value of 61 billion yuan. These numbers together sketch a scene of almost nationwide celebration for the new stock subscription, but behind the celebration, more and more voices are beginning to question whether this price has already overdrawn too much imagination.

Odaily Planet Daily today takes a look at five reasons to short Yushu behind the celebration.

1. Price-to-Earnings Ratio Far Exceeds Industry Level

Yushu Technology announced its issuance price on August 6, at 150.80 yuan per share, corresponding to an issuance market value of about 60.99 billion yuan. What truly shocked the market was its price-to-earnings ratio: 219.23 times; in comparison, the average static price-to-earnings ratio for the general equipment manufacturing industry published by the China Securities Index in the past month is only about 38.56 times, making Yushu's pricing approximately 5.7 times the industry average.

CCTV's report on Yushu. Source: CCTV

Some investors have humorously dubbed this price-to-earnings ratio as the "dream rate," meaning that the price paid is no longer based on current profitability but rather a distant dream.

2. Off-Market Quotes More Absurd Than Issuance Price

On overseas secondary market platforms like Hiive, from August 10 to 11, Yushu's quote once reached 61.63 USD per share, which translates to an overall valuation close to 22.4 billion USD, more than double the valuation corresponding to the issuance price.

On Hyperliquid, the situation is even more extreme. As of the time of publication, data showed that Yushu Technology's pre-market perpetual contract UNITREE-USDC was quoted at around 90 USD, which, based on a total share capital of 404 million shares, corresponds to a market value of about 35.47 billion USD, equivalent to approximately 239 billion yuan, nearly four times the issuance market value of 60.993 billion yuan.

Yushu Technology's pre-market quote on Hyperliquid. Source: Hyperliquid

But the emotions reflected are real, indicating that the market's imagination for Yushu has been overdrawn to a considerable extent.

3. Only 3% of Robot Sales Are Actually Used for Industrialization

The narrative supporting this valuation is the story of humanoid robots soon entering factories on a large scale, replacing human labor. However, looking at Yushu's own prospectus, this story is still just a story.

In the first nine months of 2025, 73.6% of Yushu's humanoid robot revenue came from research and education scenarios, 17.4% from commercial exhibitions, and only 9.01% from actual industrial applications. Among this 9%, the revenue actually used for manufacturing, inspection, and logistics in practical work scenarios is less than 3%, with only 15.7 million yuan in the first nine months, while the majority still comes from corporate tours.

36Kr raised a sharp question in its article "Humanoid Robots Have Yet to 'Benefit' Before 'Enriching'": "If Yushu can make money, does it mean humanoid robots will definitely make money?" It provided specific data to support this question.

In the first nine months of 2025, research and education accounted for 73.60% of humanoid robot business revenue, commercial consumption accounted for 17.39%, and industry applications only accounted for 9.01%. Among this 9.01%, corporate tours accounted for 70%, with only 15.72 million yuan used in clear industrial scenarios like intelligent manufacturing and intelligent inspection, accounting for 29.29% of industry application revenue.

The source of this data is actually Yushu's own written response to the second round of inquiries from the Shanghai Stock Exchange:

Yushu Technology's response letter. Source: Shanghai Stock Exchange

In simple terms, the largest buyer group for humanoid robots currently consists of universities, research institutions, and technology companies. They purchase robots for algorithm research, model training, and teaching experiments, while the demand in the research and education market is limited and is likely to reach a ceiling soon.

In this 9.01% of industry applications, the revenue corresponding to intelligent manufacturing, intelligent inspection, and logistics distribution in clear industrial scenarios is only 15.72 million yuan, accounting for 29.29%. The remaining approximately 70% is described by the company as "mainly used for corporate tours." Corporate tours refer to humanoid robots that, after secondary development, perform tasks like welcoming guests, guiding routes, explaining content, and answering questions within companies, essentially serving as talking, walking exhibition pieces.

If we multiply the 9.01% industry application proportion by the approximately 70% corporate tour proportion, then a significant portion of the revenue counted in the "industry application" statistics, which sounds like industrialization, is actually related to front desk welcoming and exhibition explanations, far from the imagined scenarios of robots entering factories to screw bolts and move goods.

The revenue corresponding to intelligent manufacturing, intelligent inspection, and logistics distribution accounts for less than 3% of the total revenue from the company's humanoid robots.

