According to a disclosure by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on May 11, global consumer-grade 3D printing leader—Shenzhen Creality 3D Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Creality)—has announced positive news, having officially passed the main board listing hearing of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with CICC acting as the sole sponsor.
As a leading player in the global 3D printing industry, Creality managed to increase its revenue from 1.8 billion yuan to 3.1 billion yuan in just three years, demonstrating remarkable growth momentum. However, behind the impressive revenue growth lies an awkward situation: the company suddenly recorded a net loss of 182 million yuan in 2025. This financial disconnect, characterized by "revenue growth without profit growth," raises the question of whether the company can convincingly tell the market a new story about its "full-scenario ecosystem encompassing hardware, software, and platforms."
**Uncontrolled Costs and Expenses Behind Revenue Growth**
According to the prospectus, Creality is a global provider of consumer-grade 3D printing products and services. Its products and services mainly include 3D printers, 3D printing materials, 3D scanners, laser engravers, accessories and others, as well as various services provided through Creality Cloud (a platform focused on 3D printing content). Additionally, the company launched Nexbie in August 2025, an overseas e-commerce platform dedicated to 3D creative finished products.
Creality's full-scenario 3D printing product and service matrix are designed to mutually empower each other. During the creative process, users often combine 3D printing with 3D scanning and laser engraving to achieve more comprehensive solutions. By offering one-stop purchasing services and promoting continuous traffic conversion between products and services, the company aims to drive repeat purchases and enhance customer stickiness to its products and services. Furthermore, after purchasing the company's products, customers are directed to the Creality Cloud and Nexbie platforms. This not only boosts user engagement but also aids in product discovery.
From 2023 to 2025, Creality's revenue grew from 1.883 billion yuan to 3.127 billion yuan, with a three-year compound annual growth rate of 28.87%, indicating rapid scale expansion. However, the growth rate of expenses far exceeded that of revenue: in 2025, revenue increased by 36.63% year-on-year, but sales and marketing expenses, R&D expenses, and administrative expenses increased by 48.85%, 49.2%, and 60.9% year-on-year, respectively. The combined proportion of these three expenses to revenue rose from 25.5% to 30.7%, severely eroding gross profit.
Moreover, in 2025, "other net losses" amounted to as high as 239 million yuan, primarily due to the issuance of shares to investors and dividend payments totaling 240 million yuan. This led to an annual net loss attributable to shareholders of 182 million yuan. Even after excluding this factor, adjusted net profit continued to decline from 130 million yuan in 2023 to 92 million yuan in 2025, indicating a gradual weakening of core profitability.
More critically, Creality's capital efficiency deteriorated, with a surge in inventory coupled with uncontrolled accounts receivable, turning operating cash flow from positive to negative, revealing a fragile cash-generating ability. In 2025, net cash flow from operating activities turned negative for the first time, recording -64 million yuan. The core reasons were a significant increase in inventory to 634 million yuan (a sharp increase of 44.73% year-on-year) and a rise in trade receivables to 338 million yuan (a substantial increase of 50.16% year-on-year). Inventory turnover days extended from 81.4 days in 2023 to 98.3 days in 2025, indicating a continuous decline in the efficiency of current asset turnover.
A greater concern lies in the rapid increase in current liabilities from 764 million yuan to 1.223 billion yuan (an increase of approximately 60%), while the company's held cash and cash equivalents decreased from 302 million yuan to 277 million yuan during the same period. At this critical juncture of sprinting for a Hong Kong stock listing, capital market tolerance will be tested by this financial pressure.
**Ecosystem Not Yet Closed, Entry Point Already Eroded: Creality's Synergy Dilemma**
From a business layout perspective, Creality's strategic intent is very clear—to build a full-scenario 3D creative ecosystem covering "scanning—modeling—slicing—printing—laser engraving—trading." Creality has been continuously expanding its product line: in April 2025, at its 11th-anniversary celebration, the company launched a series of new products covering FDM 3D printers, slicing software Creality Print 6.0, the Creality Cloud platform, laser engravers, 3D scanners, etc., and pledged a cooperative commitment to "feed back 30% of incremental profits into the ecosystem chain over the next three years."
Additionally, the company stated it would focus on UV printing technology and continuously pursue the development of next-generation intelligent 3D printing technologies, such as infinite-axis printing, to seize market opportunities. Simultaneously, Creality plans to develop Nexbie to connect users, creators, and producers, realize creativity through a flexible supply chain, and activate mass participation through a profit-sharing mechanism. This involves integrating generative AI technology into the company's products and platforms.
