Hong Kong debut starts flat, then slips in early trading
Longsys, a memory chip company based in Shenzhen, Guangdong, rang the bell at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Sept. 8.
The company priced its shares at HK$236 each, or about 202.04 yuan. The stock opened flat. By 10:00 a.m., it was down 1.19% at HK$233.2, or about 199.62 yuan, leaving Longsys with a market value of HK$107.192 billion, equivalent to about 91.758 billion yuan.
Founded in 1999, Longsys describes itself as an independent-brand semiconductor memory company. Its core business covers controller chip and memory chip design, firmware development, and back-end manufacturing capabilities, with products sold into consumer, enterprise and industrial-grade applications.
For the listing, the company brought in 14 cornerstone investors, including Transsion Holdings, Lenovo Group and Lens Technology. Together they subscribed for about $151 million of the offering, or about 1.015 billion yuan.
Based on 2025 storage product revenue, China Insights Consultancy ranked Longsys ninth among more than 100 global market participants. It ranked third among more than 30 market participants in China and was the country’s largest independent memory maker. Its share of the global semiconductor memory market stood at 1.2%.
Its customers include Dell, Lenovo, OPPO, Samsung, Transsion and Xiaomi.
Longsys had already listed on Shenzhen’s A-share market in August 2022. As of the close on Sept. 7, its A-share stock had risen 26.86% this year to 358.22 yuan, with a market capitalization of 153.916 billion yuan.
First-half revenue rises 136.3%, net profit surges 71,528.66%
Longsys said its product portfolio spans four lines: embedded storage solutions, SSDs, portable storage products and memory modules. The prospectus disclosed unaudited financial data for the first half of 2026, showing revenue of 24.088 billion yuan, up 136.3% from a year earlier, and net profit attributable to shareholders of 10.577 billion yuan, up 71,528.66%.
The company expects net proceeds of about HK$6.0202 billion from the global offering, or roughly 5.16 billion yuan. Of that amount, HK$4.711 billion will go to strengthening independent R&D and innovation in chip design and advanced storage product development, HK$707 million will be used for strategic investments or acquisitions, and HK$602 million will be used for working capital and other general corporate purposes.
Its historical financial figures in the prospectus showed revenue of 10.125 billion yuan, 17.464 billion yuan, 22.766 billion yuan and 14.707 billion yuan in 2023, 2024, 2025 and the first four months of 2026, respectively. Net profit for those periods was -837 million yuan, 505 million yuan, 1.498 billion yuan and 6.427 billion yuan. R&D spending was 594 million yuan, 910 million yuan, 1.048 billion yuan and 375 million yuan, accounting for 5.9%, 5.2%, 4.6% and 2.5% of revenue.
For the first half of 2026, gross margin was 58.2%, up 47.2 percentage points from a year earlier, while R&D spending reached 851 million yuan.
According to the prospectus, Longsys posted a loss in 2023 because of weak end-market demand and higher operating expenses. Profit recovered later as the storage products industry rebounded, demand improved and prices rose.
Gross margin was 4.7% in 2023, 15.8% in 2024, 18.0% in 2025 and 57.5% in the first four months of 2026, showing a year-by-year improvement. The company linked the jump in the first four months of 2026 to a surge in AI infrastructure investment, a market in short supply and higher storage product prices.
As of June 30, 2026, Longsys had 3.101 billion yuan in cash and cash equivalents.
Three brands and four product lines, with embedded storage leading revenue
Longsys operates three brands: FORESEE, Zilia and Lexar.
FORESEE mainly serves the B2B market and is the company’s own brand, with a presence in smartphones, PCs, other edge devices and automotive applications. Zilia mainly serves the B2B market in Latin America and was launched in 2023 after Longsys acquired Brazilian semiconductor memory maker SMART Brazil. Lexar, which Longsys acquired in 2017, is a global premium brand serving the B2C market, and its products have been sold in more than 60 countries and regions.
The prospectus described FORESEE as the company’s flagship brand. Its RDIMM products cover capacities of 32GB, 64GB and 96GB, and the company said it was among the first in China to launch a 96GB version. It has also developed an automotive-grade storage portfolio including UFS, eMMC and SPI NAND Flash. Those products have passed AEC-Q100 and IATF 16949 automotive certification standards and have been adopted by more than 20 automotive OEMs.
By product line, the business is split among embedded storage solutions, SSDs, portable storage products and memory modules. Embedded storage, which includes UFS and eMMC, ultra-small eMMC and ePoP, and LPDDR, is the company’s main source of revenue. It contributed 50.4% of revenue in the first four months of 2026.
