A super long standby IPO bust.
Author
Source Investor ID touzijias
An ultra-long standby IPO breakthrough.
1582 days! Recently, a paper approval from the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) brought to a close the long IPO run of the Sci-Tech Board nail-biter Shadowstone Innovation Insta360.
This result is both unexpected and reasonable. From October 28, 2020, when the company was admitted to the Science and Technology Innovation Board, to February 27, 2025, when the company’s registration application was approved, Insta360 experienced a long wait and suffering.
On September 16, 2021, the company successfully passed the meeting, and the victory seemed to be close at hand, but after submitting the registration on January 28, 2022, the company experienced many inquiries and audits, and even stalled for a while, and the stall lasted for more than three years.
Last August, a screenshot screen VC circle, founder Liu Jingkang, late at night in the circle of friends crazy output, face IPO stagnation confusion. At this time, from the shadow stone innovation submitted to the science and technology innovation board IPO registration has been two and a half years, financial information twice expired, the identity of shareholders were repeatedly questioned, the founder exposed himself to all the wages to pay the interest, the outside world is full of controversy.
During this period, Shadowstone has been labeled as a nail in the coffin of the Science and Technology Innovation Board (STB), and even rumors of withdrawing or changing the IPO plan have been circulating.
It was not until recently that Shadowstone finally broke the deadlock with the approval from the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) and was successfully registered and approved, finally becoming the first company to pass the meeting of the Science and Technology Innovation Board (STB) in 2025.
The long wait has finally come to a successful conclusion.
A
The capital market is always in a frenzy of sound.
The key trigger for the blockage of Shadowstone’s IPO was the special status of indirect shareholder Chen Bin. This was a senior manager at the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and was also seconded to the issuance department of the Securities and Futures Commission to work on a sensitive figure, not simple.
He indirectly held a stake of about 5 percent in Shadowstone Innovation in the capacity of a non-audit post through funds such as Xiamen Fukai of Shenzhen McGraw Holdings. The controlling shareholder of Shenzhen Meco Holdings is himself, and among the contributors of Xiamen Fukai, he holds 99% of the shares through his spouse, Wang Rong, who controls Deppu Investment. This complex shareholding structure, in itself, let a person smell the unusual smell.
From the IPO filing in October 2020 to the filing of the registration in January 2022, Shadowstone Innovation, in four rounds of questioning and two times of deliberation by the municipal party committee, did not say a word about Chen Bin’s regulatory background, the motivation for the shareholding, or the details of the transaction. Until August 2024, Liu Jingkang’s circle of friends to expose themselves to the family scandal, the market was surprised to realize that the former regulator, has long been lurking for three years.
In October 2018, Chen Bin through Shenzhen Meco and Xiamen Fukai surprise shares in the shadow stone innovation, the time point coincides with the eve of the company submitted IPO application. At that time, the valuation of shadow stone innovation was only 1.7 billion yuan, and by 2023, its net profit soared to 8.3 billion yuan, and the valuation of the Science and Technology Innovation Board exceeded 16.6 billion yuan. This kind of soaring valuation in itself is easy to raise questions from the outside world.
What is even more bizarre is that Chen Bin’s share price is 50 percent higher than that of SZV. This kind of pricing against the law of the market, also makes the outside world inevitably doubt whether there is something fishy.
Liu Jingkang disclosed in his 2024 open letter that in order to liquidate Chen Bin’s shares, he had to repay seven-figure interest annually, while Chen Bin cashed out his equity valued at more than 100 million yuan. Where did this huge amount of money come from? The prospectus shows that Liu Jingkang, on the eve of the IPO in 2019, cashed out 23 million yuan by transferring his shares with 29.5 million yuan through the employee shareholding platform for the reason of improving his living needs. This explanation really makes people laugh and cry.
Liu Jingkang, founder of Shadowstone Innovation, although many times eager to clarify, emphasizing that Chen Bin is not the audit post personnel, and the price of shares far exceeded the SZVIC 50, there is no suspicion of transfer of benefits, but also pointed out that the relevant provisions of the IPO filing half a year after the introduction of the company in the introduction of the provisions of the one or two months after the introduction of the special verification report has been submitted. But these explanations, under the magnifying glass of the capital market, seem pale and powerless.
Shadowstone had to spend a lot of time, energy and resources to respond to regulatory inquiries, which undoubtedly slowed down the pace of its listing and made it hover on the edge of the capital market for many years, becoming a nail in the eyes of everyone.
In October 2020, the IPO of Shadowstone Innovation was accepted on the Science and Innovation Board. At that time, the science and innovation board opened just one year, policy dividends surging, capital hot pursuit of hard science and technology. But no one would have thought that this industry leader with an annual revenue growth of 60% and a global market share of more than 50, would be reduced to the longest lagging enterprise in the registration process.
Over the years, the capital market ebbs and flows, how many companies hurriedly on the field and left the field.
Two
From Campus Legend to Global No. 1.
In the tech world, the name of Shadowstone Innovation Insta360 is no longer unfamiliar. Its story begins with its founder, Liu Jingkang. Born in 1991, this post-90s kid has been interested in technology since childhood.
During his time at Nanjing University’s School of Software, he used the ID photos of more than 7,000 classmates to draw the standard faces of various colleges, a seemingly playful experiment that made him an accidental Internet celebrity.
Earlier, he analyzed the sound of keystrokes when a reporter interviewed Zhou Hongyi and deciphered his cell phone number, and this kind of paranoia about technology made him get the title of Technology Emperor on campus.
