SEYOND (2665.HK), a global leader in LiDAR technology, recently released its 2025 performance report, marking its first annual financial statement since its successful listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in December 2025. The report highlights a milestone achievement in key financial metrics—the company's annual gross margin turned positive for the first time. However, persistent substantial losses and a highly concentrated customer base remain core challenges that the firm must address post-listing.
The transition to a positive gross margin stands out as the most notable achievement, yet overall losses remain significant. Financial data for the full year of 2025 shows that SEYOND generated revenue of $154 million. While revenue remained largely flat compared to the previous year, improvements in profitability drew greater market attention. During the year, the company significantly optimized its cost of sales, driving gross profit to $12.3 million and raising the gross margin to 7.9%. This figure contrasts sharply with the -8.7% gross margin recorded for the full year of 2024, indicating initial success in scaling mass production and implementing cost-control measures.
Despite the impressive gross profit performance, it was insufficient to offset overall loss pressures. In 2025, SEYOND reported an annual loss of $328 million. A detailed analysis of the financial statements reveals that the substantial loss was primarily attributable to non-cash accounting treatments and one-time expenses related to the listing process. These included a $189 million fair value loss on financial liabilities due to changes in company valuation, as well as $57.1 million in capital reorganization expenses linked to the completion of a SPAC merger transaction. Excluding these non-operational and one-time items, the company's adjusted net loss narrowed to $63.01 million, indicating a contraction in losses from core operations.
On the operational front, SEYOND demonstrated strong growth momentum in 2025. Total LiDAR deliveries for the year reached approximately 332,500 units, representing a significant year-on-year increase of 44.6%. The "Lark" series, targeting the mid-to-high-end market, emerged as a new growth driver, with deliveries surging from 11,600 units in 2024 to 137,800 units, achieving scaled production volumes.
The company continues to advance its customer diversification strategy, disclosing in its annual report that it has established strategic partnerships with 17 additional automakers and autonomous driving companies, involving over 50 vehicle models. However, an unavoidable reality is SEYOND's continued heavy reliance on its single largest customer, NIO. In 2025, revenue from NIO still accounted for approximately 82% of total revenue, while its procurement volume represented 86.2% of total deliveries. This deep dependency ties SEYOND's performance prospects closely to NIO's development cycle, creating a potential risk concentration point.
Simultaneously, the company's efforts to expand revenue in non-automotive sectors such as robotics and smart infrastructure still lag behind industry leaders. Translating technological advantages into market share across broader applications remains a critical challenge for management to address.
SEYOND's high-price strategy, while contributing to certain revenue levels, also poses obstacles to market expansion. Although the annual report did not disclose specific unit prices, previous prospectus filings indicated a decline in the average selling price of ADAS products from $662 per unit to $443 per unit, highlighting evident pricing pressures. As competitors like Hesai and RoboSense rapidly capture market share with more cost-effective products and actively develop secondary growth avenues in robotics LiDAR, SEYOND's revenue proportion from non-automotive sectors remains relatively low.
In 2025, revenue from products "applicable to robotics and others" amounted to $18.91 million, accounting for only 12.3% of total revenue, with some high prices attributed to early-stage projects. In the robotics LiDAR market, considered a future blue ocean, doubts persist about SEYOND's ability to achieve scaled volumes at competitive prices. The conflict between its premium pricing strategy and the need for market share expansion may place it at a disadvantage amid intense industry consolidation.
The capital market has already reflected these risks through its response. Since its listing on December 10, 2025, SEYOND's stock price experienced a brief surge before trending downward. As of the close on April 2, 2026, the share price stood at HK$8.09, down more than 50% from its post-listing peak. The sustained weakness in stock price directly mirrors investor concerns over its business model characterized by high valuation, significant losses, and heavy reliance on a single customer.
Although the company was included in the Hong Kong Stock Connect on March 9, 2026, theoretically gaining access to southbound capital liquidity support, this positive development has yet to reverse the stock's decline. The core reason lies in the fact that improved liquidity cannot address fundamental risks. Against a backdrop of intensifying industry competition and significant cost-reduction pressures on automakers, market confidence in SEYOND's ability to sustain its current valuation remains critically low.
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