On April 24, Mobvoi (02438) officially landed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, completing the gorgeous transformation from "AIGC star company" to "the first share of Hong Kong AIGC".
According to Zhitong Financial APP, Mobvoi achieved 117.39 times oversubscription during the global issuance and placement.
In the past, there were two major local state-owned cornerstone investments, and after more than 100 times oversubscribed, Mobvoi, which was officially listed, obviously won at the starting line. Next, investors are most concerned about how far they can go in the future.
According to Mobvoi's IPO placement information, the company offered 84.568 million shares globally, 42.284 million shares for public sale, 42.284 million shares for international offering, 12.685 million shares for over-allotment, and the final number of shares for international offering was 54.969 million shares. The final offer price was HK$3.8 per share.
For an AIGC company, in order to anchor its value and judge its future growth space, it must be implemented in technology, product and commercialization. Technology and products are the core, and commercialization is the driving force, which is not only the yardstick for investors to invest, but also the core and basis for the market to judge the value of AIGC enterprises. The 100-fold oversubscription in the market reflects investors' recognition of Mobvoi's future growth certainty and development space.
Star shareholders gathered, and heavy state-owned assets played the cornerstone
The listing of Mobvoi has added a blockbuster value target to the current Hong Kong stock AIGC sector and filled the gap in the Hong Kong stock market in the AIGC field.
As one of the earliest AI companies focusing on AIGC technology in China and one of the few AI companies in Asia with the ability to build general large models, Mobvoi has attracted the attention of the market and investment institutions since its establishment, and has received investment endorsements from many well-known investment institutions and well-known enterprises in the industry.
According to Zhitong Financial APP, Mobvoi has received a total of 7 rounds of financing since its establishment, and its investor lineup is full of big names, including many well-known professional investment funds at home and abroad, such as SIG Haina Asia, Sequoia China and Zhen Fund, as well as a corporate investor team led by Google and participated by many well-known enterprises such as Goertek and Yuanmei Optoelectronics.
From the perspective of post-investment valuation, Mobvoi's valuation was $5.1 million in February 2013 when it raised Series A, and it was as high as $757 million in September 2019. In 6 years, the company's valuation has increased by 147.4 times.
In addition, Mobvoi also introduced 2 heavyweight cornerstone investors before its listing. According to the company's prospectus, Zhongguancun International Co., Ltd. and Nanjing Economic Development Juzhi Science and Technology Innovation Investment Partnership will participate in the IPO issuance of Mobvoi as cornerstone investors, with a cumulative subscription scale of HK $95 million.
Through the traceability of the shareholding structure, it is found that Zhongguancun International Co., Ltd. is wholly owned by Zhongguancun International Holdings Co., Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Zhongguancun Development Group. Zhongguancun Development Group is a state-owned enterprise established by the Beijing Municipal Government.
The other cornerstone investor, the sole general partner and fund manager of Jingkai Juzhi, is Xingang High-tech Investment, and the sole limited partner is Nanjing Xingang High-tech Park Development Co., Ltd., which holds 99.0099% equity interest in Jingkai Juzhi and 100% equity of Xingang High-tech Investment. Nanjing Xingang High-tech Park Development Co., Ltd. is a subsidiary indirectly held 100% by the Finance Bureau of the Nanjing Economic and Technological Development Zone Management Committee, and the ultimate beneficiary of Jingkai Juzhi is the Finance Bureau of the Nanjing Economic and Technological Development Zone Management Committee.
In other words, behind the cornerstone investors introduced by Mobvoi this time are the Beijing Municipal Government and the Finance Bureau of Nanjing Economic and Technological Development Zone.
In fact, in recent years, the emergence of industrial investment platforms with local state-owned assets has accelerated, and more and more cornerstone investors in Hong Kong stocks have participated. Statistics show that in 2023, a total of 47 Hong Kong-listed IPO companies will introduce cornerstone investors, of which 19 companies have cornerstone investors with state-owned backgrounds, accounting for 40%; According to the classification of cornerstone investors and the amount of investment, among the 154 cornerstone investors participating in the IPO of Hong Kong stocks in 2023, 38 will be local industrial investment, with an investment amount of about HK $4.592 billion, accounting for the highest proportion of the total investment amount, reaching 29.82%.
In fact, the investment platform with state-owned background does not completely pursue financial returns, but more to achieve the purpose of local industrial development and the relevant demands of state-owned shareholders; Moreover, the exit cycle of direct investment by state-owned funds is longer, so they can also actively participate in strategic placement and private placement with better liquidity, which is more conducive to the stability of the market value of enterprises.
It is worth mentioning that from the perspective of issuance, most of the enterprises with state-owned assets as the cornerstone are hard technology enterprises. Taking one of the cornerstones of Mobvoi as an example, in the latest "Action Plan for Promoting the Development of the Computing Industry in Nanjing" released in March this year, Nanjing proposed: By 2025, the scale of the computing industry will exceed 350 billion yuan. At the same time, we will create a wealth of application scenarios and cultivate demonstration application projects in the fields of industry, finance, medical care, transportation, energy, education, cultural tourism, and e-commerce.
From the perspective of corresponding businesses, Mobvoi is also accelerating the exploration of AIGC empowerment in consumer electronics, finance, insurance, real estate and other scenarios. It can be seen that Jingkai Juzhi, as the cornerstone investor of Mobvoi, is in line with the industrial development direction of the local government, and also reflects the local government's recognition of Mobvoi's compliance development and business prospects.