Longsys said product sales volume declined in the first four months of this year from the same period a year earlier. It attributed that to higher product prices, which reduced the ability and willingness of price-sensitive customers to buy and led some customers to delay purchases. Tight supply of key memory raw materials and rising average prices for DRAM and NAND Flash also prompted the company to cut procurement, which in turn constrained output.
The company remains focused on consumer products. Revenue from consumer-grade products accounted for 94.7%, 92.9%, 89.8% and 88.4% of total revenue in 2023, 2024, 2025 and the first four months of 2026, respectively.
Six self-designed controller chips are already commercialized
Longsys said it has built in-house capabilities across key parts of the storage product chain.
On controller chips, the company has designed eight in-house controllers, six of which have been commercialized, covering USB, SD cards, eMMC, UFS products and SSDs. As of April 30, 2026, cumulative production of its self-designed controller chips had exceeded 250 million units.
In March 2026, the company launched its self-developed SPU controller chip, which integrates memory control and an intelligent processing engine. A 64TB SSD using the SPU controller can store 128TB of effective data at the host level.
Products using the company’s own controller chips entered mass production in the second half of 2024 and generated 2.989 billion yuan in revenue in the first four months of 2026, accounting for 20.3% of revenue for the period.
In memory chip design, Longsys focuses on SLC NAND Flash and other small-capacity storage chips. Nine SLC NAND Flash chips have successfully taped out, and by the end of April this year, cumulative production of its self-designed SLC NAND chips had exceeded 200 million units.
In firmware, the company has developed HLC technology and the intelligent storage agent iSA, designed for AI inference on edge devices.
For packaging and testing, its Suzhou plant has SiP and MCP capabilities, including stacked packaging, and can package 16-layer stacked storage products. Its Zhongshan plant runs a dedicated data-center storage product line that integrates R&D and retesting, with DPPM below 50 across product lines. Its plants in Atibaia and Manaus, Brazil, can provide packaging, testing, SMT assembly and box-build services for a range of storage products.
As of April 30, 2026, Longsys had 1,262 R&D employees, representing 35% of its workforce, and held 645 authorized patents, including 229 invention patents, 182 software copyrights and 13 registered integrated circuit layout designs.
Most revenue comes from outside mainland China
Longsys said it has built a global footprint. Revenue from outside mainland China accounted for 77.1%, 71.1%, 66.8% and 69.9% of total revenue in 2023, 2024, 2025 and the first four months of 2026, respectively.
Its five largest customers accounted for 34.6%, 36.8%, 29.0% and 28.3% of revenue over those same periods, and all five were independent third parties.
On the supply side, the core raw materials for its storage products are memory wafers and controller chips. Purchases from its top five suppliers accounted for 48.6%, 50.0%, 52.0% and 63.3% of total purchases in 2023, 2024, 2025 and the first four months of 2026, respectively.
Twin siblings from Jiangxi hold 38.79% of voting rights
Longsys is led by twin siblings Cai Huabo and Cai Lijiang, both from Jiujiang, Jiangxi.
Cai Huabo, now 50, graduated from No. 3 Middle School of Jiujiang in 1996 and founded Longsys three years later. He also served as an independent director of Ingenic from 2015 to 2018.
The company’s controlling shareholders are founder, chairman and general manager Cai Huabo and senior vice president Cai Lijiang, who is Cai Huabo’s elder sister. Together they directly control 38.79% of the voting rights.
The board has nine directors: three executive directors, two non-executive directors and four independent non-executive directors. The prospectus also disclosed board compensation as of Dec. 31, 2025.
Prospectus points to AI-driven demand for memory
The prospectus said the global semiconductor memory market is entering a new growth cycle. Since the end of 2022, large models have become an important new source of memory demand. Since the third quarter of 2025 in particular, demand tied to AI applications and data-center infrastructure has pushed the market into a phase of rapid expansion, with demand for storage products exceeding available supply.
On the cloud side, AI model training and inference require intensive data reads and writes, driving demand from AI servers and data centers for high-capacity, high-bandwidth and high-reliability storage products. On the edge side, the rollout of AI smartphones, AI PCs, smart vehicles, AI wearables and embodied intelligent devices has increased local data generation, model execution and real-time interaction, creating new requirements for performance, power efficiency and form factor.
Longsys sells consumer products for smartphones, tablets, wearables and other consumer electronics. Its enterprise products serve enterprise servers and data centers, while its industrial-grade products target industrial automation equipment, industrial PCs, automotive use cases and a broader set of industrial applications.
This report was originally published by Xinzhidongxi, written by Cheng Qian and edited by Panken.