Beijing Stock Exchange's resumption of inquiry-based issuance expectations heat up: Who is the top favorite?

Over the past 3 years, more than 100 new stocks have listed on the Beijing Stock Exchange (BSE), and all of them completed their issuances using direct pricing. However, this situation may soon change.

A reporter from the Beijing Daily Economic News noticed that recently, there has been strong market sentiment that Zhongkeyi is expected to adopt a book-building (offline) issuance for its BSE IPO. The reasons cited include that the company has shown outstanding growth in recent years and has proprietary and controllable themes/technology.

[The Daily Economic News media archive, photo by Chen Mengyu]

Some commentators believe that if the BSE continues using a direct pricing approach for new stock issuances, it may not be fair to those high-quality new stocks. Since last year, for certain relatively high-quality BSE-listed new stocks, their share prices in the secondary market have often remained at more than 10 times the offering price for a long time, indicating that the relevant pricing mechanism may not be fully reasonable.

However, in interviews, some industry insiders also believe that it is inevitable for the BSE to resume book-building issuance after that. Still, restarting book-building at this moment may not be the best timing.

Regarding the above market concerns, staff from Zhongkeyi responded that it is currently not convenient to disclose the specific issuance method; at the time, please refer to the relevant announcements.

Book-building issuance set to restart—could a “first mover” soon emerge?

Based on what the reporter has observed, recently, many viewpoints in the market have suggested that Zhongkeyi, a near-term BSE-listed new stock, is likely to enter the BSE through a book-building issuance. Some BSE industry insiders interviewed also hold similar views.

The prospectus shows that Zhongkeyi’s fundamentals have typical “hard-tech” characteristics. The company is a leading provider of core components for semiconductor manufacturing equipment and a supplier of vacuum science instruments and equipment in China. Its innovation is mainly reflected in the following aspects:

First, the company is the domestic dry vacuum pump manufacturer with the largest shipment volume in the integrated circuit field, and it is also the only domestic company that has achieved mass adoption in advanced process nodes, and the only one that covers clean / medium / stringent processes across all full process categories.

Second, in the dry vacuum pump sector, the company’s R&D innovation has broken the long-term monopoly held by companies in Europe and the United States and Japan. Its dry vacuum pump products meet production needs for processes such as 14nm advanced logic chips and 128-layer and above 3D NAND memory, and they have already achieved large-scale applications across leading Chinese wafer fabrication enterprises.

Third, as an enterprise under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the company has three national-level R&D platforms, including the National Engineering Research Center for Vacuum Technology Equipment.

In addition, the company’s operating performance has continued to grow in recent years. From 2021 to 2025, the net profit attributable to shareholders increased from 0.65 billion yuan to 8.4 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of nearly 90%. In the first quarter of 2026, the company’s performance grew sharply again.

What is worth noting is that, judging by the IPO process of Zhongkeyi, some parts appear different from the norm: first, in this IPO, the company chose the BSE’s fourth set of listing standards—this is also the first time since June 2023 that a BSE new stock has used the fourth set of standards (expected market value not less than 1.5 billion yuan, and total R&D expenditure over the past two years not less than 50 million yuan). Second, on January 16 this year, the BSE Listing Committee held its 4th deliberation meeting in 2026 and approved Zhongkeyi’s listing application, and it was registered by the CSRC on February 10. Meanwhile, companies such as Saiying Electronic, which completed IPO registration at the same time, have recently already completed their issuance.

However, in the view of some industry insiders, these are only basic facts, not sufficient conditions for restarting book-building issuance.

Liu Zimu, founder of Zimu Research, believes that because the BSE’s pricing issuance results in relatively low valuations, it may not be fair to high-quality companies. For example, in the case of BSE new stocks that completed IPOs last year such as Xingtu Measurement & Control and Hengdong Optics, after they were listed, their share prices in the secondary market have long been more than 10 times the offering price, which suggests these companies may not be suitable for pricing issuance and should use book-building issuance.

