China’s securities regulator cleared a Tianjin pool-cleaning robot maker for a Hong Kong listing on 30 October, opening the way for the first listed company in a category most investors have never priced.
Wanyuan Technology plans to issue up to 12.6886 million shares on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange main board. By 2024 shipments and gross merchandise value it ranks third globally and first in China with about 9.2 per cent of the market, and it holds 19.7 per cent of the cordless segment, the largest position worldwide. Its products sell in more than 60 countries.
A hardware story that looks like software until you read the margin
Revenue rose from RMB 378 million in 2023 to RMB 812 million in 2025, a compound annual growth rate of 46.6 per cent. Gross margin climbed from 57.5 per cent to 62.9 per cent. Net margin went the other way, from above 30 per cent during its earlier A-share filing to 16.1 per cent in 2023 and 12.4 per cent in 2025.
That divergence is the whole investment case. Wanyuan spent two decades solving the engineering problems that make underwater robots hard: satellite positioning does not penetrate water, currents and refracted light corrupt sensor readings, and IP68 sealing plus lithium battery cooling have to hold at depth. It then shifted from ODM contracting to its own brand, which lifted revenue and gross margin while marketing spend ate the operating profit.
The market structure it attacked was Western and cabled. Maytronics of Israel and Fluidra of Spain built the category on tethered machines, where cable tangling was an accepted annoyance rather than a defect to be solved. Cordless navigation was the opening, and Wanyuan took it.
The governance discount
Founder Fu Guilan, 70, started the company in 2005 with her son Yu Qian, now vice chairman and product director. Through layered holding vehicles the family controls 71.58 per cent of voting rights, with institutional holders too dispersed to counterbalance management.
Two pre-IPO dividends draw scrutiny. The company paid RMB 85 million before its 2021 A-share attempt and another RMB 62 million in 2025, equal to half that year’s adjusted net profit, with most of it going to the controlling family. The Hong Kong proceeds include working capital. Paying out and then raising is legal, and public-market investors tend to price it as a governance discount rather than a crime.
The exposure nobody in the pitch deck mentions
Of Wanyuan’s revenue, 93.1 per cent comes from outside China, and North America plus Europe account for 85.1 per cent of the total. Tariff changes hit unit economics directly. A terminated Section 337 investigation in the United States has not closed the patent exposure, with litigation still live in California and France. An adverse ruling could mean damages or a partial sales ban in the markets that carry the business.
Listing solves the capital question. It does not solve concentration, family control, or the fact that a robot sold into a Florida pool has to survive American trade policy before it survives the water.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original OFweek report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience. The full original (in Chinese) is at https://robot.ofweek.com/2026-11/ART-8321202-12003-30710051.html.