BEIJING/SHANGHAI, Aug 10 (Reuters) – Chinese robot maker Unitree said on Monday its $900 million Shanghai initial public offering was more than 8,000 times oversubscribed by retail investors, reflecting investor fever.
Unitree, which competes with Tesla and Boston Dynamics, said in a filing that the lot-winning rate for retail investors was roughly 0.018% after clawing back some shares from the institutional tranche of the offering.
The chance of securing the newly issued shares is lower than in most China IPOs this year.
“Unitree is strategically important to China. Its humanoid robots would challenge Elon Musk’s Optimus,” said Wen Hao, a veteran investor in China’s eastern city of Hangzhou, where Unitree is based.
“I expect the stock to multiply by several times on debut,” he added.
Unitree, set to become China’s first onshore-listed humanoid robot maker, priced its IPO last week at 150.80 yuan ($22.36), valuing the company at more than 60 billion yuan.
“The relatively high IPO valuation could draw market attention toward commercial value of the robotics industry,” SWS Research said in a note.
“It will potentially lead to a re-pricing of robotics-related stocks.”
Some investors are more cautious, pointing to the recent selloff in tech shares.
“The IPO is expensive, and the investment risk is already quite high,” said Wang Zhuo, partner of Shanghai Zhuozhu Investment Management.
“Unitree generates much of its sales from research and demonstrations, but wider application is still far away.”
The IPO values Unitree at 219 times 2025 earnings, and 36 times sales.
The company, which counts the U.S. as a significant market, has also flagged geopolitical risks such as U.S. sales restrictions.
Unitree needs to “keep growing rapidly to justify its rich valuations,” Xiangcai Securities said.
($1 = 6.7452 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(Reporting by Ethan Wang and Ryan Woo in Beijing; additional reporting by Samuel Shen in ShanghaiEditing by Keith Weir)