From the official narrative, a complete, full-process ecosystem chain appears to have been largely established. However, on the flip side of this seemingly closed ecosystem, the vulnerability of the core entry point is being overlooked. From 2023 to 2025, the proportion of 3D printer revenue in total revenue was significantly compressed from 74.6% to 57.1%, while shipments during the same period also decreased from 870,000 units to 740,000 units. Although the company explained this was due to an increase in average product price (from 1,600 yuan to about 2,500 yuan), this shift essentially indicates the company is sacrificing mass-market share to maintain revenue growth.
More crucially, 3D printers serve as the core "entry device" for the entire ecosystem. Once shipments weaken, the sustained growth of subsequent value-added businesses such as materials, accessories, and scanners will lack sufficient user base support—and materials and scanners are precisely the two pillars enabling high-frequency repeat purchases within the ecosystem's closed loop. The operation of the ecosystem relies on the stability of the entry point, but Creality's investment and competitive response at the entry point are clearly insufficient.
Meanwhile, the "ecosystem moat" claimed by Creality faces considerable challenges in actual operations. As of the end of 2025, over 2.7 million 3D models were stored on the Creality Cloud platform, with approximately 84,300 model creators. However, the strength of ecosystem binding depends on whether users are unable or unwilling to leave the ecosystem. Currently, the company has not disclosed data on the connection rate between devices and the platform, the repurchase rate for materials, or user overlap data between scanners and printers. Users can completely use other brands of printers to print models downloaded from Creality Cloud or scan data with Creality's scanners and export it to competitors' platforms for printing.
Regarding product iteration and positioning, although Creality has achieved the top global market share in consumer-grade 3D scanners and ranks third globally in the laser engraver market, these "second and third place" labels have not truly provided positive feedback to the competitiveness of the core entry point—3D printers. In 2024, based on GMV, Creality ranked second in the global consumer-grade 3D printer market with a market share of about 11.2%, while the leader, Bambu Lab, held a commanding 35.5%. For the full year 2025, Bambu Lab captured a 37% share in the entry-level 3D printer market (below $2,500), while Creality fell to second place. The shift from once being the global leader in cumulative shipments to being overtaken in a single segment truly reflects the changing competitive landscape.
Furthermore, in terms of channel layout and resource allocation for globalization, Creality's diversification efforts have, to some extent, diluted the focus on core competitive resources. The company has established a sales network covering approximately 140 countries and regions worldwide, including 81 online stores and 2,422 distributors. Overseas markets form the foundation of its revenue, with North America and Europe together accounting for 57.3% of revenue in 2025. To support such an extensive channel system, the company's sales and marketing investment increased from 302 million yuan in 2023 to 570 million yuan in 2025. The marketing expense ratio rose significantly from 16% to 18.2%. In contrast, its peer Bambu Lab resembles a more capital- and technology-driven, efficient player—achieving revenue exceeding 10 billion yuan in less than six years since its establishment. This efficiency gap further exacerbates the contradictions in Creality's capital market narrative: channel expansion and product diversification have not translated into strong competitiveness for the main entry point but have instead invisibly eroded profit margins.
Ultimately, the core business contradiction faced by Creality lies in its attempt to flourish across multiple business lines such as materials, scanners, and laser engravers while failing to defend the moat of its core position—3D printers. Ecosystem construction cannot merely be a "broad product line full-coverage checklist" encompassing diverse hardware; it must be built upon genuine interactive closed loops and user switching costs. When the main entry point—printers—sees both market share and shipments suppressed by competitors, and other auxiliary businesses have not yet cultivated sufficient user loyalty and high-frequency repurchase to feed back into the entry point, this so-called closed-loop ecosystem can easily devolve into an operational dilemma characterized by "a lost entry point and new businesses fighting their own battles."
In summary, Creality has successfully passed the Hong Kong Stock Exchange hearing, with revenue climbing to new highs for three consecutive years, seemingly enjoying immense success. However, beneath the surface of revenue growth, the company is deeply mired in a structural dilemma: "the ecosystem is not yet closed, and the entry point is already eroded." At this critical juncture of sprinting for a listing, the capital market's measure of Creality should not be solely the label "global consumer-grade 3D printing leader," but rather its ability to truly construct a defensible, high-stickiness, closed-loop ecosystem. For now, the persuasiveness of this story remains thin.
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