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From Scandal to Scale: Unisplendour's Phoenix-Like Rise to Hong Kong IPO

MarketDash Editorial Team
4 hours ago
The successor to disgraced chipmaker Tsinghua Unigroup is charting a comeback with a Hong Kong listing, pivoting from semiconductor ambitions to AI infrastructure. Revenue jumped 25.9% to 47.4 billion yuan in the first half of 2025, but margin pressure tells a more complicated story about the cost of growth.

Remember when Tsinghua Unigroup Chairman Zhao Weiguo announced he wanted to buy TSMC and MediaTek? That was a decade ago, when Chinese semiconductor ambitions ran hot and one executive's audacious claims could send shockwaves through the entire Greater China tech community. Those were different times. Zhao is now serving a prison sentence for corruption, and his company went through bankruptcy restructuring after becoming synonymous with scandal.

But here's the thing about corporate phoenixes: sometimes they actually do rise from the ashes. The new entity, Unisplendour Corp. Ltd. (000938.SZ), just filed for a Hong Kong IPO, and while it bears the DNA of its troubled predecessor, it's playing an entirely different game now.

A Different Company With Different Priorities

Gone are the grand pronouncements about acquiring Taiwan's semiconductor giants. Today's Unisplendour generates over 70 billion yuan ($9.9 billion) in annual revenue by doing something considerably less flashy but potentially more sustainable: building China's digital infrastructure backbone. The company offers full-stack capabilities spanning computing, storage, networking, security, cloud services and integration. Translation: they can handle everything from servers to software for government agencies, enterprises and internet companies.

According to third-party data in the listing document filed last week, Unisplendour ranked third by revenue in China's digital infrastructure market in 2024, capturing 8.6% of the total market. More importantly, it holds the number two position in both networking and computing infrastructure, which happen to be the core segments everyone actually cares about. In China's rapidly expanding computing power buildout, being a top-tier domestic player means something.

Computing Power Takes Center Stage

The company's transformation becomes clear when you look at where the money comes from. Digital solutions represented less than two-thirds of revenue back in 2022. By 2024, that figure hit 70.6%, and by the first half of this year, it reached 76.7%. Meanwhile, the legacy ICT distribution business shrank from 37% of revenue to under 23% over the same period.

The real story lives in the computing business segment, which covers AI servers and computing clusters. This segment's revenue grew by 9.46 billion yuan year-over-year in the first half of 2025, catapulting it to roughly 65% of the company's digital solutions revenue. When AI infrastructure is your primary growth driver in today's market, you're definitely positioned where the action is.

Overall revenue growth tells a tale of two periods. From 2022 to 2024, revenue crept from 73.7 billion yuan to 79 billion yuan, showing modest expansion. Then 2025 arrived, and revenue jumped 24.9% year-over-year to 47.4 billion yuan in just the first six months. That acceleration reflects China's intensifying push into computing center construction, large language model training, and industry cloud deployments.

The Margin Squeeze Reality

Here's where the story gets complicated. Scaling up in capital-intensive infrastructure means burning through cash to keep pace with demand, and margins inevitably suffer. Unisplendour's overall gross margin gradually eroded from 19.8% in 2022 to 16% in 2024, then fell further to 14.4% in the first half of this year.

Computing power products inherently carry thin margins because the industry has matured considerably. But there's another problem: customer concentration. A relatively small number of major cloud providers and internet platforms dominate the buyer side, giving them serious bargaining power. Companies like Unisplendour face a classic trade-off: sacrifice price for scale, or maintain margins and risk losing market share. They've chosen scale, and profitability has taken the hit.

Net profit margins moved in lockstep with gross margins, contracting from 5.1% in 2022 to just 2.1% in the first half of 2025. Last year, net profit fell roughly 25% to 1.57 billion yuan from 2.1 billion yuan the year before. Falling prices weren't the only culprit. Finance costs surged 170% year-over-year to 860 million yuan in 2024, driven by significant debt financing and option liabilities related to acquiring an additional 30% stake in networking equipment maker H3C. That acquisition directly pressured the bottom line.

The company's profit did rebound somewhat in the first half of this year, rising 4% year-over-year to 1.04 billion yuan. But cash flow turned negative during the period, with operating outflows hitting 2.82 billion yuan as inventory and receivables built up during expansion. The company held 7.44 billion yuan in cash at midyear, so near-term liquidity isn't an immediate concern.

