On 4 November, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange accepted an IPO application from Nanjing Qinheng Microelectronics for its ChiNext board, with Huatai United Securities as sponsor and a planned raise of RMB 1.486 billion. It is the first IPO the exchange has accepted since July 2026, after a review rhythm that had slowed for close to half a year. Slipping into that gap is itself a signal.
Ten months earlier the same company had walked away from a different board. On 30 June 2025 its STAR Market application was accepted with a plan to raise RMB 932 million for USB chips, network chips and full-stack microcontrollers. It entered the inquiry stage on 20 July, and then nothing moved for half a year. The Shanghai exchange project page still shows no data under inquiry and response, meaning the company never filed a single reply. On 20 January 2026 the company and its sponsor withdrew and the review was terminated.
A different board means a different test
Changing boards changed the standard. The STAR Market application carried a science and technology attribute requirement. The ChiNext version cites item one of rule 2.1.2, which requires positive net profit in the last two years totalling at least RMB 100 million. The prospectus reports adjusted net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 97.24 million in 2024 and RMB 173 million in 2025, or RMB 270 million cumulatively, comfortably over the line.
The raise went up rather than down, from RMB 932 million to RMB 1.486 billion, a 60 per cent increase, and the projects went from three to four. The common IP platform takes RMB 440 million, multi-protocol interconnect chips RMB 277 million, ubiquitous IoT network chips RMB 313 million, and the Qingke RISC-V edge SoC plus ecosystem RMB 457 million. All four go into research and industrialisation, with nothing allocated to working capital.
The company designs chips, and the unusual part sits underneath. Where others buy processor cores and interface licences from third parties and assemble them, Qinheng integrates USB, Bluetooth and Ethernet connectivity with its own core on a single die.
The Qingke processor is built on the open RISC-V instruction set and is in its fifth generation. Cumulative shipments of chips carrying the core passed 300 million, with more than 200 million in the most recent year and period. The prospectus claims response speed, power consumption and compute are comparable to ARM’s Cortex-M series.
Its leading position is in a narrow segment. Citing QYResearch, Qinheng held about 15.7 per cent of China’s USB bridge chip market in 2025, making it the largest domestic supplier and the sixth largest by global sales. On 2024 revenue it ranked ninth globally and first in China.
The margin tells the strategy
Revenue rose from RMB 308 million in 2023 to RMB 547 million in 2025, while adjusted net profit went from RMB 62.89 million to RMB 173 million. In the first half of 2026 revenue was RMB 361 million and adjusted profit RMB 136 million, up about 45 and 71 per cent respectively. The prospectus reports compound annual growth above 30 per cent in revenue and above 65 per cent in adjusted profit over the three years.
Gross margin carries a structural story. From 2022 to 2024 the main business margin fell from 63.32 to 57.51 per cent, because Bluetooth, Ethernet and microcontroller products with lower margins grew faster and pulled the average down. In the first half of 2026 the blended margin recovered to 61.94 per cent.
The company is moving from one high-margin USB bridge chip toward more interfaces and more cores. That route dilutes margin in the short term and is only judged over a longer one.
Cash generation is consistent with reported profit. Operating cash flow was RMB 176 million in 2025 against net profit of RMB 181 million, the debt ratio was 10.71 per cent at the end of June 2026, and the company paid no dividends during the reporting period. Whether the extra half billion is well spent is likely to draw the Shenzhen exchange’s first-round questions on research intensity and the necessity of the raise.
On ownership, the actual controller is Wang Chunhua, born in 1976 in Jiangsu, who came up through a technical secondary school education and built the company around interface silicon rather than a licence book. The listing will test whether a component supplier with a real integration moat can hold a premium once it is priced as a public company.
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-201714-8120-30710728.html.