Geekplus-W Shares Hit Record Low, Down 78% from Peak as FX Losses Erode Profit and Embodied AI Second Curve Remains Unrealized

Deep News09-24 18:00

On September 24, Geekplus-W (HKEX: 02590) closed at HK$7.62, down 2.81%, after touching an intraday low of HK$7.475, marking a fresh record low since its listing and shrinking its total market capitalization to approximately HK$9.8 billion.

Compared with its all-time high of HK$33.4 set in January this year, the company's share price has contracted by more than 77%; relative to its IPO price of HK$16.8, the decline has also reached 54.6%.

This robotics company, which carries the halo of being the "world's number one warehousing AMR stock" and secured 133.62 times oversubscription in its Hong Kong public offering at listing, now finds itself in a capital market position that stands in sharp contrast to the exuberance of a year ago.

Geekplus listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on July 9, 2025, with a global offering of 161 million H shares at an issue price of HK$16.8, raising net proceeds of approximately HK$2.545 billion from the global offering.

Within half a year of listing, the company's share price climbed steadily to HK$33.4, with market capitalization briefly surpassing HK$40 billion.

The turning point came after peaking in January 2026, when the stock entered a sustained downtrend.

By August 28, the day its interim results were released, the closing price had fallen to HK$10.2, breaking below the IPO price and representing a pullback of nearly 70% from the year's high.

Entering September, the decline accelerated further, with a cumulative drop of 29.38% over the past month, an expanded decline of 39.04% over the past three months, and a year-to-date cumulative decline of 65.17%, wiping out more than HK$33 billion in market capitalization from the year's peak.

Fundamental Growth Remains Intact as FX Losses Become a Profit "Black Hole"

From an operational perspective, Geekplus's core business has not shown signs of collapse.

In the first half of 2026, the company achieved revenue of RMB 1.284 billion, up 25.3% year-on-year; gross profit of RMB 460 million, up 27.8% year-on-year, with the gross margin improving from 35.1% in the same period last year to 35.8%.

Newly signed order value reached RMB 2.385 billion, up 35.5% year-on-year, equivalent to nearly 1.9 times the revenue for the same period.

As of the end of the reporting period, the company served more than 1,000 end customers across over 40 countries and regions worldwide, maintained a customer repurchase rate above 80%, and had cumulative robot shipments exceeding 81,000 units.

However, the book profit performance ran counter to revenue growth.

In the first half of 2026, the company recorded a loss of RMB 177 million for the period, an expansion of 268.1% year-on-year; operating loss was RMB 176 million, an expansion of 113.8% year-on-year.

The core factor behind this divergence was the dramatic reversal in exchange gains and losses.

During the reporting period, the company recorded an exchange loss of RMB 105 million, compared with an exchange gain of RMB 77.39 million in the same period last year, creating a profit gap of more than RMB 180 million from this single item alone.

China Merchants Securities International noted that Geekplus's first-half net loss exceeded market expectations by approximately RMB 85 million, mainly dragged down by exchange gains and losses.

The root of this problem lies in the company's revenue structure.

In the first half, revenue from regions outside mainland China accounted for more than 75% of Geekplus's total, with overseas sales gross margin reaching 46.2%, more than 10 percentage points higher than the overall gross margin.

The high proportion of overseas business is both an important support for the company's relatively high gross margin level and exposes its income statement to enormous exchange rate fluctuation risk.

Excluding exchange losses and one-off or strategic expenditures such as embodied AI R&D investment, the company's adjusted net loss was RMB 60.6 million, narrowing 32.1% year-on-year; excluding the impact of embodied AI R&D investment, the adjusted net loss narrowed sharply by 81.9%, bringing the core business close to break-even.

But the problem is that, against the backdrop of an uncertain trajectory for the RMB exchange rate, the disturbance to book profits from exchange gains and losses is difficult to eliminate in the short term, and the net profit figures investors see will continue to be significantly distorted by "non-operating factors."