The article also mentions that a competitor, UBTECH, although it has received numerous large orders, has accumulated losses exceeding 5 billion yuan from 2020 to the first half of 2025 and has yet to turn a profit. In contrast, even with impressive orders, it does not mean that this business is in the clear. Another analysis article on the IPO directly pointed out that the research and education sector is a good business, but it cannot support the premium of 61 billion yuan related to "general robots entering thousands of households"; this premium needs to be taken over by industrial scenarios and consumer markets, both of which are still in the pilot stage.

4. Slowing Profit Growth and Deteriorating Profit Quality

In the first quarter of this year, Yushu's revenue was 423 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 68.49%, seemingly still strong, but compared to the 332.64% growth rate in the first quarter of 2025, it has already dropped sharply. The net profit excluding non-recurring items in the first quarter fell from 84.8365 million yuan in the same period last year to 40.2536 million yuan, a year-on-year decline of 52.55%, directly halving. The company's explanation is that R&D expenses increased by 38.328 million yuan year-on-year, mainly invested in embodied intelligent models, motion control algorithms, and body structure development, while also intensively promoting the brand through platforms like CCTV's Spring Festival Gala, which raised sales expenses.

Yushu Technology's financial response letter, Source: Shanghai Stock Exchange

Comparing the application documents disclosed in March this year and the documents disclosed in May, Yushu Technology made five modifications to the special risk warnings, among which the most critical was the addition of a "warning of year-on-year decline in net profit" and replacing the originally relatively broad risk of "technical breakthroughs and product innovations not meeting expectations" with "risk of slowing growth and fluctuations in operating performance," placing it at the top of seven special risk warnings. The prospectus also first named the threat from Tesla, acknowledging that Tesla, with its large-scale production and supply chain integration capabilities, has initiated small-batch trial production of its humanoid robot Optimus Gen-3, planning an annual production capacity of 1 million units, which will directly compete with Yushu once mass production is achieved.

UBS Securities' industrial analyst Wang Feili mentioned that even though many manufacturers are aiming for a shipment volume of 10,000 units this year, humanoid robots may not have truly reached the commercialization inflection point, because current industry orders are still mainly for verification purchases, rather than expansionary purchases based on productivity needs.

5. Institutions and Analysts Are Bearish

Zhuo Wang, a partner at an investment firm in Shanghai, stated in an interview with Reuters, "This IPO pricing is too expensive, and the investment risk is already quite high," pointing out that most of Yushu's sales revenue comes from research and display scenarios, and true large-scale commercial applications are still a long way off.

Even the relatively bullish Shenwan Hongyuan Research used cautious language when commenting on this pricing, believing that the high issuance valuation may draw market attention to the commercial value of the entire robotics industry, thereby driving the revaluation of related stocks. This statement can also be interpreted as Yushu's current commercial value itself still needs to be validated, with the valuation ahead of the business.

Research institution SemiAnalysis estimated in their report that they expect Yushu to have only about 250 robots truly used in industrial scenarios by 2025, while the shipment volume that year has already exceeded 5,500 units, indicating a significant gap.

Conclusion: Valuation Ultimately Must Return to Fundamentals

Ultimately, this round of pricing is largely a result of the global humanoid robot craze and the sentiment of retail investors in the A-share market pushing prices higher. Since the beginning of this year, from Tesla's Optimus to ZhiYuan, YueJiang, and YunShenChu, almost all companies associated with the "embodied intelligence" label have been granted an imagination space far exceeding their current performance in the capital market.

For this bet to hold, three assumptions must be fulfilled simultaneously: the demand for humanoid robots in the industry must experience explosive growth in the short term, Yushu must maintain its market share in the face of strong competitors like ZhiYuan and Tesla's Optimus, and it must not sacrifice its current high gross margin of about 60% due to price wars. Each of these three conditions is essential, and each carries considerable uncertainty.

In the short term, constrained by structural factors such as a small circulation and index funds supporting the stock, Yushu's stock price may not immediately weaken, and it may even continue to rise in the early days of listing. However, in the medium term, once these structural support forces dissipate over time, especially as the one-year listing mark approaches and the lock-up period for institutional shares expires, the valuation will ultimately have to return to fundamentals for verification. If by then the revenue proportion from industrial scenarios has not significantly improved and profit growth continues to decline, this high valuation, currently built on dreams, is likely to experience a significant drop.

This is strikingly similar to the trajectory of most crypto assets...

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