When he graduated in 2015, he took his team to develop a live broadcast system for famous schools and won the IDG angel round of financing, but what really changed the fate of China’s imaging industry was the 360 video he saw in 2014, the pain point of the traditional panoramic camera that takes half an hour to splice, which became the starting point of his business.
At the beginning of 2015, the prototype of the first generation of Insta360 panoramic camera was born in Nanjing, and in July of the same year, the startup team moved to Shenzhen, where the supply chain is more mature, while actively laying out the overseas market. Facts have proved that his judgment is correct.
The development speed of Shadowstone Innovation is amazing. The first consumer-grade camera, Nano, which took one year to launch, shocked the industry with its 70-gram weight and instant photo function, and was called a terrific product by Apple co-founder Wozniak, selling about 20,000 units in the first month of its launch.
Since then, the company has continued to innovate, pioneering features such as the invisible selfie stick and bullet time, which continue to surprise users. It has turned the panoramic camera into a creative tool for Jitterbugs.
According to Frost & Sullivan, in 2022, Shadowstone’s share of the global panoramic camera market will be more than 50 percent, and by 2023, its share of the global consumer panoramic camera market will be as high as 67.2 percent, which is the world’s largest for the sixth consecutive year, equivalent to two out of every three units sold will be labeled with the Insta360 logo.
It not only broke the long-term monopoly of European, American, Japanese and Korean brands in the field of panoramic cameras, but also achieved remarkable results in the global sports camera market, becoming a Chinese brand that goes hand in hand with GoPro, with a market share that is stable in the world’s top two.
In terms of technology research and development, Shadowstone has spared no effort. Starting from 2021, the company has invested more than 1.1 billion yuan in R&D in three and a half years. As of June 2024, the company has more than 800 patents, and many of its technologies have been selected for the China Patent Award, forming a competitive barrier.
Nowadays, Shadowstone has built up a global network covering 200 countries, and its products are stationed in the Leica flagship store of Apple Store, making it the only panoramic camera brand stationed in Apple Overseas revenue accounts for more than 80%, and it has realized a counterattack in the high-end market of Europe and the United States.
In just a few years, this campus project has gone beyond the scope of business to become a time capsule that redefines the way of human recording.
Shadowstone innovation has also realized the leap from campus legend to the world’s first.
Three
Leading in technology does not mean resting on one’s laurels.
Sometimes, the triumph of technology often comes with a more sinister price. When it emerged in the global market with its panoramic camera technology, a storm of patent lawsuits from industry giants has been quietly approaching.
In March 2024, American sports camera giant GoPro wielded the 337 investigation stick, accusing Shadowstone Innovation of infringing on six of its patents and demanding a permanent ban on the sale of its products in the United States. This move was like a hammer blow to Shadowstone, whose main revenue comes from overseas markets, hitting the key point.
Crucially, the lawsuit also precisely sniped its IPO process.
At that time, Shadowstone had already submitted its registration application for more than three years, and the 12-16 month cycle of the 337 investigation directly caused it to miss the best financing window. More fatally, the list of infringing products mentioned by GoPro in the lawsuit covered almost all consumer camera models of Shadowstone. Even today, this protracted investigation and litigation is still ongoing.
The rise of Shadowstone Innovation is just a thorn in the side of its overseas competitors. GoPro’s patent lawsuit is clearly intended to curb the momentum of Shadowstone’s expansion in overseas markets, to maintain its hegemony in the global sports camera field.
In the face of GoPro’s aggressive, shadowstone innovation did not retreat, but to attack for defense, decisive legal weapons to fight back, in-depth study of GoPro’s patent lawsuit loopholes and cracks, while taking the initiative to attack, sued GoPro infringement of its two patents, and claimed 1.5 billion.
This kind of strategy, you fight your patent war, I fight my home war, is in line with the tactical logic of Huawei’s fight against Cisco and DJI’s fight against Dotcom.
However, the plight of Shadowstone Innovation is far more than that. Although it will panoramic camera to the world’s first, but the core chip is still highly dependent on overseas suppliers, this upstream neck downstream to play the situation, people can not help but think of Huawei Kirin chip supply dark moment.
In addition to the fierce battle with GoPro, Shadowstone was also involved in nearly 10 intellectual property disputes at home and abroad before and during the IPO. From the Dija Altman copyright dispute to the trade secret allegation, each lawsuit is a real money consumption war.
When the technology moat is dug deeper and deeper, the smell of gunpowder in the legal battle is also getting stronger and stronger.
Perhaps the biggest challenge after Shadowstone’s IPO came from the gap between investors’ understanding of the technology route. When GoPro launched N rounds of patent lawsuits, can the market see through the short-term fluctuations to see the long-term technical value? When panoramic camera encountered AR VR technology subversion, 67 2 market share is a moat or transformation burden? All these questions are questioning the cognitive depth of the capital market.
But surprisingly, despite the disputes, Shadowstone Innovation finally succeeded in passing the meeting.
After all, it took ten years, from GoPro’s 1 40 scale to a full-scale reversal, proving that another possibility of China’s manufacturing Not only rely on low prices, but also rely on technology, branding and channel triple upgrades to poke through the ceiling.
The IPO approval of Shadowstone Innovation is not the end of the story, but the starting point of a new battle.
When the panoramic camera market is approaching the ceiling, Shadowstone must find the second curve When the international giants escalate their patent siege, it needs to change from a defender to a rule maker.
Capital Breaking 2019 China Fund Partners GPLP Summit
Return to Value Investment 2018 China Equity Investment Annual Summit
Leave a Reply