Estun Rushes for "A+H" Share Listing: AI Robots Empowering a New Chapter for China's Smart Manufacturing to Go Global

On January 15, Estun (002747.SZ) released its latest prospectus. The previous prospectus submitted to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange had automatically lapsed after reaching its six-month validity period.

Recently, Estun announced that it had received the overseas issuance and listing filing notice from the China Securities Regulatory Commission. At the same time, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange Listing Committee held a listing hearing on December 17 to review Estun's application for this offering and listing.

This means that Estun is not far from successfully building its "A+H" dual capital platform.

The prospectus shows that Estun's cash turnover has significantly improved in the first three quarters of 2025, and its total interest-bearing debt has been significantly reduced. This IPO in Hong Kong is a crucial step for Estun to optimize its capital structure and support future development. The raised funds will be partly used to repay existing loans and supplement working capital, which will significantly improve financial costs and liquidity. In addition, the remaining funds will be used for R&D investment, expanding global production capacity, and industry chain mergers and acquisitions.

Estun is a leading Chinese industrial robot company, maintaining the top position in shipments among domestic enterprises in China's industrial robot solutions market for many consecutive years. It is also the first domestic robot enterprise to top China's industrial robot solutions market.

Currently, the robotics and intelligent manufacturing sectors are both hot topics in the capital markets and align with the national strategy for industrial upgrading. As a leading enterprise in the industry, Estun, with its solid technological accumulation, clear market strategy, and global layout, is poised to achieve higher quality development by leveraging the power of the capital markets.

By building an "A+H" dual capital platform, Estun will accelerate the industrialization of its embodied intelligence technology and, leveraging its global footprint, provide robot and automation solutions for the overseas expansion of China's advantageous industries such as new energy vehicles and photovoltaics, thereby upgrading from "product going overseas" to "productivity system going overseas."

Embodied Intelligence Breakthrough: Estun Drives Industrial Robots Towards AI Integration

Estun has developed a control system architecture for AI applications, centered on powerful openness, compatibility, and scalability, providing robust support for industrial intelligent scenarios.

Based on its extensive experience and data accumulated from industrial robot application scenarios, Estun has adopted a pervasive AI technology layout from top to bottom. In its next-generation controllers, it has specifically developed interface technology that can seamlessly integrate with AI control, giving the controllers the underlying capability to connect to upper-level embodied artificial intelligence control.

Eston's solutions, such as teaching-free welding, teaching-free polishing, and vision-guided random bin picking, integrate cross-disciplinary technologies including motion control, machine vision, and AI programming. This integration creates robots with intelligent capabilities characterized by teaching-free operation, easy deployment, and enhanced usability. In application scenarios with low robot density, such as steel structure welding, curved surface polishing/dispensing, and laser welding, these robots can achieve rapid replication across scenarios and drive the expansion of market demand.

In the future, ESTUN will continue to develop embodied intelligence technology, increase R&D investment in the "AI + Robotics" field, focus on the practical application value and specific implementation scenarios of robotics and intelligent integration, and conduct innovative research on the integration of robotics with AI, big data, and other cutting-edge technologies.

In terms of AI-related technical routes, Estun leverages the generalization capabilities of third-party large models to focus on developing small models for vertical scenarios.

In welding scenarios, ESTUN collects welding data for workpieces of different materials and thicknesses to train specialized models. This allows robots to adjust welding parameters based on the actual situation, improving welding quality. For example, a steel structure company whose workpieces vary in thickness and lack standardization requires traditional robots to frequently adjust programs. However, ESTUN's robots, through small model training, can automatically identify the workpiece thickness and match welding parameters, increasing efficiency by over 30%.

Replacing humans with AI robots does not mean abandoning the concept of production safety, which is why functional safety certification is another core barrier ESTUN is committed to building.

While conducting on-site testing at an auto parts company, an Estun robot stopped after a worker accidentally bumped into its arm, yet the worker remained completely unharmed. This demonstrates the effectiveness of the emergency stop collision detection function. In addition to this, Estun’s products feature functions such as end-effector force output limitation and speed and separation monitoring, all of which are core requirements for functional safety certification.

ESTUN has obtained the first TÜV Rheinland CE Functional Safety Certificate for a Chinese industrial six-axis robot. Achieving this certification was not easy, as every detail, from hardware design to software algorithms, had to meet international standards. This certification has become a crucial asset for ESTUN in gaining customer trust.

New Paths for Global Expansion: ESTUN Helps Chinese Advantageous Industries Globalize

Technological breakthroughs have not only enhanced the intelligence of Estun's products but also laid a solid foundation for its expansion in the global market. With the rapid growth of China's industrial robot exports, Estun, leveraging its innovative advantages, is directly empowering the global expansion of China's advantageous industrial chains such as new energy vehicles and photovoltaics.

In 2024, China's total exports of industrial robots reached $1.13 billion, a year-on-year increase of 43.22%, ranking second globally in export market share. In 2025, China's industrial robot exports grew by 48.7%, making it a net exporter of industrial robots.

Driven by the recovery in market demand, Estun's revenue for the first three quarters of 2025 increased by 12.97% year-on-year, reversing the downward trend of 2024. Meanwhile, with the market improvement, the factors that previously dragged down profits due to substantial goodwill impairment (mainly involving German company Cloos) have been largely eliminated, and the company achieved a turnaround in the same period, with net profit increasing by 0.95 billion yuan year-on-year.

