Investors are showing a strong appetite for Unitree Robotics' initial public offering, reflecting growing optimism about China's ambition to turn its industrial chain strengths into commercially viable artificial intelligence applications in the physical world, market experts and investment banks said.
Though still at an early stage of commercialization, China's embodied intelligence industry is gaining momentum in scaling up applications, first in business scenarios and later in consumer markets, creating a distinctive opportunity set for global investors, they said.
The IPO of Unitree on Shanghai's STAR Market — the first A-share listing of a major producer of humanoid robots — has entered the subscription stage, with buoyant demand helping to lift its issue price and fundraising size above earlier expectations.
Its issuing announcement showed that it had priced its IPO at 150.80 yuan ($22.35) per share, with expected proceeds amounting to 6.099 billion yuan, higher than the 4.202 billion yuan estimated in its earlier IPO filing at an implied price of about 104 yuan per share.
Its IPO price represents a price-to-earnings ratio of 219.23 times, far surpassing the industry average of 38.56 times and giving it a market capitalization of about 60.99 billion yuan at the IPO price, the announcement said.
