Hesai reported third-quarter results on 10 November that show volume growth running well ahead of revenue growth, and a new business line being funded by the old one.
Revenue for the quarter reached RMB 1.0683 billion, up 34.3 per cent year on year and the tenth consecutive quarter of growth, though it came in below the company’s own guidance of RMB 1.1 billion to RMB 1.15 billion. Lidar deliveries totalled 729,673 units, up 65.3 per cent, also below guidance of 800,000 to 850,000 units.
The profit line needs context
Net profit was RMB 80.79 million, down 68.5 per cent year on year. The comparison is distorted by a one-off: in the third quarter of 2025 the company booked about RMB 185.1 million from the disposal of an equity investment and the transfer of intellectual property. Excluding those items, net profit this quarter grew 13.7 per cent.
Group operating profit was RMB 62.58 million, down 19.1 per cent. The lidar segment itself earned RMB 145.5 million of operating profit, up 88 per cent on revenue of RMB 977.8 million, which grew 22.9 per cent.
That segment result is the crux. The core business became more profitable while the group became less so, because the strategic growth business is consuming the difference.
The strategic growth unit
The SGI segment, which houses robot joint modules and the Kosmo spatial data platform, posted revenue of RMB 90.51 million and an operating loss of RMB 82.89 million. Revenue was up about 101 per cent sequentially.
Hesai had set a full-year SGI revenue target of RMB 100 million at the start of the year and has since raised it to between RMB 200 million and RMB 300 million. The first nine months delivered RMB 135.5 million.
Robot power module shipments were 23,405 sets in the quarter, up 96.8 per cent from 11,890 sets in the second quarter. Cumulative deliveries reached 35,295 sets by the end of September, and monthly capacity has been lifted to about 10,000 sets. Full-body joint modules have also entered volume production.
Those modules now appear inside Sharpa’s flagship tactile dexterous hand, the Wave W01, which has 22 active degrees of freedom in a one-to-one human-hand configuration. The hand has been adopted into NVIDIA’s Isaac GR00T humanoid reference design and is used by Berkeley, Stanford and Nanyang Technological University. Sharpa’s D01 robot and W02 lightweight tactile hand, shown at IROS 2026, also carry Hesai modules, with the reducer and motor made in-house.
The automotive base
ADAS lidar accounted for 638,055 units in the quarter, up 67.6 per cent and about 87.4 per cent of total shipments. Robot lidar reached 91,618 units, up 51.1 per cent year on year though down from 142,400 units in the second quarter. Cumulative deliveries for the first nine months were 1.8297 million units.
Design wins are stacking up. The ET ultra-long-range series added five global OEM programmes including Cadillac, Geely, Great Wall and a mainstream European carmaker, with combined order backlog above one million units. The FT blind-spot series entered Leapmotor and a European OEM, the AT series won a Wuling programme, and Chery appears in the overseas model list.
Chief executive Li Yifan attributed the growth to three factors: five new ETX design wins including a top European carmaker and Cadillac, rising penetration of multi-lidar configurations in China and abroad, and new Wuling and Chery programmes pushing the technology into high-volume mass-market and export models.
The drag came from two places. Management said overall 2026 vehicle demand was weaker than expected at the start of the year, with several carmakers including some Hesai customers cutting full-year sales targets. Separately, a robot mower customer ran into its own operating problems, which pulled JT series shipments below plan. Demand from robotaxi, autonomous trucking and humanoid robot customers was better than expected, and those products carry higher average selling prices and margins.
Pricing and the 2027 question
Gross margin fell to 41.0 per cent from 42.1 per cent as lower-margin products took a larger share of revenue, though gross profit in absolute terms rose about 30.8 per cent to RMB 438.2 million. Research and development spending was RMB 254.0 million, up 27.8 per cent and equal to 23.8 per cent of revenue.
Management expects full-year 2026 gross margin near 40 per cent and sees 2027 as relatively stable. The chief financial officer said pricing for the ATX series should stabilise further under contracts already signed for 2027, which would let profit growth come from volume, mix and operating efficiency rather than continued discounting.
Fourth-quarter group revenue guidance is RMB 1.1 billion to RMB 1.15 billion. The company held about RMB 6.977 billion of cash at the end of September and has now posted six consecutive quarters of GAAP profitability.
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-8321201-12003-30711327.html.