image credit: Bamboo Works
Key Takeaways:
Huaqin shares rose 14% in their Hong Kong debut on Thursday, complementing its existing Shanghai listing, as it reported strong double-digit revenue and profit growth last year
The electronics ODM began as a smartphone maker, and has more recently moved into tablets, wearables and laptops, as well as data center servers and switches
Like the millions of electronic gadgets it makes and sells each year, Huaqin Co. Ltd. (3296.HK; 603296.SH) is a complex machine with many moving parts.
The company is quite profitable, reporting double-digit profit gains over the last three years, including 41% growth last year, and a return on equity (ROE) rate that rose more than six percentage points to 16.9% in 2025.
To broaden its business scope and raise its pressured margins, the company is revving up its R&D spending on new product areas like data centers and automotive electronics. It's also making strategic acquisitions to take it into areas like robotics, using its cash flow to fund those campaigns. Beyond acquisitions, the company has also set up its own in-house robotics R&D team. With the Hong Kong listing, it's now turning to international investors to help fund those drives. Banking heavyweights BofA Securities and CICC underwrote the deal, which raised HK$4.46 billion ($654 million).
The company raised the money after selling 58.5 million shares for HK$77.70 each. The stock opened 13.6% higher on Thursday at HK$87.55.
The IPO will complement Huaqin's existing listing in Shanghai, following a recent trend by Chinese tech companies making similar second listings to tap Hong Kong's more international investor pool to raise their global profiles. Huaqin is already quite a global company, boasting manufacturing facilities in Vietnam, Mexico and India and getting more than half of its revenue from overseas customers.
Huaqin was founded in 2005 by Qiu Wensheng, a veteran of telecoms giant ZTE, initially as a mobile phone ODM. It was the world's second largest smartphone ODM in 2024 with about a quarter of the global market, and it ranks as the ...
