Author: Pan Yan

Producer: Global Finance

After 4 years, Goertek (002241. SZ) why did you insist on listing Goertek?

　　01

Goertek restarted its IPO and switched to Hong Kong stocks

When Goertek first hit the capital market, it coincided with the early stage of the implementation of the new rules on A-share spin-offs and listings, and A-shares set off a spin-off boom.

In order to seek independent listing, in 2019, Goertek divided all the MEMS microelectronics-related businesses of the group to its subsidiary Goertek, which became the only entity engaged in MEMS microelectronics-related business in the Goertek system.

During the period of August 2020, MEMS company Minxin Co., Ltd. (688286. SH) completed the listing application from submitting the listing application to landing on the Science and Technology Innovation Board in less than 9 months, becoming the "first A-share MEMS chip stock", which to a certain extent aroused Goertek's determination to go public and accelerated the rhythm.

At the beginning of 2021, Goertek conducted counseling and filing, and officially submitted a listing application to the GEM of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in December of the same year, and passed the listing committee meeting in October 2022 after two rounds of inquiries.

At the end of the day, Goertek did not submit the listing registration draft. However, at that time, with the release of the "827 New Deal" in 2023 and the "National Nine Articles" in 2024, the rhythm of A-share IPOs began to tighten in stages, and the craze of "A splitting A" also cooled down rapidly.

Under multiple pressures, Goertek announced the termination of the split listing in May 2024 and withdrew the relevant listing application documents.

It cannot be ignored that the problems faced by Goertek in the GEM IPO have not yet been completely resolved, and it is still doubtful whether the IPO in Hong Kong can be successful.

First of all, there are doubts about Goertek's ability to operate independently.

As of Goertek's submission of the Hong Kong stock prospectus, Goertek directly held 83.4% of Goertek's shares and was its controlling shareholder. At the time of the A-share IPO, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange asked questions about the company's business independence in the first round of inquiries.

Specifically, Goertek is not only a supplier of Goertek, but also one of its five major customers.

At present, although the revenue contributed by Goertek accounts for only about 1% of Goertek's total revenue, it has long been ranked as the second largest customer.

Until 2024, the gross profit margin of the cooperation between the two parties will be higher than the comprehensive gross profit margin of Goertek. From 2022 to 2023, the gross profit margin from Goertek's orders will be 21.50% and 17.90%, while the comprehensive gross profit margin of Goertek Micro will be 18.50% and 17.23% respectively in the same period.

In 2019 and 2020, Goertek's products were mainly sold through Goertek, and after 2021, Apple's "buy and sell" model gradually switched to direct sales.

Although backed by big trees, Goertek's overall performance in recent years has not been ideal, and after reaching the peak of performance in 2021, it has declined for two consecutive years. From 2021 to 2023, Goertek's operating income will decrease from 3.348 billion yuan to 3.001 billion yuan, and the attributable net profit will decrease from 329 million yuan to 289 million yuan.

Under the surface of performance fluctuations, Goertek's "purchased chips" problem cannot be ignored.

As the main raw material of MEMS products, Goertek's chips mainly rely on outsourcing, and its self-developed chips account for less than 3% of the auxiliary status. As of the end of September 2024, Goertek's sensor shipments equipped with self-developed chips accounted for about 29.7% of the total shipments.

The low proportion of self-developed chips has lowered the company's gross profit margin. As of the end of September 2024, Goertek's micro-gross profit margin was 19.41%, which was a lot lower than the historical peak of 29.69% in 2018.

It should be noted that Goertek's outsourcing is highly dependent on a single supplier Infineon, accounting for more than 60% at one time. At the end of September 2024, Infineon still accounted for 55.7 percent of the total procurement value.

For the highly dependent on a single supplier, in the first version of the prospectus, Goertek explained that "Infineon has been recognized by the company's end customers", which directly refers to Apple, a major customer.

