5x AI Application Leading Stock Yidian Tianxia: Increase Revenue Without Increasing Profit; Before the Hong Kong IPO, the controlling shareholders and their entrepreneurial partners cashed out 4.45 billion | Read the financial report

Source: Titanium Media

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On March 25, AI application stock pick Yidian Tianxia (301171.SZ) released its 2025 annual report. This set of results, carrying expectations for a transformation into a “leading outbound marketing company,” nevertheless presents the reality of “increased revenue but no profit growth.”

According to the annual report, for the full year of 2025, the company’s revenue surged significantly year over year; however, the net profit attributable to the parent company and the net profit after excluding non-recurring items both fell sharply, and even recorded a loss in Q4 on a single-quarter basis, breaking the trend of continued profitability in the first three quarters.

The company’s observation notes that just as it was planning an IPO in Hong Kong, before the deal, the company’s controlling shareholder and one of the persons acting in concert who is also one of the actual controllers reduced their holdings. Through equity look-through, it was actually the company’s actual controller cashing out together with the business partners who started the company, totaling 445 million yuan.

Q4 Loss of 45.47 million yuan

The annual report discloses that in 2025, Yidian Tianxia achieved operating revenue of 3.830 billion yuan, up 50.39% year over year; but net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies was only 158 million yuan, down 31.80% year over year; net profit after excluding non-recurring items dropped even more sharply by 63.97%, recording only 78.17 million yuan.

Behind the “increased revenue but no profit growth,” the company’s total operating costs reached 3.674 billion yuan, up 61% year over year, exceeding the rate of increase in revenue. Among them, various expenses grew significantly: selling expenses were 65.1997 million yuan, up 48.60% year over year; administrative expenses were 189 million yuan, up 58.04% year over year; R&D expenses were 159 million yuan, up 74.28% year over year. The company explained that the main reason for the significant increase in these three expense categories was higher personnel costs and increases in share-based payments.

In 2025, the company’s total number of employees increased by 235, a net increase of 26.73% year over year; by year-end, the total number of employees was 1,114. In the same period, the company granted restricted shares to incentive recipients three times. The total amount of expenses recognized under equity-settled share-based payments was 81.9883 million yuan.

From a quarterly perspective, in 2025 Q4, revenue reached its peak; but net profit attributable to the parent company recorded a loss. Net profit after excluding non-recurring items even saw consecutive losses for two quarters, in Q3 and Q4.

(Yidian Tianxia’s quarterly performance, source: 2025 annual report)

While profits declined, cash flow was also under pressure. The company’s net cash flow from operating activities in 2025 was 161 million yuan, down significantly by 65.87% year over year.

It is worth noting that in January 2025, the company had announced its plan to use idle funds of no more than 100 million yuan for securities investments, and in August of the same year it further increased the investment limit to 500 million yuan. The annual report shows that in 2025, the company newly purchased bonds, stock funds, and other securities totaling 492 million yuan. Adding this to other securities investments it had already held, the company’s carrying value of securities investments at the end of 2025 was 783 million yuan, and the profit/loss for the reporting period was 74.5997 million yuan.

Before the Hong Kong IPO, the actual controller cashed out 445 million yuan together with founding partners

Public information shows that Yidian Tianxia is a digital marketing service provider focused on helping Chinese companies go global. Its main business centers on digital marketing services, and it builds a service system covering the entire advertising marketing chain through three proprietary core systems—Cyberklick, Yeahmobi, and zMaticoo. The company’s business is mainly divided into two segments: integrated marketing services and advertising platform business. As of now, the company has served more than 10,000 customers, and has cumulatively achieved more than 1.3 billion commercial conversion events such as app installations, user registrations, or product sales. Its business covers more than 230 countries and regions worldwide.

According to the company’s explanation, driven by cutting-edge network technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence, large models, and AIGC, the global internet advertising market is currently developing at a high speed. In 2025, the global internet advertising market size was approximately 791.839 billion US dollars, and it is expected to reach 1,160.163 billion US dollars by 2029. The estimated CAGR from 2025 to 2029 is about 10.02%. The domestic market is also performing strongly: according to eMarketer data, in 2025, China’s internet advertising market size was approximately 151.863 billion US dollars, and it is expected that the CAGR from 2025 to 2029 will be about 7.52%.

Against this backdrop, Yidian Tianxia actively embraced AI technology and launched the AI Drive 2.0 intelligent marketing solution, aiming to build Agentic AI applications in the vertical marketing field. However, the company’s observation notes that in an industry environment with cooling business sentiment, compared with peers, Yidian Tianxia’s 2025 performance is not strong.

For example, BlueFocus (300058.SZ) disclosed that its 2025 performance forecast shows full-year revenue of about 72 billion yuan, up 18.43% year over year; net profit attributable to shareholders is expected to be 180 million yuan–220 million yuan, with a significant year-over-year increase, achieving a turnaround from loss to profit. Hong Kong-listed Mobvista (01860.HK) achieved revenue of 2.047 billion US dollars in 2025, up 35.74% year over year. During the period, profit was 61.62 million US dollars, up 346.16% year over year; adjusted net profit was 95.49 million US dollars, up sharply by 93.53%.

In fact, as competition intensifies, Yidian Tianxia’s gross margin has also been declining. The annual report discloses that in 2025, the gross margin for the e-commerce industry was 11.32%, down 11.87% year over year; the gross margin for applications, agency, and others was 15.77%, down 1.72 percentage points year over year.

(Yidian Tianxia’s gross profit margin declined, source: 2025 annual report)

Of course, the difference in performance does not prevent Yidian Tianxia—linked to multiple concepts such as AI applications, AIGC, and cultural media—from being heavily “piled into” in the secondary market together with its peers. Looking back, starting from September 18, 2024 when the stock price was relatively low at 12.37 yuan, Yidian Tianxia has gone through several rounds of rallies. As of the intraday high of 83.95 yuan on January 14, 2026, the cumulative increase has exceeded five times. Even after subsequent consolidation and downward movement, as of the close on March 25 the price was 44.25 yuan, still more than double the initial low.

And just in the period from October 28, 2025 to December 24, 2025, the concerted actor Ningbo Zhongdian Yi Enterprise Management Partnership (Limited Partnership) with one of the controlling shareholder and actual controller of Yidian Tianxia, Zou Xiaowu, (() reduced its holdings by 14.1565 million shares, accounting for 3% of the company’s total share capital. Based on the average selling price during the reduction, the total cash-out was about 445 million yuan.

(Ningbo Zhongdian Yi’s reduction, source: the company’s announcement)

The shareholders of Ningbo Zhongdian Yi are Sun Fengzheng, Zou Xiaowu, and Wang Xiangyang. Their respective shareholdings are 86.89%, 9.27%, and 3.84%. The three are long-time entrepreneurial partners and are also persons acting in concert.

(Equity structure of Ningbo Zhongdian Yi, source: Tianyancha)

It is worth noting that on February 26, 2026—two months after the reduction was completed—Yidian Tianxia disclosed an announcement regarding its plan for an H-share listing. The annual report also provided a profit distribution proposal. It plans to distribute cash dividends of 0.35 yuan for every 10 shares to all shareholders (including tax), and to capitalize from capital reserve to convert 3 shares for every 10 shares to all shareholders. (By Company Observer, author: Su Qitao, editor: Cao Shengyuan)

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