The AI Infrastructure Opportunity

AI applications are exploding, and all those sophisticated programs need powerful infrastructure to run. Computing power, storage capacity, and networking capabilities form the foundation of AI productivity. Increasingly, clients want providers who can deliver end-to-end and system-level integration services rather than piecemeal solutions.

That's where Unisplendour's comprehensive capabilities could give it an edge. The company can potentially secure hosting contracts for large-scale computing power projects and smart city initiatives that competitors with narrower offerings simply can't match. When you can handle everything from hardware to integration, you become a more attractive partner for massive, complex deployments.

Looking Beyond China

The listing document reveals that IPO proceeds will fund investment in underlying technologies like high-performance computing (HPC), cloud infrastructure, and digital platforms, strengthening the company's core computing resources. This focus aligns perfectly with China's national priorities around self-reliance in AI infrastructure, positioning Unisplendour to receive strong government support for its data infrastructure push.

But the company isn't limiting its ambitions to the domestic market. Unisplendour operates in over 100 countries and regions, with 32 subsidiaries spread across Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America. That global footprint establishes groundwork for future AI infrastructure ventures in emerging markets, representing a potential growth avenue beyond China's borders.

Valuation Questions Ahead

Unisplendour already trades on China's A-share market in Shenzhen, where shares currently command a forward price-to-earnings ratio around 50 times, near a three-year high. That's considerably richer than Hong Kong-listed Lenovo (0992) at roughly 10.5 times, and ZTE (0763) at 24.4 times. ZTE also trades on the Shenzhen exchange under ticker 000063.SZ.

The past is past. The days of bombastic acquisition announcements are gone, replaced by a focus on execution and growth in AI infrastructure. Unisplendour brings genuine scale and strong positioning in a high-growth market to the table. If management can address concerns about eroding margins and elevated finance costs, the company could potentially justify a valuation premium to peers when it lists in Hong Kong. The question is whether investors will pay up for promise, or demand proof that profitability can keep pace with revenue growth.

Back to News

From Scandal to Scale: Unisplendour's Phoenix-Like Rise to Hong Kong IPO

MarketDash Editorial Team
4 hours ago
The successor to disgraced chipmaker Tsinghua Unigroup is charting a comeback with a Hong Kong listing, pivoting from semiconductor ambitions to AI infrastructure. Revenue jumped 25.9% to 47.4 billion yuan in the first half of 2025, but margin pressure tells a more complicated story about the cost of growth.

Remember when Tsinghua Unigroup Chairman Zhao Weiguo announced he wanted to buy TSMC and MediaTek? That was a decade ago, when Chinese semiconductor ambitions ran hot and one executive's audacious claims could send shockwaves through the entire Greater China tech community. Those were different times. Zhao is now serving a prison sentence for corruption, and his company went through bankruptcy restructuring after becoming synonymous with scandal.

But here's the thing about corporate phoenixes: sometimes they actually do rise from the ashes. The new entity, Unisplendour Corp. Ltd. (000938.SZ), just filed for a Hong Kong IPO, and while it bears the DNA of its troubled predecessor, it's playing an entirely different game now.

A Different Company With Different Priorities

Gone are the grand pronouncements about acquiring Taiwan's semiconductor giants. Today's Unisplendour generates over 70 billion yuan ($9.9 billion) in annual revenue by doing something considerably less flashy but potentially more sustainable: building China's digital infrastructure backbone. The company offers full-stack capabilities spanning computing, storage, networking, security, cloud services and integration. Translation: they can handle everything from servers to software for government agencies, enterprises and internet companies.

According to third-party data in the listing document filed last week, Unisplendour ranked third by revenue in China's digital infrastructure market in 2024, capturing 8.6% of the total market. More importantly, it holds the number two position in both networking and computing infrastructure, which happen to be the core segments everyone actually cares about. In China's rapidly expanding computing power buildout, being a top-tier domestic player means something.

Computing Power Takes Center Stage

The company's transformation becomes clear when you look at where the money comes from. Digital solutions represented less than two-thirds of revenue back in 2022. By 2024, that figure hit 70.6%, and by the first half of this year, it reached 76.7%. Meanwhile, the legacy ICT distribution business shrank from 37% of revenue to under 23% over the same period.