From 2022 to the first three quarters of 2024, Goertek's revenue from the top five customers increased from 75.5% to 79.9% of total revenue, of which Apple, the first customer, increased from 56.1% to 61.8%.

Obviously, Goertek is facing the same problem as its parent company, Goertek, that is, its high-speed dependence on Apple, a major customer.

Goertek has revealed that most of the MEMS acoustic sensors equipped with the company's self-developed chips are low-end products. Due to Apple's high requirements for products, in order to win Apple's orders, Goertek has compared the performance of different merchants and self-developed chips in the market, and only Infineon-related chips can meet some of Apple's development specifications.

Goertek's old illness has not been cured, why does Goertek insist on spinning it off and going public?

　　02

The market value evaporated by more than 100 billion

Judging from Goertek's own situation, the financial risk is more prominent.

For a long time, since 2020, Goertek's asset-liability ratio has remained at about 54%-61%, which is much higher than the industry average of about 43%-45% given by Wind data.

It was also at this time that Goertek began to reveal a hint of tightening liquidity.

In June 2020, Goertek issued a convertible bond fundraising with a scale of 4 billion yuan, but the following month, Goertek issued a relevant announcement on the intention to use 2.5 billion yuan of idle raised funds to temporarily replenish liquidity.

Such an announcement was made twice after Goertek, both of which were a few days after the return of idle fundraising, and the announcement of the intention to use idle fundraising to replenish the flow was issued again until the last idle fundraising of Goertek shares was repaid in November 2023.

As of the end of September 2024, Goertek's monetary funds were 16.288 billion yuan, but short-term borrowings were 10.699 billion yuan, non-current liabilities due within one year were 3.597 billion yuan, and long-term borrowings were 2.698 billion yuan.

Goertek's financial difficulties have been revealed, and the spin-off of Goertek's independent listing may broaden financing channels and optimize the company's debt structure.

It is worth mentioning that after Goertek announced the spin-off of Goertek's IPO in Hong Kong, in February 2025, Goertek issued another announcement on the company's controlling shareholder, Goertek Group, which intends to increase its holdings by 500 million to 1 billion yuan.

Goertek mentioned in the announcement that the increase in holdings adopts a combination of special loans for stock holdings and its own funds, and the loan ratio exceeds 90% of the amount of the increase, and the term is not more than 3 years.

What is the intention of repurchasing at the expense of loans? The core goal is to restore market confidence.

Since December 2021, Goertek's share price has reached a record high of nearly 60 yuan, and the total market value of nearly 200 billion yuan ranks third in the consumer electronics sector, second only to Lixun Precision and Industrial Fortune Union.

However, since then, the company's stock price has been declining, the lowest point has fallen below 14 yuan, and the market value has also fallen below 100 billion, which has been overtaken by latecomers such as Lens Technology and Transsion Holdings.

In 2022, the company's attributable net profit decreased by 59.08% to 1.749 billion yuan due to the impairment of the accrued inventory assets.

In 2023, it coincides with the downward trend of the consumer electronics cycle, and Goertek's revenue has shown a rare negative growth, down 6.03% year-on-year to 98.574 billion yuan, and the attributable net profit continues to shrink, a year-on-year decrease of 37.80% to 1.088 billion yuan.

After entering 2024, Goertek continued its revenue decline, with a year-on-year decrease of 5.82% to 69.65 billion yuan in the first three quarters. However, the profit side has rebounded significantly, and the attributable net profit in the first three quarters increased by 162.88% year-on-year to 2.345 billion yuan.

According to the recently released 2024 performance forecast, Goertek expects attributable net profit to be 2.557 billion yuan to 2.775 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 135%-155%.

This is mainly related to the low base in the same period of 2023, and if compared with the attributable net profit in 2021 before the order cut, there is still a net gap of about 1.5 billion yuan to 1.778 billion yuan.

The performance continued to decline, and it was difficult for Goertek's stock price performance to be reversed significantly.

