Approval has made JPT the 46th company to pass the vetting process and the second fiber-optic laser company in the Chinese secondary market.
The STAR market IPO Committee held its 21st Review meeting on September 5, approving JPT's (杰普特光电) IPO application.
Founded in April 2006, JPT is headquartered in Shenzhen. It has positioned itself as a high-tech enterprise that develops, produces and sells laser light sources, smart laser equipment, and optical fiber devices. It has also realized the mass production of a commercial "adjustable pulse-width high power fiber laser", filling a gap for sophisticated tech in the domestic market.
According to the prospectus, JPT plans to raise CNY 972 million. The money is destined to bankroll its semiconductor laser and fiber laser's R&D center, to supplement liquidity, expand smart equipment capabilities and boost other projects.
While the STAR market allows loss-making companies to go public, JPT's financial performance in the past 3 years looks healthy and shows stable growth.
From 2016 to 2018, its total assets more than tripled, climbing from CNY 246 to 832 million; sales revenue also increased from CNY 253 to 666 million. It is noteworthy that the net profit ratio increased from about 2% to 14%. While for the first half of 2019, the trend has been different from previous, as JPT's total assets slightly decreased to CNY 813 million; sales revenue was CNY 302 million, falling 9.4% on a year-on-year basis.
Compared to the first listed laser company in China, Raycus (锐科激光), JPT has attained steady improvement in terms of gross margin, reaching 36.53%, which surpassed Raycus's 31.83% in the first half of 2019. However, even as gross profitability dropped, Raycus succeeded in gaining a swift increase in terms of sales revenue, and the company still occupied the largest market share of the fiber-optic laser.
According to the China Laser Industry Development Report, three overseas leading organizations including IPG, nLight and Coherent, and three domestics ones including Raycus, Maxphotonics (创鑫激光) and JPT, jointly took 96.5% market share in China.
Raycus (锐科激光) was founded in 2007, listed in the Shenzhen Growth Enterprise Board after 11 years. In 2018, as the market dominator, Raycus reached a total sales revenue of CNY 1.46 billion, and net profit of CNY 430 million. Keeping close step with the international giant IPG, Raycus was the runner-up with a market share of 17.8%.
According to Laser Focus World, the 2018 global laser market size was USD13.75 billion, the CAGR of global sales revenue from 2009 to 2018 was 11.1%. Data indicated an expanding trend internationally. For China laser manufacturers, being a substitution for foreign firms has been considered as a frontier of profitability.
Domestic enterprises can rely on technological breakthroughs and use price advantage to expand market share. With the capital injected into JPT, higher growth could be expected.