UBTECH lists on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange

From a 2012 startup to the main board

UBTECH was founded in March 2012 ^[1]. As of 30 June 2023, it had served more than 50 countries and regions and over 900 enterprise customers, and had sold more than 760,000 robots, Securities Times reported ^[1]. The same report put revenue at 740 million yuan in 2020, 817 million yuan in 2021 and 1.008 billion yuan in 2022 ^[1] — a rise from just over 700 million yuan to more than 1 billion yuan across three years.

The listing

On 29 December 2023 UBTECH listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange under stock code 9880, with an issue price of HK$90 per share ^[1][2]. Securities Times reported that the offering sold 11.282 million shares and raised net proceeds of HK$906 million ^[1]. Multiplying the number of shares by the issue price gives the gross size of the deal; the gap between gross and net proceeds normally covers underwriting and other costs, which is standard for an IPO. UBTECH describes itself as the first humanoid robot company listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange ^[2].

A robot at the gong

Hong Kong listing ceremonies are marked by striking an opening gong. This time the gong was struck by a Walker S humanoid robot together with founder and CEO Zhou Jian; Securities Times described it as the first time a humanoid robot had done so at a listing ceremony ^[1]. The shares closed at HK$90.85 on the first day, giving a market capitalisation of HK$37.962 billion ^[1] — a first-day move of under 1% above the issue price.

What the event marks

Moving from private funding to a main-board listing changes more than a ticker symbol. A listed company can raise money by issuing shares to the public, and in exchange it has to publish financial results on a schedule and accept scrutiny from public investors. For humanoid robotics this matters because the work is capital-heavy and slow: mechanical structures, joint actuators, sensors and control software all have to be designed and tested before anything is sold, and revenue tends to arrive well after the spending. A public listing opens a funding channel different from private rounds, and it puts the company's numbers where anyone can read them.

The day also left two concrete markers. One is the HK$37.962 billion market capitalisation at the first close ^[1], which records what the public market was willing to pay, at the end of 2023, for a company whose central product line is humanoid robots. The other is the Walker S at the gong ^[1]: the ceremony used a machine the company built rather than a person. For anyone studying this period later, the date, the stock code, the issue price and those two details are easier to check than the commentary written at the time.