As of the close of trading on March 25, 2025, Goertek shares closed at 26.78 yuan per share, with a total market value of 93.1 billion yuan, the stock price fell nearly 50% from the historical peak, and the total market value has evaporated more than 100 billion yuan.

It is worth mentioning that Goertek shares were listed 2 years earlier than Lixun Precision, and when Lixun Precision was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2010, the total market value was about the same level as Goertek shares, and now the market value has been nearly 200 billion yuan.

　　03

Bet on AI hardware

As a supply chain enterprise, Goertek's growth logic has never changed, and it will continue to rely on the development of industry outlets and major customers in the future.

After the order cutting incident, Goertek's dependence on large customers has not been alleviated, but has a tendency to increase. From 2021 to 2023, the sales proportion of Goertek's top five customers will increase from 86.54% to 88.75%.

In fact, the cooperation between Goertek and Apple has not been completely terminated, in addition to the AirPods Pro 2 that was cut down, Goertek also OEM for Apple's AirPods 2 and AirPods 3, and there are also orders for other parts.

In order to continue the cooperation with Apple, Goertek has registered a company in Vietnam since 2012, mainly producing AirPods, smart watches, virtual reality and augmented reality devices, drones and other products, in line with the trend of Apple's supply chain shifting to Southeast Asia.

According to the 2024 interim report, Goertek Vietnam achieved an operating income of 10.672 billion yuan and a net profit of 787 million yuan, which is the subsidiary with the highest net profit margin among the main shareholding subsidiaries disclosed by Goertek.

In the future, Goertek may still maintain a binding relationship with Apple. According to industry insiders, Goertek has become the NPI supplier of Apple's two new products, smart home webcam and AirPods in 2026.

However, Goertek also knows the risks brought about by the dependence of large customers.

In the case of Apple, providing the "fruit chain" enterprises with the expected demand in the next three months requires a quick response from suppliers. If the market performance is not good, Apple will most likely cut orders immediately, and prevent being coerced by core suppliers, and adopt a decentralized model.

In order to enhance its own business anti-risk ability, Goertek began to explore business diversification.

At first, Goertek was very optimistic about the VR market, whether it was the concept of the metaverse many years ago, or the AI artificial intelligence in recent years, the landing is inseparable from the support of the hardware side, which also brings new opportunities for the development of AR/VR.

From the perspective of Goertek's revenue structure, the revenue proportion of the smart hardware business, including VR headset related products, has increased to 49.15% in the first half of 2024, surpassing the precision components business and becoming the first business segment.

However, what is more embarrassing is that the gross profit margin of Goertek's intelligent hardware business is only 9.24%, which is far lower than the gross profit margin of 22.46% of Goertek's precision components business, and the profit contribution is limited.

In addition, the cold VR market is also the main problem that Goertek needs to face.

According to the market research report, global AR/VR headset shipments will decline by 23.5% in 2023 and decline for three consecutive quarters in 2024, of which global shipments will decline by 4% year-on-year in the third quarter.

Previously, foreign media reported that Apple has significantly reduced the production of its first-generation Vision Pro headset and plans to completely stop the production of the current version of the device by the end of 2024.

Since the end of 2024, there have been continuous signals in the market that Goertek is increasing its AI glasses.

Initially, there were media reports that Xiaomi will benchmark Meta's Ray-ban glasses, and plans to launch a new generation of AI smart glasses in the second quarter of 2025, and has reached a cooperation with Goertek.

In the 2024 performance forecast, Goertek also mentioned that the integration of AI artificial intelligence technology and metaverse technology and emerging intelligent hardware products, the company will go all out to seize industry opportunities.

However, there is no exact information about the layout of Goertek in the AI glasses track.

On the interactive platform, many investors asked Goertek whether it would cooperate with Xiaomi to develop AI glasses, and Goertek replied with "questions involving specific customers or projects are not convenient to comment". When asked what level of AI business is in the industry, Goertek replied vaguely, actively paying attention to and expanding business opportunities in the field of AI smart glasses.