New Stock Outlook | Gorilla: Revenue doubles in three years but still loses over 300 million, CIM software gross profit margin "cliff-like" drops to 15%

Recently, Shanghai Gorill Software Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Gorill") has once again submitted an application for listing on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with Guotai Haitong and CMBC CAPITAL acting as joint sponsors. This is the company's second time submitting an application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. It is understood that as one of the domestic enterprises that early laid out the semiconductor CIM (Computer Integrated Manufacturing) system, Gorill has benefited significantly in recent years from the rapid development of the domestic semiconductor industry, driving significant growth in its revenue scale. However, behind the fast-growing performance, the company has continued to experience significant losses for three and a half years. At the same time, as a software company, the increasingly climbing accounts receivable also constitute a risk factor that cannot be ignored in its push towards the capital market. It is worth noting that Gorill's latest round of Series D financing was completed in October 2023, with a post-investment valuation of 3.54 billion yuan, an increase of 368.87% from the valuation after the completion of the Series B financing in December 2019 (755 million yuan). In several rounds of financing, Gorill has introduced well-known institutions such as Guotai Major Special Fund, Guokai Manufacturing, Shenzhen Chenxin, and Shenzhen Investment Holding. Before the IPO, these experienced independent investors collectively held approximately 24.58% of Gorill's issued share capital. Revenue growth has not led to profit improvement Concerns about the core business's "hematopoietic" ability According to the prospectus, Gorill is one of the main providers of Intelligent Manufacturing Software Solutions (IMSS) in China's semiconductor industry sector, occupying approximately 11.7% of the total market share in 2024. The company focuses on the research and commercialization of IMSS tailored for the advanced manufacturing of the semiconductor industry. In recent years, the company has continuously optimized and enhanced IMSS with the development of artificial intelligence. With its research and professional knowledge in the semiconductor industry, the company has launched AI-empowered IMSS for various manufacturing scenarios in the semiconductor industry. The company's AI model continues to learn from production and operational data, achieving self-perception, self-learning, and decision support to help production lines increase capacity and quality, reduce waste costs. According to a Frost & Sullivan report, based on revenue generated, in 2024, the company ranked second in the Chinese semiconductor IMSS market and is the largest domestic provider of semiconductor IMSS. The company also became the first Chinese company to cover the entire value chain of the semiconductor industry with software solutions, providing end-to-end solutions from materials, processing, components, assembly, to downstream applications, covering all industries in the semiconductor sector. The prospectus shows that from 2023 to 2025, Gorill's revenue increased from 165 million yuan to 300 million yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 34.8%, indicating significant growth on the surface. However, looking at the profit side, the company has accumulated losses of over 330 million yuan in three years, with a net loss of 104 million yuan in 2025, showing a significant deviation from revenue growth. This situation of "increased revenue but not profit" reflects that the company's business expansion heavily relies on high investments and has not yet developed effective profit conversion capabilities. Although the gross profit margin has recovered from 3.4% in 2023 to 14.2% in 2025, the absolute value is still low. For a software company that emphasizes technology, a gross profit margin of 14.2% does not reflect the expected technology premium and exposes underlying issues such as high product or project delivery costs and inadequate pricing power. In 2025, the company's R&D expenses reached 66.25 million yuan, accounting for 22.1% of revenue; total sales and administrative expenses amounted to 91.40 million yuan, accounting for over 30% of revenue. The combination of these two expenses consumes more than 50% of revenue. High R&D investment should be a moat for software companies, but if it cannot be converted into gross profit space, it may become "ineffective investment". Current data indicates that the company is still in the stage of "burning money for market expansion," and its operational efficiency urgently needs improvement. In addition, although inventory impairment and contract provisions have narrowed in 2025, they have continued to erode profits over the past three years. Combined with the high accounts receivable issues commonly faced by the software industry, the risk of impairment still hangs over the company's head. If the efficiency of accounts receivable collection and inventory turnover cannot be improved, it may continue to drag down cash flow and profit performance in the future. According to the prospectus, the revenue from the top five customers of Gorill during the reporting period was 69.20 million yuan, 89.70 million yuan, 116 million yuan, and 42.50 million yuan, accounting for 62.4%, 54.2%, 46.7%, and 52.5% of total revenue during the respective periods. The company's dependence on large customers has led to a high level of accounts receivable. As of the end of each reporting period, Gorill's total trade receivables, bills receivable, and contractual assets reached 108 million yuan, 117 million yuan, 168 million yuan, and 183 million yuan respectively. Overall, Gorill is in a period of strategic gameplay between "expanding scale" and "profitability dilemma." The growth in revenue is being diluted by continued losses, low gross profit margins, and high expense ratios. Decrease in the proportion of core business Initial success in diversified layout From an observational standpoint, the revenue composition shows that the revenue generated from the CIM software solutions of IMSS was 137 million yuan, 196 million yuan, and 215 million yuan, accounting for 82.7%, 78.5%, and 71.6% of total revenue respectively, demonstrating a structural change in the shrinking proportion of the core business and a gradual diversification of revenue sources. IMSSCIM CIM202321.9%202423.1%202515.0%V 15.0%50% CIM4520322028.8% CIM Overall, this change reflects two trends: one is that the company is actively adjusting its business structure to reduce reliance on a single product and gradually expand to other platforms and maintenance services within the IMSS system; and the other is that the growth rate of non-CIM business is higher than the core business, indicating that product line extension has begun to show results. However, whether the current diversification has a sustainable competitive foundation still requires further observation. As the technological cornerstone of the company, the gross profit margin of CIM software has shown significant fluctuations: 21.9% in 2023, a slight increase to 23.1% in 2024, but a sharp drop to 15.0% in 2025, showing an inverted V-shaped trend of "rising first and then falling". This trend deserves high attention. In the industrial software field, the gross profit margin of core products usually reflects the level of technological barriers and productization capabilities. A gross profit margin of 15.0% is not only significantly lower than the industry's mature level (usually over 50%), but also exposes the deep challenges the company faces in terms of profit quality: On the one hand, the decline in gross profit margin indicates that the company may have taken on more low-margin customized projects or passively relinquished pricing power in market competition. This is contradictory to the scale profit logic of industrial software companies of "develop once, reuse many times". On the other hand, against the backdrop of continued growth in CIM business revenue, the gross profit amount decreased from 45.20 million yuan to 32.20 million yuan, a decrease of 28.8%, reflecting that the cost growth rate is significantly faster than the revenue growth rate, possibly related to factors such as increased project complexity and decreased delivery efficiency. In summary, Gorill is in a period of deep strategic gameplay between "expanding scale" and "profit quality". On the one hand, leveraging its first-mover advantage in the semiconductor CIM field, the company has seized the industry dividend of domestic substitution, continuously expanding its revenue scale, and its diversified layout is beginning to show initial success; on the other hand, the sharp decline in gross profit margin of core products, continuous large losses for three consecutive years, high accounts receivable, and other issues deeply reveal the dilemma of "increased revenue but not increased profit". As a software company striving for the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Gorill urgently needs to find a balance between project-based and product-based development to translate its high R&D investment into sustainable profit and cash flow performance.