For stock investors, authoritative, professional, timely and comprehensive analyst research reports help uncover potential thematic opportunities. On October 8, shares of UBTECH ROBOTICS (09880.HK), known as the "first humanoid robot stock," fell to an intraday low of HK$69 per share, a new low for the year. Since the start of this year, the company's share price has retreated repeatedly, and it is now more than 50% below its year high of HK$156.4.

Behind the weakness in the secondary market, UBTECH ROBOTICS has long been mired in losses. In the first half of this year, the company's revenue rose 104.22% year on year to 1.269 billion yuan, while its loss for the period narrowed 22.99% year on year to 339 million yuan, and its adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed 45.89% year on year to 174 million yuan. Since listing in 2023, UBTECH ROBOTICS has accumulated losses of about 3.553 billion yuan. It was noted that in the first half of this year, full-size embodied intelligent humanoid robots became UBTECH ROBOTICS' growth engine. However, it is hard to ignore that there is a huge gap between the order momentum for the new consumer-grade U1 product and actual delivery capacity, and order conversion capability is falling short of expectations.

Beneath the appearance of high revenue growth, UBTECH ROBOTICS still faces many hidden concerns, with its accounts receivable scale exceeding revenue for the same period and cash flow continuing to bleed. Due to a massive acquisition, the company's cash reserves were cut by more than half in six months.

Education revenue halves, U1 deliveries shrink 80% from expectations

Since listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in December 2023, UBTECH ROBOTICS' losses have narrowed year by year, but the company has never achieved profitability. From 2023 to 2025, its losses for the year were 1.265 billion yuan, 1.16 billion yuan and 790 million yuan, respectively. In the first half of this year, its loss for the period narrowed 22.99% year on year to 339 million yuan, bringing cumulative losses over the past three and a half years to 3.553 billion yuan.

In contrast to the losses, the company's revenue doubled. In the first half of this year, UBTECH ROBOTICS generated revenue of 1.269 billion yuan, up 104.22% year on year. By business segment, revenue from customized intelligent robots and intelligent robot solutions for other industries rose 810.7% year on year to 581 million yuan in the first half, with its revenue share jumping to 45.8% from 10.3% in the same period of 2025, becoming the core driver of revenue growth. By comparison, the two traditional core businesses lacked growth momentum. Revenue from consumer-grade robots and other hardware devices rose 10.8% year on year to 288 million yuan, with its revenue share shrinking to 22.7%; revenue from educational intelligent robots and intelligent robot solutions reached 122 million yuan, down 49.1% year on year, accounting for 9.6% of revenue. In the same period of 2025, the revenue shares of these two segments were 41.8% and 38.6%, respectively.

It was noted that at the product level, full-size embodied intelligent humanoid robots became the biggest highlight of the interim report. In the first half of this year, products and solutions for full-size embodied intelligent humanoid robots achieved leapfrog growth, with sales volume up 1,946.7% year on year to 921 units and revenue surging 1,445% year on year to 590 million yuan, making it UBTECH ROBOTICS' largest revenue product. In the same period of 2025, revenue from this product was only 38.206 million yuan. According to disclosures, revenue from UBTECH ROBOTICS' full-size embodied intelligent humanoid robots almost entirely depends on a single model, the WalkerS2. In the first half of this year, the delivery scale of the WalkerS2 continued to expand, while the WalkerC, WalkerS3 and consumer-grade U1 had not yet entered mass production.

At the June 30 launch event for the ultra-biomimetic humanoid robot U1 series, UBTECH ROBOTICS CEO Zhou Jian said that all-channel orders for the product exceeded 13,361 units, with the first batch of deliveries to begin on September 16, and the company would try to complete deliveries within the year. It is worth mentioning that in the full year of 2025, UBTECH ROBOTICS' full-size humanoid robot sales volume was only 1,079 units, and U1 orders were more than 12 times that of 2025, with the order number once sparking widespread market discussion. But on the August 30 earnings call, UBTECH ROBOTICS' disclosed delivery expectations clearly cooled. The company said that pre-sale orders for the consumer-grade U1 series exceeded 13,000 units, and actual deliveries this year could be 1,500 to 2,000 units. Real delivery capacity shrank by more than 80% compared with delivery expectations, showing that the company's order conversion capability is not as optimistic as imagined.

Cash flow bleeds over the long term, large goodwill hangs overhead

It is worth noting that behind UBTECH ROBOTICS' high revenue growth, accounts receivable and inventory have significantly squeezed working capital. Because the company's main customers come from large manufacturing enterprises and government industrial parks, such customers have relatively long repayment cycles, causing the company's cash collection pace to be slow. In the first half of this year, UBTECH ROBOTICS' book balance of accounts receivable was 2.225 billion yuan, 1.75 times its revenue of 1.269 billion yuan for the same period. Bad debt provisions were 545 million yuan, with a provision ratio of 24.51%, and the book value of accounts receivable was 1.68 billion yuan, up 92% year on year.

Accounts receivable risk has already been reflected in the income statement. In the first half of this year, UBTECH ROBOTICS' credit impairment loss reached 91.07 million yuan, including 76.784 million yuan in bad debt losses on accounts receivable, while credit impairment loss in the same period of 2025 was only 1.303 million yuan. UBTECH ROBOTICS explained that starting at the end of 2025, the company changed from the original external evaluation method to the migration rate method to determine the expected credit loss rate, which led to a year-on-year increase in credit impairment loss provisions. Although it was only a change in accounting policy, it still significantly dragged down profit for the period and also reflected the pressure the company faces in collecting payments.

At the same time, UBTECH ROBOTICS' inventory book value in the first half of this year was 985 million yuan, up 70.93% from the end of 2025. Accounts receivable and inventory tied up a large amount of working capital, resulting in a net operating cash flow of -749 million yuan during the period. Over a longer period, UBTECH ROBOTICS' operating cash flow has been bleeding for a long time, at -1 billion yuan, -884 million yuan and -784 million yuan from 2023 to 2025, respectively. It was noted that with the robot main business not yet capable of generating its own cash, UBTECH ROBOTICS' funding continuity is highly dependent on the capital market. In 2025, the company raised a net total of about HK$6.342 billion through three placements, and since listing it has raised more than HK$7.4 billion through six placements in total. In August, UBTECH ROBOTICS announced that it planned to change the use of HK$387 million in unused placement proceeds from "investing in or acquiring potential upstream or downstream targets, integrating or establishing joint ventures" to "payments to suppliers and service providers."

It is worth mentioning that UBTECH ROBOTICS' cash reserves contracted sharply in six months. As of the end of the first half of this year, the company had cash and cash equivalents of 2.326 billion yuan, compared with 4.888 billion yuan at the end of 2025. The core reason for the large cash consumption was that UBTECH ROBOTICS spent 1.665 billion yuan to complete the acquisition of a 43.01% stake in Fenglong Co., Ltd. (002931.SZ), which has been consolidated since April this year. However, Fenglong Co., Ltd.'s own fundamentals are weak. In the first half of this year, Fenglong Co., Ltd. achieved revenue of 267 million yuan and a net profit attributable to shareholders of -2.0151 million yuan, respectively. The acquisition also formed goodwill of 1.124 billion yuan, accounting for nearly 70% of the acquisition cost. Once subsequent performance falls short of expectations, the large goodwill will face impairment risk.