The real story lives in the computing business segment, which covers AI servers and computing clusters. This segment's revenue grew by 9.46 billion yuan year-over-year in the first half of 2025, catapulting it to roughly 65% of the company's digital solutions revenue. When AI infrastructure is your primary growth driver in today's market, you're definitely positioned where the action is.

Overall revenue growth tells a tale of two periods. From 2022 to 2024, revenue crept from 73.7 billion yuan to 79 billion yuan, showing modest expansion. Then 2025 arrived, and revenue jumped 24.9% year-over-year to 47.4 billion yuan in just the first six months. That acceleration reflects China's intensifying push into computing center construction, large language model training, and industry cloud deployments.

The Margin Squeeze Reality

Here's where the story gets complicated. Scaling up in capital-intensive infrastructure means burning through cash to keep pace with demand, and margins inevitably suffer. Unisplendour's overall gross margin gradually eroded from 19.8% in 2022 to 16% in 2024, then fell further to 14.4% in the first half of this year.

Computing power products inherently carry thin margins because the industry has matured considerably. But there's another problem: customer concentration. A relatively small number of major cloud providers and internet platforms dominate the buyer side, giving them serious bargaining power. Companies like Unisplendour face a classic trade-off: sacrifice price for scale, or maintain margins and risk losing market share. They've chosen scale, and profitability has taken the hit.

Net profit margins moved in lockstep with gross margins, contracting from 5.1% in 2022 to just 2.1% in the first half of 2025. Last year, net profit fell roughly 25% to 1.57 billion yuan from 2.1 billion yuan the year before. Falling prices weren't the only culprit. Finance costs surged 170% year-over-year to 860 million yuan in 2024, driven by significant debt financing and option liabilities related to acquiring an additional 30% stake in networking equipment maker H3C. That acquisition directly pressured the bottom line.

The company's profit did rebound somewhat in the first half of this year, rising 4% year-over-year to 1.04 billion yuan. But cash flow turned negative during the period, with operating outflows hitting 2.82 billion yuan as inventory and receivables built up during expansion. The company held 7.44 billion yuan in cash at midyear, so near-term liquidity isn't an immediate concern.

The AI Infrastructure Opportunity

AI applications are exploding, and all those sophisticated programs need powerful infrastructure to run. Computing power, storage capacity, and networking capabilities form the foundation of AI productivity. Increasingly, clients want providers who can deliver end-to-end and system-level integration services rather than piecemeal solutions.

That's where Unisplendour's comprehensive capabilities could give it an edge. The company can potentially secure hosting contracts for large-scale computing power projects and smart city initiatives that competitors with narrower offerings simply can't match. When you can handle everything from hardware to integration, you become a more attractive partner for massive, complex deployments.

Looking Beyond China

The listing document reveals that IPO proceeds will fund investment in underlying technologies like high-performance computing (HPC), cloud infrastructure, and digital platforms, strengthening the company's core computing resources. This focus aligns perfectly with China's national priorities around self-reliance in AI infrastructure, positioning Unisplendour to receive strong government support for its data infrastructure push.

But the company isn't limiting its ambitions to the domestic market. Unisplendour operates in over 100 countries and regions, with 32 subsidiaries spread across Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America. That global footprint establishes groundwork for future AI infrastructure ventures in emerging markets, representing a potential growth avenue beyond China's borders.

Valuation Questions Ahead

Unisplendour already trades on China's A-share market in Shenzhen, where shares currently command a forward price-to-earnings ratio around 50 times, near a three-year high. That's considerably richer than Hong Kong-listed Lenovo (0992) at roughly 10.5 times, and ZTE (0763) at 24.4 times. ZTE also trades on the Shenzhen exchange under ticker 000063.SZ.

The past is past. The days of bombastic acquisition announcements are gone, replaced by a focus on execution and growth in AI infrastructure. Unisplendour brings genuine scale and strong positioning in a high-growth market to the table. If management can address concerns about eroding margins and elevated finance costs, the company could potentially justify a valuation premium to peers when it lists in Hong Kong. The question is whether investors will pay up for promise, or demand proof that profitability can keep pace with revenue growth.