Embodied AI Investment Ramps Up as the Second Growth Curve's Valuation Narrative Faces a Test

Facing steady core business growth but profit pressure, Geekplus has pinned its hopes for a valuation breakthrough on embodied AI.

In the first half of 2026, the company's embodied AI R&D investment reached RMB 44.5 million, directly widening the loss for the period.

Total R&D expenses were RMB 188 million, up 27.7% year-on-year.

In terms of business progress, Geekplus released its first general-purpose dual-arm wheeled humanoid robot, Gino 1, in February 2026, launched the unified embodied AI framework Gravity and its accompanying 4D embodied model at the WAIC conference in July, and announced its "one core, dual engines" general-purpose embodied AI layout.

The company plans to gradually mass-produce Gino 1 starting from the third quarter of this year and has set a target of cumulative shipments exceeding 10,000 units of embodied AI products within the next three years.

However, the market is clearly divided on whether this second curve can support the current valuation.

Although embodied AI has secured orders, the company has consistently declined to disclose specific contract amounts, shipment volumes, or revenue contributions from this business.

What currently supports revenue is still the warehousing robots it has been building for a decade — first-half warehousing fulfillment revenue was RMB 1.202 billion, accounting for 93.6% of total revenue, while industrial handling revenue was only RMB 82.22 million.

Investor patience with the "embodied AI plus humanoid robot" concept is wearing thin.

More notably, company management has revealed it is studying a spin-off of the embodied AI business from the listed company.

If this plan proceeds, the listed entity would lose its most imaginative valuation support, and while the current 13% debt-to-asset ratio and debt scale of less than RMB 100 million do not constitute financial pressure, it would mean the company loses a tool to attract external capital through an independent financing platform.

Institutions Densely Cut Earnings Forecasts as Shareholder Selling Pressure Cannot Be Ignored

Facing continued disturbance from exchange gains and losses and escalating embodied AI investment, institutions are repricing Geekplus's earnings outlook.

Bank of America Securities cut its earnings forecasts for 2026 to 2028 by 48% to 185%, and lowered its target price by 44.4% from HK$27 to HK$15.

China Merchants Securities International sharply reduced its target price from HK$28.2 to HK$16, now expecting an adjusted net loss of RMB 158 million in 2026, with adjusted net profits of RMB 234 million and RMB 603 million only expected in 2027 and 2028 respectively.

Morgan Stanley had also previously lowered its target price from HK$37 to HK$29 and cut its gross margin forecasts for 2026 to 2028 to reflect the potential dilutive impact of an increased order mix from Latin America and Eastern Europe, freight uncertainty, and capacity ramp-up for new products.

Liquidity-level pressure also warrants vigilance.

The lock-up period for Geekplus's early investors expired on July 9, 2026, and shares held by existing shareholders have been unlocked, creating potential selling pressure.

Although the largest cornerstone investor, Xiong'an Fund, stated at the January cornerstone unlock that it would not reduce its holdings and was bullish long-term, whether the selling intentions of existing shareholders align with those of cornerstone investors has no clear answer in public information.

The company has conducted buybacks for 18 consecutive trading days since late August, spending a cumulative HK$261 million, yet its share price still fell 22.99% cumulatively during that period.

The sustained buybacks failed to reverse the stock's decline, reflecting that the persistence of market selling pressure may exceed the company's capacity to absorb it through buybacks.

Judging from first-half results, the growth logic of Geekplus's core business has not been broken, with new order growth outpacing the industry, and the surge in subscription-based service orders providing a new fulcrum for optimizing the future revenue structure.

But the capital market's pricing logic is changing: when book profits are significantly distorted by exchange gains and losses, the commercialization progress of the second growth curve remains opaque, and the selling window for early investors has already opened, investors' tolerance for the company's "high revenue growth, high loss expansion" is approaching a critical point.

Until the revenue contribution of the embodied AI business is clearly disclosed and the adverse impact of exchange gains and losses eases, the pressure on Geekplus's share price will be difficult to fundamentally alleviate in the short term.

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