Lingyi iTech moved into focus after Apple introduced its first foldable phone, and the company was identified as the supplier of three of the device’s harder-to-make parts: hinge precision structural components, screen support plates and ultra-thin vapor chambers. In A-share trading, the stock surged intraday and touched CNY 13.67, missing the daily limit by CNY 0.01.
A die-cutting business that grew into a broader manufacturing platform
Lingyi iTech began in die-cutting, making small internal parts used for bonding, dust resistance and heat dissipation inside phones. Those parts include tapes, foams and graphite sheets cut into specific shapes and fitted into different parts of a handset. The source article describes them as low-visibility components that still affect durability and cooling performance.
In its early years, the industry largely relied on flatbed machines. Lingyi pushed rotary die-cutting instead, letting materials move continuously through the process and improving speed and efficiency. As the business matured, competition came down to tighter tolerances and thinner profit per unit.
The company’s origin story in the article starts in 2006 in Shenzhen, where founder Zeng Fangqin launched the business in a rented factory space with 80 employees and 10 machines. Nokia became an early notable customer. After operations stabilized, orders from Foxconn and BYD followed.
Around 2008, when Apple was building out its global supply chain, Lingyi broke into that system. Zeng later recalled that the team’s yield rate was just 30% at the time, while the customer initially demanded 50% to 70%. The requirement later moved to 85% and then 90%. She described the process by saying the team had pushed so hard that it had 「把牙龈都咬出血了」.
As the relationship deepened, the company took on more iPhone structural-part orders. Over the following decade, it expanded its in-house process stack to include stamping, CNC machining, injection molding and metal injection molding, then added newer materials such as titanium alloy and carbon fiber. The article says Lingyi had already become No. 1 globally in die-cutting by 2012 and entered China’s A-share market through a backdoor listing in 2018.
Based on third-party statistics cited in the piece, Lingyi ranked first in the global high-precision functional parts market for AI terminal devices by 2025 revenue. The company says it holds more than 2,000 patents.
Foldable work started in 2019 and ran for seven years
Lingyi began preparing for foldables in 2019, when first-generation foldable phones had only just appeared and the sector had not yet proved itself. The company invested in stainless-steel etching, titanium-alloy processing and carbon-fiber forming, and iterated its screen support plates across three material generations: stainless steel, titanium alloy and carbon fiber.
The source says the finished support parts have to pass 100,000 folding tests. The vapor chamber designed for foldables was made as thin as 0.25 mm, and before Apple’s launch event, Lingyi’s production lines had already begun ramping for the device.
The hinge is described as the foldable phone’s critical pain point. More than 100 components have to mesh with tight precision, closing cleanly and opening flat. For what the article calls the iPhone Duo, Apple’s requirements were also strict: each assembled unit had to be scanned and matched one by one, with even slight ripples removed. Lingyi says the value of content per foldable device is several times that of a bar phone, and the more difficult jobs it takes on, the higher that content value becomes.
Revenue rose, but margins kept thinning
The article argues that being a global leader in this segment does not automatically translate into thick profits. The business model has a built-in pattern: when a new project first appears, only a handful of suppliers can make it, so pricing power is better. Once the process is mastered and rivals catch up, customers gain alternatives and negotiate prices lower over time.
Lingyi’s prospectus labels this a “competitive pricing strategy,” meaning it enters new categories at relatively low prices to win share, then relies on scale and manufacturing execution to hold business. The trade-off shows up in gross margin.
- 2022 comprehensive gross margin: 20.73%
- 2023: 19.94%
- 2024: 15.77%
- 2025: 15.80%
Revenue, by contrast, expanded from just over CNY 30 billion in 2021 to more than CNY 50 billion in 2025. But the profit layer grew thinner. Gross margin for precision functional and structural parts stood at 25.97% in 2022. By 2025, when comparable business had been grouped into the AI terminal category, that margin was down to 17.21%.
