On July 8, Platinum New Materials (300811.SZ), a global soft magnet leader, officially submitted an H share listing application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. CITIC Securities was the sole sponsor. As of July 10, the market value of the company's A shares was about 34.5 billion yuan. This leading alloy soft magnetic material leader, which goes from powder to inductance, chose “A+H” to go public when its market capitalization had already exceeded 30 billion yuan. The investment logic and potential risks behind it are worth thoroughly dismantling.
Long-term growth is resilient, and the annual growth rate is “hot and cold”
According to Zhitong Finance, Platinum New Materials is a rare domestic and globally competitive alloy soft magnetic powder core specialist. It has long been deeply involved in the field of high-end new magnetic materials. Its products are widely used in core scenarios such as new energy vehicles, photovoltaic energy storage, industrial control, AI computing power hardware, and high-end consumer electronics.
With long-term technology accumulation and production capacity scale advantages, the company has the highest market share of alloy soft magnetic powder core products in the world, and is a core material supplier for the global new energy conversion process. At the same time, the company's precision card AI industry dividends, and the high-end precision inductor business rapidly expanded, ranking in the first tier in the world, forming a classic growth structure where the tradition just needed to bottom out and break through with high AI growth.
In terms of revenue in 2025, Platinum New Materials ranked first in the global alloy soft magnetic powder core market, with a market share of 27.1%; ranked fifth in the global AI chip inductor market, with a market share of 7.6%.
Judging from the prospectus operating data, Platinum New Materials mainly shows the growth characteristics of “a steady bottom of the stock chassis, and the second curve bursts out”, but hidden risks such as fluctuations in growth rate, differentiation in gross margin, and financial structure have gradually formed a duality that cannot be ignored at the management level.
From 2023 to 2025, the company's revenue increased from 1,159 million yuan to 1,802 million yuan, and net profit climbed from 256 million yuan to 426 million yuan. The three-year compound growth rates of revenue and net profit reached 24.7% and 29.1% respectively, with a solid long-term growth background.
However, the pace of annual growth is clearly divided: 2024 ushered in high performance, with revenue and net profit surging 43.5% and 46.2% year on year; in 2025, traditional businesses entered a mature period, revenue growth fell back to 8.4%, and net profit growth slowed to 14.0%. However, in the first quarter of 2026, revenue surged 27.7% year on year, and net profit increased 20.6%, strongly reversing the decline in growth and verifying that growth is resilient.
The profit side, on the other hand, showed a trend of rising first and then falling. The comprehensive gross margin rose steadily from 39.6% in 2023 to 42.0% in 2025, mainly due to product structure optimization and continuous delivery of profit dividends. The overall gross margin fell sharply to 37.1% in the first quarter of 2026. The core drag came from the traditional main business alloy soft magnetic powder core. Its gross margin fell 9.5 percentage points to 30.1% within a year, and the pressure on traditional racetrack profits became a short-term operating pain point.
The slowdown in growth is not terrible; what is scary is that no new engines can be found. However, Platco New Materials's answer is written in the revenue structure of AI chip inductors.
The AI chip inductor is the most prominent section in Platco New Materials's prospectus. In 2023-2025, AI chip inductor revenue soared from 77.54 million yuan to 439 million yuan, a three-year cumulative increase of 466.2%, with a compound growth rate of 138.1%; the revenue share jumped all the way from 6.7% to 24.4%, further breaking through 32.5% in the first quarter of 2026. Revenue in a single quarter soared 115% year on year, completely carrying the banner of performance growth.
Behind this high growth is a solid technical moat — the company has the world's first high-pressure molding combined with copper-iron co-firing technology (CFS), which reduced the size of AI chip inductor products by 56.2% compared to traditional processes, and increased power module efficiency by 2.6%. At the same time, R&D investment continued to increase. From 2023 to 2025, R&D expenses were 74.71 million yuan, 117 million yuan, and 152 million yuan, respectively. The three-year compound growth rate was 42.2%, and the proportion of R&D expenses in revenue increased from 6.4% to 8.4%.
However, high growth is accompanied by high expansion, and the hidden bad debts and cash flow pressure of Platinum New Materials's high accounts receivable are also operating thresholds that must be crossed on the way to expansion.
Specifically, along with the expansion of revenue scale, the company's accounts receivable continued to rise, from 626 million yuan at the end of 2023 to 1,039 million yuan at the end of 2025, accounting for 57.7% of total revenue for the year. The lengthening payment cycle for downstream customers and fluctuations in the business environment in the industry have caused the company to face repayment uncertainty. By the end of 2025, the company's cash and cash equivalents were $435 million. From 2023 to 2025, the company's trade receivables are prepared to remain between 28 million yuan and 43 million yuan. Large receivables not only take up working capital, but also lay the risk of potential bad debts, testing the company's ability to control cash flow.
Based on the above, Platco New Materials relies on its leading position in the world and the high growth curve of AI inductors. Growth momentum is abundant and technical barriers are solid. However, problems such as pressure on traditional business profits and high accounts receivable have caused the company's short-term operations to remain disrupted.