The multiple advantages of "technology + competitive products + hematopoiesis" open the valuation ceiling
Behind the development of the AIGC industry, the competition between technology and the track has never stopped. At present, the world's major AIGC companies are increasing R&D investment to compete for the market after the technology is formed. The reason why Mobvoi can stand out from the competition is that the company has multiple advantages of "track + competitive products + hematopoiesis". This makes Mobvoi's success almost impossible to replicate.
In recent years, with the gradual maturity of the three underlying capabilities of computing power, algorithms, and data, generative AI has entered a period of accelerated growth. In this context, a full understanding of the company's competitive advantages at the level of technology products and commercialization will help investors deeply understand the appreciation potential of Mobvoi.
At present, Mobvoi is on the eve of the outbreak of the AIGC blue ocean market in the AI industry segment, and has a high growth ceiling. According to the CIC report, the total addressable market of China's AIGC market is expected to reach approximately RMB32.6 billion by 2027.
The reason why Mobvoi has a stable foothold in the AIGC market is its excellent core management team, high AIGC technical barriers, comprehensive AIGC commercial products and stable hematopoietic capacity.
Mobvoi has been able to survive several AI waves and still stand at the forefront of the industry, which is inseparable from its core management and international team.
Zhitong Financial APP learned that Li Zhifei, the founder of Mobvoi, has a Ph.D. in computer science from Johns Hopkins University, a former scientist at Google headquarters, an expert in natural language processing and artificial intelligence, and one of the main developers of Joshua, the world's mainstream machine translation open source software.
Relying on the strong technical reserves and business acumen of the core management, Mobvoi has been at the forefront of global AIGC technology development, becoming one of the few AI companies in Asia with the ability to build general large models, and one of the earliest AI companies in Asia to start and focus on AIGC technology with the highest revenue.
At the international level, the company's founder Li Zhifei paid more attention to the recruitment of international talents when setting up the R&D team, and Mobvoi was able to establish an experienced full-stack AI international team, which has accumulated deep technical precipitation in the field of AIGC for Mobvoi, built a strong competitive barrier, and has the ability to do cost-effective R&D with low R&D costs, as well as the organizational and operational capabilities to quickly adapt to steep changes in technology.
From the technical side, in recent years, the company has continuously increased R&D investment to expand its leading edge. In 2023, the company's R&D expenditure will reach 155 million yuan. At present, the number of Mobvoi's R&D team has exceeded half of the company's total number of employees; At present, Mobvoi has obtained a total of 681 AI-related intellectual property rights, including 593 approved AI-related patents and 88 AI software copyrights, building a solid technical barrier.
From the product side, unlike companies in the market that focus on large text models (such as Kimi), Mobvoi relies on the self-developed "Sequence Monkey" multi-modal large model, and simultaneously opens the AIGC product matrix for creators, including four CoPilot applications, as well as AI digital employee applications for the B-side. At present, the company has more than 15 million users worldwide, including content creators, enterprises and consumers.
At present, by building an AIGC multi-modal product matrix covering multiple scenarios, Mobvoi has formed a complete AIGC ecological closed loop integrating technology, products, and commercialization, and this full-stack layout has become its core differentiating advantage.
In addition, Mobvoi has also made an in-depth layout at the international commercialization level. The company has reached a strategic cooperation with Google, an international giant and shareholder, to promote the overseas listing of smart software and hardware products including TicWatch smart watches and the overseas version of "Dupdub" of "Magic Sound Workshop". In particular, "DupDub" has provided services to more than 40 countries and regions around the world, and has been successfully selected into the "AI Product List" to go overseas on the list of stars.
On the financial side, from 2021 to 2023, Mobvoi's revenue will be about 398 million yuan, 500 million yuan and 507 million yuan respectively. It is not difficult to see that AI software has become the company's main source of income.
During the reporting period, the revenue of this business increased significantly from 60 million yuan to 343 million yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 140%; Among them, the company's revenue from AIGC solutions has grown rapidly, showing strong growth momentum, with a compound annual growth rate of over 300% from 2021 to 2023, with a compound annual growth rate of over 300%, with a compound annual growth rate of over 300%. At the same time, its share of revenue has also increased significantly from 15.0% in 2021 to 67.7% in 2023. The surge in the AI software business has also led to the acceleration of the company's gross profit margin. Within three years, the company's gross profit margin jumped from 30.12% in 2021 to 64.3% in 2023.
The excellent hematopoietic ability is the best proof of Mobvoi's ability to resist risks. Recently, there has been a lot of debate around the world about the Fed's interest rate cut expectations. Just after Fed Chairman Jerome Powell's statement on April 16 this year that it will take longer to cut interest rates, the market's expectations for the Fed to cut interest rates have further weakened, and the market expects the Fed's first rate cut to be postponed until 2025. Therefore, for most of the world's unprofitable AIGC start-ups, it is still unknown when the financing winter will improve. In this context, Mobvoi's stable hematopoietic ability is undoubtedly a strong support for its valuation.
To sum up, compared with competing products competing in a single track in the AI industry, having a complete AIGC ecological closed loop allows Mobvoi to have a wider corporate moat, and its stable hematopoietic ability also makes it more risk-resistant, and the continuous growth of the company's intrinsic value space is more powerful.
The oversubscription of more than 100 times by investment institutions has indicated their expectation for the growth of Mobvoi's future investment value space. This highlights that Mobvoi not only has a high starting point for listing, but also has unlimited growth in the future, and has a continuous driving force for stock price growth, which is worth holding for investors for a long time.