Daily Brief China: Busy Ming, Shanghai Shengsheng Pharmaceutical Cold Chain Technology, Guangxi Baifei Dairy, Leadrive Technology (SHANGHAI), Geekplus Technology, Akeso, Delton Technology and more

• Busy Ming (1768 HK) raised US$430m in its January 2026 Hong Kong IPO, with the IPO being offered at a fixed price of HKD 236.6/share.
• It is a rapidly growing food and beverage retailer in China. Stores are typically located in high-traffic, high visibility, and easily accessible street-side locations.
• In this note, we will talk about the lockup dynamics and possible placement.

• The apparent 2024 profit crash to 26.4 million RMB was primarily an accounting artifact rather than an operational failure, driven by a massive 72.1 million RMB non-cash share-based compensation charge following the withdrawal of their A-share IPO. On an adjusted basis, profitability grew steadily from 97.5 million RMB in 2023 to 152.0 million RMB in 2025.
• Shengsheng’s industry-leading 36.94% gross margin is structurally anchored by its vertically integrated manufacturing of proprietary cold-chain materials (vacuum insulated panels and phase change materials). This buffer shields them from traditional third-party logistics margin erosion, though domestic pricing pressures are rising as clinical sponsors demand multi-vendor setups to reduce dependency.
• The company’s “global leader” marketing narrative is severely mismatched with its actual international commercial footprint, with US operations yielding only 19.4 million RMB in 2025. Upstream financing constraints among domestic biotechs have also begun deteriorating Shengsheng’s balance sheet, pushing trade receivables to 226 million RMB and extending collection times to 106 days.

• Extreme Customer Concentration and Sourcing Interlock with Chery Automobile: Leadrive’s rapid revenue scaling is heavily dependent on a single customer, Chery Automobile (Customer D), which accounted for 57.1% of 2025 revenue and 50.0% of the first five months of 2026. Crucially, Chery acts as both a customer and a major supplier in a consigned purchasing arrangement, restricting Leadrive’s ability to optimize its supply chain margins and stripping it of pricing power.
• Severe ASP Collapse and Single-Digit Gross Margins: Intense competitive and pricing pressures from OEMs have led to a collapse in Average Selling Prices (ASPs). Motor controller ASPs fell from 4328.1 RMB in 2023 to 2473 RMB in 2025, while power brick ASPs plummeted from 4431.7 RMB to 1135 RMB. Consequently, despite surging revenues, Leadrive’s gross margin was only 5.59% in 2025 and 9.05% in the first five months of 2026, leading to a cumulative net loss of over 1.03 billion RMB since 2023.
• Structural Squeeze on the “Power Brick” Niche: Leadrive’s top market share in main drive power bricks (31.4% in 2025) represents a transient niche. As major OEMs shift from modular power bricks to fully integrated 3-in-1 and multi-in-one electric axles, Leadrive is increasingly squeezed between insourcing giants (like BYD’s FinDreams Power) and highly scaled independent Tier-1 suppliers (such as Inovance).
• Hype vs. Reality in Emerging Segments: While Leadrive is diversifying into eVTOLs and physical AI, these segments remain in their infancy. The eVTOL order pipeline is a negligible 12.4 million RMB, and while the robotic joint actuator partnership with Agibot targets 20,000 sets in 2026, it is a high-mix, low-margin segment that cannot offset the cash drain of the core automotive division in the near term.

• Guangxi Baifei Dairy Co., Ltd. is a leading buffalo dairy company in China, focusing on buffalo dairy products. Its core brand Baifeilao ranked No. 1 in China’s buffalo liquid milk.
• The company ranked No. 1 in China’s buffalo dairy products industry for retail sales value of buffalo liquid milk in 2025 with a 30.1% market share.
• Revenue was RMB1,613,606 in 2025, with gross profit of RMB607,560. Net cash from operating activities was RMB241,079 in 2025.

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• Leadrive Technology provides electric control solutions for NEVs, holding leading market positions in China, and is expanding into emerging physical AI applications.
• Leadrive Technology was No. 1 in Main-drive PEBB, motor controllers on exported vehicles, and dual motor controllers by sales revenue in 2025 in China.
• Revenue was RMB2,000,214 in 2025, with a net loss of RMB331,006, and expects to continue recording net losses in 2026.

