A Shanghai STAR Market company has disclosed a second delivery failure on a large compute hardware contract, having already paid a deposit worth more than its cash position at the half-year.
Maixinlin said on the evening of 2 November that a supplier had again missed delivery on an RMB 890 million server purchase agreement. Sixteen servers were due by 31 October. What arrived were sixteen serial numbers. No machines had shipped, and transport and acceptance checks had not begun.
Four announcements, one contract
On 26 June, Maixinlin signed an equipment purchase contract with a counterparty identified only as Company A, for about RMB 890 million including tax. The announcement three days later set the terms: a 30 per cent deposit within three working days of signing, full delivery by the end of September, and 70 per cent of each batch payable after shipping notice and document checks.
The counterparty’s name, nature and registered address were all exempted from disclosure on trade secret grounds. The filing stated only that it was not a defaulter, had no connection to controlling shareholders or directors, and had done no comparable business with Maixinlin in the previous three years. On a first transaction, Maixinlin paid RMB 267 million.
In the same period the company announced it would list a factory and office building for sale at RMB 403 million, citing asset activation and faster cash turnover, and said the purchase would be funded from its own resources plus bank financing, with the cost of that financing acknowledged in the filing.
Two deadlines, no machines
The first batch of at least 32 units was due by 25 August. Nothing arrived, and by 28 August the delay had passed the three working day grace period. Under the contract the supplier was to return all payments made and pay a penalty of 5 per cent of the amount paid, or RMB 13.344 million.
Maixinlin sent a formal demand on 14 September. By 21 September, when the full delivery window closed with no machines delivered, the penalty basis shifted to 5 per cent of the undelivered contract value, or RMB 44.48 million. The two figures rest on different bases, one on money already paid and one on goods still owed.
The 23 September announcement noted that Maixinlin had not signed formal agreements with downstream customers, so the failure did not put it in breach on the other side, and said the delay was not expected to have a material effect on operations, finances or cash flow. It also carried a candid risk line: hardware iterates quickly, so when the machines do arrive they may arrive already obsolete.
The disclosure timing drew scrutiny. A material change triggered in late August was not published until 23 September, and the June announcement omitted the 32-unit first-batch commitment. Whether the RMB 267 million comes back now bears directly on the company’s ability to service debt.
The supplementary agreement
On 8 October the two sides signed a supplement: 16 units by 31 October, 16 more by 30 November, with timing, quantity and price for the remainder to be negotiated separately. Batches delivered in full would no longer carry the original late-penalty clause.
Maixinlin had listed termination, refund and damages among its options in September and chose to extend instead, stating that obtaining the equipment and landing its compute business were the priority. That decision made 31 October the next test date. It produced serial numbers.
The balance sheet behind the order
Third-quarter results, published on 29 October, show nine-month revenue of RMB 379 million, down 15.13 per cent, and net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 4.67 million, down 91.71 per cent. The third quarter alone lost RMB 6.0954 million. Full-year 2025 net profit was RMB 17.58 million.
At the half-year, cash stood at RMB 204 million, some RMB 60 million below the deposit already committed. The debt ratio was 71.49 per cent, and short-term borrowings had risen from RMB 452 million at the end of the first quarter to RMB 671 million.
The pattern is not unique to this company. Feilixin ended a compute agreement in 2024 after GPU servers failed to arrive, and Lianhua Holdings terminated a RMB 693 million purchase when chips ran short. Many firms in the chain buy against orders already sold, which works until the upstream supplier misses a date.
30 November is the second delivery date in the supplement. Sixteen more machines are due, and the same question is open: whether a serial number becomes a server, and whether an RMB 890 million contract becomes compute or a receivable.
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://www.ofweek.com/ai/2026-11/ART-201714-8120-30710515.html.