Customer concentration has also increased. The top five customers accounted for 57.5% of revenue, and Apple alone represented 19.2%. In 2020, the top-five share was 44%. That means Lingyi is becoming more dependent on its largest customers even as it remains only one supplier within Apple’s broader ecosystem.
Currency moves added another layer of pressure. The article says the renminbi strengthened in the first half of this year, while 68% of Lingyi’s revenue came from overseas and collections were mainly in U.S. dollars. Foreign-exchange gains of CNY 24 million turned into losses of CNY 466 million, a swing of nearly CNY 500 million. Financial expenses rose from CNY 113 million to CNY 620 million.
During the same period, revenue reached a record CNY 25.149 billion and extended its growth streak to 10 consecutive quarters. Net profit came in at CNY 764 million, down 17.88%. The source says nearly half of that was supported by one-off gains. Excluding those, net profit was CNY 389 million, down 35.83%. By that measure, only about CNY 4 of profit remained for every CNY 100 of revenue.
Two earnings setbacks, two recoveries, both driven by new businesses
The article frames the company’s recent history around two sharp setbacks. The first came in 2021, when chip shortages, shutdowns at overseas factories, rising raw-material costs and price declines on older projects hit at the same time. Net profit fell to CNY 1.180 billion, down 47.9%. After the earnings warning, the stock hit limit down the next day, and more than CNY 10 billion in market value disappeared within two days. The article says Lingyi was the second-worst performer in Apple’s China supply chain at that point, ahead only of OFILM, which had been removed from Apple’s supplier list.
The second setback came in 2024, when net profit fell another 14.5%. The company attributed that to a product-mix shift: older work was shrinking while new work had not yet gained enough scale and profitability. This time, recovery came faster, with profit in the final three months of the year rising 92.9%.
In both cases, the company used the same fix: find a new line of work. Chargers were the “new business” of the previous cycle. In 2019, Lingyi paid CNY 678 million for Salcomp. Charger revenue rose 330% over four years, but the growth tail eventually faded. In 2023, the business was almost flat at 2.3% growth. In 2024, it started shrinking. The article cites media commentary saying the acquisition dividend had been fully consumed.
Lingyi has not stopped looking. In July this year, it planned to spend no more than CNY 4 billion to acquire Futong Jiashan, a fiber-optic company. The rationale given in the filing was that liquid cooling was already in place, but optical communications were still missing from the chain. After entering due diligence, the company withdrew 21 days later, saying time was too tight and the books could not be fully checked, making a reliable judgment impossible.
Foldables, liquid cooling and robotics are now the three main lines of debate
The author of the source article argues that the real question is not just what Lingyi has today, but what it is preparing to do next. The market is focused on three areas: foldables, liquid cooling and robotics.
Foldables: higher content value, but shipment uncertainty remains
Analyst estimates cited in the article put Lingyi’s content value per foldable device at $80 to $100, with some estimates reaching $110 to $120. On a neutral case, that implies CNY 3.6 billion to CNY 4.5 billion in additional annual revenue, provided shipments materialize smoothly.
That caveat matters. Apple’s inventory preparation target is described as 10 million units, while institutional shipment forecasts range from 3 million to 8 million. Even at the higher end, foldables would still account for only a small share of Apple’s annual smartphone volume of more than 200 million units.
At the industry level, foldables made up only 1.6% of the smartphone market last year. Institutions cited in the piece expect that ratio to rise above 3% by 2027. Initial third-quarter shipments are expected at just 500,000 to 1 million units, with yield still the main constraint. That is why some financial media have pushed back, saying supplier status does not necessarily equal profit.
Liquid cooling: NVIDIA certifications in hand, orders booked into Q1 2027
Among the three growth areas, the article calls liquid cooling the most tangible. Early this year, Lingyi acquired Liminda for CNY 875 million at a premium of more than 34 times. The deal was really about two certifications for NVIDIA liquid cooling, AVL and RVL, both of which are in place. Orders, according to the article, are already booked through the first quarter of 2027.