The rapid growth of China's industrial robot exports is primarily driven by two factors. First, the accelerating automation upgrade in global manufacturing, particularly in sectors like new energy vehicles and photovoltaic industry, has significantly increased the incremental demand for industrial robots. Second, the relocation of manufacturing capacity to Southeast Asia and Europe has driven the export of supporting industrial robots.

In recent years, with the rapid rise of domestic industrial robots, the era of foreign capital monopolizing the Chinese industrial robot market is gone. According to data statistics from research company MIR DATABANK, in 2024, the market share of domestic industrial robot manufacturers in China increased to 52.3%.

According to the MIR DATABANK's 2024 global industrial robot shipment brand share top ten list, four seats are occupied by Chinese companies, including Estun. In 2017, only one Chinese manufacturer entered the list. Estun has ranked first in the Chinese robot market for two consecutive quarters. In the first half of 2025, it surpassed international giants such as FANUC and ABB in shipment volume in the Chinese market for the first time, reaching a market share of 10.5%, becoming the first domestic brand to top the Chinese market, leading the growth of the Chinese industrial robot market and promoting the development of the Chinese industrial robot industry.

Specifically, Estun has built a product portfolio of 96 industrial robots covering a load range of 3kg-1000kg. General-purpose robots meet basic needs in multiple scenarios, while special-purpose robots are customized and adapted for specific scenarios. According to Frost & Sullivan data, in 2024, the company ranked first globally in shipments of industrial robots for sheet metal bending and industrial robots for the photovoltaic sector, first in China in shipments of industrial robots for the power battery sector, and fifth globally in shipments of arc welding robots. Its leading position in various market segments confirms the product competitiveness of the "first stock in industrial robots."

It is worth mentioning that in 2020, Estun acquired Cloos, a leading German company in the global robotic arc welding segment, breaking the long-term monopoly of Japan and Europe. With the ongoing escalation of Sino-Japanese trade friction, Estun boasts significant advantages in full-industry-chain domestic substitution in related fields.

In addition, in the Chinese market, domestic enterprises require faster supply chain response speeds. Compared to leading overseas industrial robot companies, domestic industrial robots offer lower costs and a delivery cycle that is approximately 30% shorter in scenarios such as handling and palletizing, which can meet the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises. Localized service networks significantly reduce after-sales response times, while foreign brands face long component supply cycles and high costs.

In comparison, Estun boasts a globally efficient supply chain and service network.

As a leader in China's industrial robotics, Estun continues to expand its overseas markets, developing more high-barrier, high-value-added products. Through the "Local for Global" model, it has established a global production layout and supply chain system, fully leveraging the efficiency advantages of China's local supply chain to continuously optimize its cost structure. This allows Estun to provide global customers with leading technology, optimized costs, and widely applicable industrial automation solutions.

For instance, Estun is actively expanding its global footprint by increasing its presence in markets such as Europe, the Americas, and Southeast Asia. The company is also accelerating the export of high-value products by following the overseas expansion of leading domestic clients in sectors such as new energy vehicles and lithium battery equipment. The European market is a key focus for Estun this year, serving as the strategic starting point for the company’s evolution into a global leader in industrial robotics.

In deepening cooperation with leading clients in the industry, ESTUN has developed a distinctive customer structure. This model demonstrates unique advantages in the current global economic and trade environment: when systematic risk shocks affect the broader market, deep ties with leading clients who possess strong risk resilience provide the company with more stable revenue security, effectively hedging against uncertainty.

ESTUN has established subsidiaries and localized management teams in several European countries. At the same time, ESTUN has set up and operates production bases in Europe, staying close to European customers, carrying out flexible and efficient localized production, and improving global delivery efficiency.

Estun has established a dual-track service model centered on the E-Care remote maintenance platform and the E-Noesis digital cloud platform, creating added value that goes beyond the products themselves. In production practice, the E-Care platform has improved troubleshooting efficiency by 60% and reduced unplanned downtime losses by more than 30%. Meanwhile, E-Noesis integrates digital information such as operational indicators and process parameters to provide customers with full-lifecycle robot management services.

This means that what Estun delivers is no longer just "robots," but a "productivity system" that continuously optimizes production efficiency and is predictable and manageable, effectively ensuring global product delivery.

As of September 30, 2025, ESTUN has established 75 service outlets globally and employs 1090 overseas staff, with its business covering manufacturing and economically developed regions in Europe, America, and Asia. Through the combined advantages of close-proximity service, in-depth understanding, and agile response, ESTUN provides 24/7 global coverage, continuously creating service experiences and value that exceed customer expectations worldwide.

Through the "A+H" dual-capital structure, Estun has established a firm foothold in both domestic and international capital markets. This layout enables the company to fully leverage Hong Kong's advantages as an international financial center to flexibly advance global mergers and acquisitions, technical cooperation, and the building of ecological alliances. Simultaneously, it helps attract top-tier talent with a global perspective and promotes the full alignment of corporate governance, accounting standards, and ESG practices with international benchmarks. This enhances operational efficiency and scientific decision-making, accelerates the implementation of intelligent industrial scenarios, and facilitates the global expansion of China’s competitive industrial chains.