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• Unit Economics and Payback Disparity: Geek+ Shelf-to-Person (formerly Goods-to-Person) systems achieve a 1.5 to 2.5-year payback period in high-wage markets like the US and Western Europe, driven by fully loaded warehouse labor costs of $22.00 to $28.00 per hour. In contrast, payback periods in APAC and Eastern Europe stretch to 4 to 5 years, forcing Geek+ to focus heavily on Western geographic expansion to maintain margin viability.
• The RaaS Balance Sheet Illusion: While Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) lowers the adoption barrier for mid-market customers, it creates a massive working capital strain on the OEM. Geek+ has largely transitioned away from carrying these assets on its own balance sheet, utilizing third-party leasing and joint-venture financing partners (such as DLL) to convert RaaS contracts into immediate upfront cash flows, shifting the credit risk away from the robotics provider.
• The Integration and Software Moat vs. Hardware Commoditization: Pure hardware margins have compressed from above 35% in 2021 to under 25% by 2026 due to intense price competition from low-cost Chinese players like Hikrobot and Quicktron. Geek+’s true defense lies in its fleet management software—which handles dynamic path planning for over 500 robots simultaneously—and its deeply embedded global systems integrator network (e.g., Körber, Dematic), which local hardware competitors cannot easily replicate.

• On Harmoni squamous NSCLC, SMMT expects FPS data in “backend of 2026” and believes interim OS data in 1H27 (with follow-up of low 20s months) to be “key focal point”
• On Harmoni-3 (2L EGFRm NSCLC post TKI), SMMT provided updated OS analysis (showing consistent HR of 0.76 for Asian and western patients). FDA PDUFA date on 14 November
• See inside for additional SMMT takeaways (on Ivonescimab’s competitions and commercial preparation) and catalyst table on ivonescimab

• Shanghai Shengsheng Pharmaceutical Cold Chain Technology is a leading integrated temperature-control supply chain service provider in China for the pharmaceutical and life science industry, with a core focus on clinical.
• Shanghai Shengsheng is the largest temperature-control supply chain service provider in China for the pharmaceutical and life science industry in 2025. Revenue increased from RMB614.2 million in 2023 to RMB727.6.
• Revenue was RMB727,574 in 2025, with a gross profit margin of 36.9% in the same year. Adjusted net profit was RMB151,984 in 2025.

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• Delton Technology is a leading Chinese manufacturer of high-end Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs), specializing in high-growth sectors such as AI servers, data centers, 5G communications, and automotive electronics. The company ranks third globally and first in mainland China for compute server PCBs by revenue.
• The company is experiencing a period of hyper-growth, with revenue increasing by 47% in 2025 and net income growing by 50%. This growth is driven by strong demand in its key end-markets. However, this expansion has led to negative free cash flow due to significant capital expenditures.
• Valuation appears stretched, with key multiples trading at a significant premium to peers. While strong growth prospects in the AI and high-performance computing sectors may warrant a higher valuation, the current market price presents a high bar for execution and leaves little room for error.

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• Margin Compression Core Drivers: The sharp decline in net profit margin from 21.8% in 2024 to 14.6% in 2025 was primarily caused by a massive non-operating 111 million yuan biological asset fair value adjustment loss and an out-of-control 45.1% surge in sales and distribution expenses (reaching 281 million yuan), which was heavily weighted down by a 44.8% increase in e-commerce platform and channel fees (to 122 million yuan).
• Severe Raw Material Bottleneck: The water buffalo milk supply chain suffers from systemic yield limitations—water buffaloes yield only 1.8 to 2.1 tons of milk per year compared to over 10 tons for Holstein cows. Despite promoting a premium “water buffalo” narrative, Baifei’s self-produced water buffalo raw milk accounts for only 3.7% of its total raw milk sourcing, forcing them to import huge quantities of standard cow’s milk from as far as Ningxia to blend into their final products.
• Defensibility and Moat Limits: Baifei’s 30.1% market share is insulated from national giants (Yili and Mengniu) because the total liquid water buffalo milk market is a tiny niche—worth just 8.5 billion yuan in 2025—which is too small to justify the fragmented sourcing and collection logistics for major giants. However, Baifei’s rapid shift toward e-commerce and discount snack channels (such as Mingming Henmang) is highly margin-dilutive, destroying their pricing power in exchange for short-term volume growth.