As NVIDIA’s new racks shift fully to liquid cooling in the second half of the year, Lingyi is trying to position itself for that cycle. Its own production lines are set to begin volume production in the third and fourth quarters, using manufacturing skills developed in phone components. The article adds that few Chinese suppliers hold these certifications, and a China Central Television report said the company’s related exports doubled in the first half.
Cold plates, quick connectors and manifolds are all necessary parts inside each rack. Institutional forecasts in the source put the global liquid-cooling market at $33 billion by 2029, with a 47% annual growth rate.
Robotics: order language and delivery language are not the same
Robotics offers the largest theoretical upside, and the most uncertainty. Lingyi has said externally that orders in hand exceed 25,000 units. But in financial-report language, delivered volume is still only “thousands of units.” The article’s point is simple: orders are closer to applications, deliveries are closer to approvals, so investors should weigh the latter more heavily.
The company’s scope in robotics runs from key components and joint modules to complete assembly and full-machine testing. At a super factory in Beijing, a startup called Yuanluo has placed several hundred units of orders and does not need to build its own factory because the production line is set up inside Lingyi’s facility.
Planned capacity stands at 10,000 units this year and 20,000 next year, with a long-term plan of 500,000. Lingyi says its goal is to become one of the world’s top three embodied-intelligence hardware manufacturers. Its automotive business is also growing, with revenue up 198% in the first half.
Valuation remains split, and the market is arguing about what comes next
The market is pricing Lingyi very differently across listings. The article says the A-share market values the company at 49 times earnings, while the H-share market gives it 22 times, less than half that level. On its H-share listing day, the stock opened 6% above the offer price and closed below it. Based on the date used in the article, it remains 36% below the offer price, and the 19 cornerstone investors in the deal were not spared that decline.
Within the same supply chain, Dongshan Precision has risen by more than 100% since the start of the year, while Lingyi is down 17%. Even so, institutional target prices cited in the piece sit above current trading levels in both markets.
- More than 30 domestic institutions have a combined target price of CNY 18.61, nearly 50% above the current price
- In early September, JPMorgan gave the H shares a target price of HK$11
- Jefferies reiterated a Buy rating in early September
- In March, Goldman Sachs gave the A shares a target price of CNY 22.6
- Institutions conducted 92 on-site visits
The company has also been returning cash. In the first half, spending on buybacks and dividends amounted to more than 70% of net profit, according to the article.
The bullish case rests on platform reuse across four business lines. The same manufacturing base supports foldables, liquid cooling, robotics and the legacy precision-components business. Liquid cooling has entered NVIDIA’s supply chain, robotics has orders in hand, and Apple’s new foldable phone carries slightly more Lingyi content than the previous generation, according to the source. Institutions cited there forecast net profit growth of 36% in 2026 and a 1.5-fold increase by 2028 from the current level.
The bearish case is centered on concentration and valuation. Roughly 80% of revenue still comes from AI hardware, the article says, and automotive, one of the fastest-growing newer segments, accounts for only 14%. A 49x earnings multiple is not cheap for a manufacturer. Changes in major-customer relationships, production ramp-up, yield and final delivery all remain variables.
Twenty years later, the model is still the same
This year marks Lingyi iTech’s 20th year. It started in a rented factory with 80 employees and 10 machines. It now has 100,000 employees, operations in 10 countries and 80 sites. The work has expanded from tiny phone parts to foldable-phone structures and cold plates used in data-center cooling.
The article’s conclusion is that the company has spent two decades repeating one cycle: find a new job, make the hard part, turn it into mass production, then go look for the next one. The debate in the market now is how much that next step is worth.
The source article says company data came from Lingyi iTech’s Hong Kong listing prospectus, annual reports from 2021 to 2025, its 2026 interim report and other public disclosures. Institutional estimates and views were drawn from public research by TF International, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Jefferies, while industry data came from Frost & Sullivan and TrendForce. Market, valuation and consensus data were stated as of Sept. 10, 2026. The original text also noted that institutional views and target prices do not constitute investment advice.