The halo of 'AI high-flyer' fades as the stock price halves within the year; EasyPoint Global pushes for a dual 'A+H' listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange

Sing Tao trainee reporter Zheng Shuyi reporting from Shenzhen

Against the backdrop of a more than 30% year-on-year plunge in net profit in 2025 and its A-share price having fallen over 40% from its yearly high, EasyPoint Global (301171.SZ), an overseas digital marketing service provider, has filed with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange to push forward with a dual 'A+H' platform strategy, but its path to a Hong Kong IPO is being scrutinized under a microscope by the market.

According to publicly available information from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, EasyPoint Global officially submitted its application for a main board H-share listing on March 25, with CITIC Securities (Hong Kong) acting as the sole sponsor. In August 2022, EasyPoint Global was listed on the ChiNext Board of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. In December 2025, the board of directors of EasyPoint Global authorized management to initiate relevant preparatory work, marking the formal entry into the operational phase of the dual 'A+H' platform strategy.

However, the basic profile of the company outlined by the prospectus and annual report data from Yidian Tianxia is not optimistic: gross margin decreased by 10 percentage points over three years, procurement from the top five suppliers accounted for as high as 82.3%, and the advertising and marketing industry's investment logic has been impacted by regulation due to 'internally competitive' pressures, facing short-term disruptions.

▲ Screenshot from the Yidian Tianxia official website

The halo of 'AI bull stock' fades

According to the prospectus, Yidian Tianxia is a digital marketing service provider focused on assisting 'Chinese enterprises going global.' It has cumulatively helped clients achieve over 1.3 billion commercial conversions, covering scenarios such as app installations, user registrations, and product sales. Its long-term partners include well-known companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, and SHEIN. Based on total transaction volume in 2024, Yidian Tianxia ranks fourth among Chinese outbound digital marketing service providers with a market share of 5.0%; it ranks third among independent third-party mobile ad platforms from China in the global market.

However, in about three weeks since submitting the prospectus, Yidian Tianxia's performance in the A-share market has been relatively lackluster. As of the close on April 14, the company's stock price was at 47.96 yuan per share, up 5.41% for the day, with a total market value of approximately 22.632 billion yuan, a turnover rate of 15.79%, and a daily trading volume of 2.885 billion yuan.

Looking at a longer time frame, over the past month (from March 13 to April 13), Yidian Tianxia's stock price change ranged at -6.59%. Over the last 20 trading days, the closing price showed a rhythm of 'high pullback and increased volatility,' gradually weakening from around 48 yuan to near 45 yuan.

Yidian Tianxia’s stock price experienced an extreme rally at the start of 2026. From December 31, 2025, to January 14, 2026, in just nine trading days, the company's stock price soared from 36.74 yuan to 81.32 yuan, marking an increase of 121.34%. At that time, the AI application sector in the A-share market collectively surged, and Yidian Tianxia leveraged AI tools, intelligent agents, and engineering capabilities to shift marketing from 'experience-driven' to 'data + model-driven.' Therefore, Yidian Tianxia, along with Chinese Online and Tianlong Group, were dubbed 'New Yi Zhongtian' by the market and became a focal point for capital inflows.

However, as the AI concept hype quickly faded, Yidian Tianxia's stock price entered a sustained correction phase starting February 14. Calculated based on the closing price on April 14, the stock price had fallen by about 40% from its yearly high of 81.32 yuan, erasing over 10 billion yuan in market value, and the 'AI bull stock' aura had nearly dissipated.

The dilemma of 'increased revenue but no profit growth'

From a fundamental perspective, Yidian Tianxia's biggest advantage in this Hong Kong IPO is its rapid revenue growth. Data from the prospectus and annual reports show that between 2023 and 2025, the company's revenues were 2.143 billion yuan, 2.547 billion yuan, and 3.83 billion yuan, respectively, with a three-year compound annual growth rate of 33.7%. In 2025, year-over-year growth further surged to 50.4%.

However, the changes on the profit side cannot be ignored. In sharp contrast to the high growth in revenue is the continuous deterioration of the company's profitability. From 2023 to 2025, Epoint World’s net profits are 217 million yuan, 232 million yuan, and 158 million yuan respectively, with a 31.8% year-on-year decline in 2025. The drop in non-GAAP net profit was even more severe, falling to just 78.1723 million yuan in 2025, a sharp decrease of 63.97% year-on-year.

The three consecutive drops in gross margin are one of the core reasons for the contraction in profits.From 2023 to 2025, Epoint World’s gross margin fell year by year from 24.4% to 18.6%, then to 14.3%, with a cumulative decline of 10.1 percentage points over three years. The company explained that the decline in gross margin was mainly due to competitive marketing strategies, increased employee costs and share-based payment expenses, as well as rising media costs resulting from the expansion of media resources to optimize advertising algorithms.

Dual dependency on customers and suppliers

Epoint World, as a digital marketing intermediary service provider, sits between traffic buyers and advertisers. Its business model naturally exposes it to bidirectional dependence on upstream media and downstream clients within the industry chain.

In terms of customer concentration, during this period, the revenue share from Epoint World’s top five customers increased year by year, rising from 21.5% in 2023 to 29.9% in 2025, while the revenue share from the largest single customer increased from 5.2% to 12.4%. The company candidly stated in its prospectus that if major clients cut their advertising budgets, it would significantly and adversely affect operating performance.

The issue of supplier dependency is even more prominent. From 2023 to 2025, the procurement amount from Epoint World’s top five suppliers accounted for more than 79% of total purchases for three consecutive years, climbing further to 82.3% in 2025, with the largest supplier accounting for 30.7% of purchases. As a first-tier agent for leading media platforms like Google, Meta, and TikTok, the company has limited bargaining power over upstream traffic sources, and rising media costs directly erode gross margin space.

New regulations implemented, rectifying 'internally competitive' practices

During the critical window period of Epoint World’s Hong Kong IPO, changes in the external policy environment are also worth noting.

Starting April 10, 2026, the 'Rules on Pricing Behavior of Internet Platforms,' jointly issued and officially implemented by the National Development and Reform Commission, the State Administration for Market Regulation, and the Cyberspace Administration, explicitly prohibits selling below cost as a form of predatory pricing, bans 'big data-enabled price discrimination,' and forbids platforms from forcing or indirectly forcing merchants to lower prices to participate in promotions.

For Easepoint Technology, whose core business revolves around overseas digital marketing, the impact of the aforementioned policy signals cannot be ignored. The emphasis by platforms on 'fair competition, transparent pricing, and compliant subsidies' may introduce short-term uncertainties in ad placement rules, subsidy criteria, and traffic allocation mechanisms, which could in turn affect advertisers’ budget allocation pace and strategies. This also implies that the advertising and marketing sector Easepoint operates in is undergoing a profound reshaping of the policy environment.

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