There is a boom in card slots, but the capacity utilization rate has declined across the board
Judging from the industry cycle, Platinum New Materials is at the intersection of two boom tracks: on the one hand, there is a steady expansion of traditional soft magnetic materials under a long cycle of new energy, and on the other, a high-end inductance gold outlet spawned by AI computing power hardware iterations.
First, let's take a look at the traditional soft magnetic materials industry. Alloy soft magnetic powder cores are the core basic materials for electric energy conversion, filtering, and energy storage, and are “just needed consumables” for the new energy and industrial control industries. Downstream photovoltaics, energy storage, new energy vehicles, and industrial automation are long-term boom tracks, and demand strong rigidity and strong cyclical resistance.
According to industry data disclosed in the prospectus, benefiting from continued growth in demand in new energy fields such as photovoltaics and energy storage, the global alloy soft magnetic powder core market has expanded rapidly in recent years. In terms of revenue, the global market size increased from RMB 1.6 billion in 2020 to RMB 4.8 billion in 2025, with a CAGR of 24.6% during the period. Looking ahead, the global market size is expected to reach RMB 98 billion by 2030, with a CAGR of 15.5% during this period.
As can be seen, as production capacity on this segmented circuit continues to be concentrated on leading companies with deep technical, production capacity, and customer barriers, Platco New Materials is expected to continue to enjoy the dividends of increased share and structural upgrades in the global segment.
Let's take another look at the AI precision inductor industry. The AI computing power industry will be the core main line of the global technology industry in the next few years. AI servers and high-end GPU power supplies place extreme requirements on inductors with high frequency, low loss, miniaturization, and high stability. Traditional ordinary inductors cannot be adapted to high-end computing power hardware.
In terms of revenue, the market size of the global AI chip inductor industry grew from RMB 1.1 billion in 2020 to RMB 5.8 billion in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 38.2%. It is expected to reach RMB 26.9 billion in 2030, and the compound annual growth rate from 2025 to 2030 is 36.0%.
Numbers are the best litmus test. From the high growth rate mentioned above, it is easy to see that the AI precision inductor industry is currently in the early stages of a boom where demand is bursting, supply is scarce, and barriers are rising. However, the scarcity of high-end production capacity, long certification cycles, and extremely high customer barriers also make it difficult for new entrants to quickly enter the leading supply chain. These characteristics are also an important weight for Platco New Materials to increase its future valuation as a leading company in the industry.
Standing at the intersection of two booming tracks, it seems only natural that Platinum New Materials will go public in Hong Kong. However, coins always have another side — when the capacity utilization rate of core products falls across the board, the rationality of raising capital to expand production becomes a must-answer question that cannot be avoided in this capital feast.
This time, Platco New Materials went on a dual listing in Hong Kong, and the main fund-raising investment was to expand production capacity for AI chip inductors and alloy soft magnetic powder cores, but the biggest controversy in the market focused on the need to expand production in the context of declining capacity utilization. According to prospectus data, the capacity utilization rate of the company's three core products declined across the board. Among them, the AI chip inductor capacity utilization rate fell from 88.1% in 2023 and 90.1% in 2024 to 75.5% in the first quarter of 2026, which became the focus of market questions.
Disassembled from the perspective of the industry cycle, there are objective industry reasons for the phased decline in production capacity utilization: the AI inductor circuit has a long run-in cycle, high-end production lines require a long run-in cycle from commissioning to stable mass production, and the industry order scheduling cycle is lengthened. Early production expansion is a conventional strategy for leading companies to lock in long-term customer orders and seize track share. In the long run, AI computing power hardware iterations have long-term certainty. The essence of expanding production is to match the industry's long-term explosive demand; it is not a short-term blind expansion.
But the risks also objectively exist. If the pace of downstream AI capital expenditure and new energy installation falls short of expectations, additional production capacity will face pressure from continued sluggish utilization rates and depreciation of fixed assets dragging down gross margins; at the same time, the AI chip inductor circuit pattern is stable, and overseas giants take the lead, and the high boom on the racetrack will continue to attract entrants, and future industry competition will intensify or reduce profit space.
Overall, Platco New Materials is on the booming track of new energy and AI, and there is plenty of room for growth as a leader. However, risks such as declining short-term capacity utilization, increased industry competition, and fluctuations in downstream demand cannot be ignored. The company's future value delivery depends on whether pre-production expansion can match long-term industry dividends.
Summarize
In summary, it is easy to see that Platinum Technology is in an industry cycle driven by the dual “steady state of inventory+high incremental growth”. The traditional alloy soft magnetic powder core track pattern is clear, the leaders are concentrated, and the demand is sustainable. The 27.1% global market share provides a solid safety cushion for the company's performance. The AI chip inductor circuit is in the early stages of a boom where demand is bursting, supply is scarce, and barriers are rising, opening up room for the company to imagine valuations. However, hidden dangers such as a sharp drop in the gross margin of traditional businesses, higher accounts receivable, and a decline in short-term capacity utilization also constitute dualities that cannot be ignored at the industry level.