(Yicai) Oct. 29 -- Shares of Unitree Robotics, the first humanoid robot maker to go public on a Chinese mainland exchange, stumbled after profit declined over 17 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, while spending on research and development more than tripled.

After slumping by as much as 7.7 percent in Shanghai earlier today, Unitree [SHA: 688836] closed down 4.8 percent at CNY662.39 (USD99.43) per share. The stock, which listed on the tech-heavy Star Market in August at an offering price of CNY150.80, peaked at CNY1,100 (USD165.11) on its debut and then slid to a low of CNY404.03 on Oct. 15.

Net profit was CNY112.7 million (USD16.9 million) in the three months ended Sept. 30, the Hangzhou-based company said in a financial statement released yesterday. Revenue climbed 70 percent to CNY665 million, driven by innovation, business expansion, and a broader product portfolio that better meets customer needs, it said.

R&D spending soared 250 percent to CNY127 million, equivalent to 19 percent of revenue, to support Unitree’s efforts in embodied artificial intelligence, particularly in foundation models and computing resources, an expanded R&D team, and new product development.

In the first three quarters, revenue jumped 56 percent from a year ago to CNY1.8 billion (USD272.7 million), while net profit soared 271 percent to CNY386.7 million. Net profit excluding non-recurring gains and losses shrank 19 percent to CNY349 million. R&D expenditure surged 191 percent to CNY263 million.

Unitree plans to use one-third of the CNY6.1 billion raised in its initial public offering to develop an AI model for intelligent robots, according to its listing prospectus. Founder Wang Xingxing has said AI model development is its main area of investment in terms of funding and personnel.

Unitree’s IPO prospectus warned investors that competition is intensifying. Domestic rival AgiBot shipped more humanoid robots than Unitree in the first half of the year, reports from International Data Corporation and Smart Analytics Global showed.

On Oct. 26, Unitree issued an announcement warning of unusual stock trading activity after the cumulative deviation in its share-price movements exceeded 30 percent over three consecutive trading days. As of that date, the firm’s trailing price-to-earnings ratio stood at 465.22 times, compared with an average 38.5 times for the general equipment manufacturing industry in the previous month, according to China Securities Index, a financial research firm and index provider.

In the announcement, Unitree stressed that the humanoid robotics industry remains in the early stages of commercialization, with much uncertainty around technological maturity, downstream demand, and supply-chain capabilities.

The company also noted that bringing physical AI from the laboratory into large-scale deployment in real-world applications still presents challenges, including perception accuracy, motion-control stability, data accumulation, and hardware-software integration.

If large-scale commercialization progresses more slowly than expected, earnings growth could be adversely affected, potentially exposing investors to the risk of a valuation correction, the company noted.

Editor: Futura Costaglione