It is worth noting that since this year began, the issuance pace of BSE new stocks has clearly accelerated compared with 2024 and 2025. According to Choice data, in the first quarter of 2026, 16 new stocks have been listed on the BSE. Based on this pace, the number of new stocks issued for the whole year may far exceed those of 2024 and 2025. In those two years, the number of newly listed stocks was 23 and 26, respectively.

In response to the above market calls, the reporter recently called Zhongkeyi. The company’s staff said it is not convenient to disclose the specific issuance method at this time, and that investors should refer to the relevant announcements when the time comes.

Book-building issuance restart timing sparks heated discussion in the industry

Based on publicly available information, after One to Win (Yinnowei) completed its IPO on the BSE in April 2023, there has been no change in the BSE’s new stock pricing approach for the following 3 years.

At that time, One to Win used book-building issuance in the underwriting stage of its IPO. Back then, there were also some controversies and rumors in the market regarding One to Win’s issuance.

Over the 3 years after One to Win’s IPO, more than 100 new stocks have listed on the BSE, and all of them have used direct pricing for their issuance, with the offer price P/E ratio typically set at around 15 times. Once the pricing method of restarting offline (book-building) issuance is enabled, the room for the offer P/E ratio is expected to open up.

However, in recent interviews, some BSE industry insiders responded with indifference to news that book-building issuance is about to be restarted. Zhou Yunnan, a senior commentator on the New Third Board, said, “This is still only market hearsay at the moment. As for which company and when it will restart book-building issuance, it is still waiting for the official announcement from the issuing company.”

A BSE analyst at a securities firm also said, “Resuming book-building issuance after the BSE is an inevitable trend, but restarting book-building now may not be the best point in time. First, the BSE market is currently in a downtrend phase; second, this year the issuance pace of BSE new shares is faster; and third, Zhongkeyi has controversy—its non-recurring gains and losses are large, and its gross margin is relatively low.”

According to Zhongkeyi’s 2025 annual report, the company’s net profit attributable to shareholders in 2025 was as high as 840 million yuan. However, it includes 740 million yuan in non-recurring gains and losses. The more than 700 million yuan of non-recurring gains and losses mainly come from fair value changes in the financial assets and financial liabilities it holds. Based on information disclosed in the prospectus, last year the company’s gain from fair value changes reached 752 million yuan, which mainly came from a surge in the share price of the listed company Tuoqing Technology held by Zhongkeyi.

From the perspective of net profit attributable to shareholders after deducting non-recurring items, the compound annual growth rate of Zhongkeyi’s performance from 2022 to 2025 is only 18.4%.

In addition, in recent years, the company’s cash flow does not match its profits well. In some reporting periods, there was a significant difference between the company’s net cash flow from operating activities and net profit attributable to shareholders, which to a certain extent reflects that the “quality/amount of value” of its profitability still needs improvement.

In fact, book-building issuance, pricing issuance, and auction issuance are all recognized IPO pricing methods on the BSE. However, since the BSE officially opened for business in November 2021, only 5 BSE new stocks have used book-building issuance in total, accounting for less than 3%. In this regard, some in the industry believe that the high proportion of direct pricing is because direct pricing is more efficient and better fits the characteristics of small and medium-sized enterprises on the BSE.

In the view of the above analyst, “It’s not too late to restart book-building issuance once these conditions are met: first, the market is in a stable phase; second, the issuance pace for new shares isn’t that fast; and finally, the IPO companies’ industry tracks are good and there isn’t much controversy.”

“You can’t just do book-building because you want to. Some of the previously relatively high-quality companies were also (under pricing issuance) offered at relatively low offering prices, but they still rose a lot in the secondary market, and the companies didn’t really have complaints. If you truly do book-building, the company might end up oversubscribed, but there is also the risk of a post-listing price drop.” He further pointed out, “The core is still to enhance the appeal of the market to investors. Just like when people apply for new shares on the BSE now, no one invites anyone in particular—because there is a profit-making effect, freezing 700 billion to 1 trillion yuan is a norm.”

(Editor: Zhang Yang HN080)

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