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text｜han xiang

cambrian, the "first ai chip stock", recently disclosed its operating results for the first half of 2024, which can be described as "dismal".

data shows that cambrian's revenue in the first half of the year was 64.77 million yuan, down 43.42% year-on-year; the net loss attributable to the parent company was 530 million yuan. regarding the performance changes, cambrian said that in the first half of the year, it was mainly affected by the "entity list" and other supply chain aspects, resulting in a significant decline in revenue.

"digital intelligence research society" found that cambrian's annual revenue was 460 million yuan when it went public in 2020, and it would reach 710 million yuan by the end of 2023. now, cambrian has returned to the pre-liberation era overnight.

what's more fatal is that cambrian has not solved the problem of profitability so far. from 2017 to the first half of 2024, cambrian lost 381 million yuan, 41 million yuan, 1.179 billion yuan, 435 million yuan, 825 million yuan, 1.257 billion yuan, 848 million yuan and 530 million yuan respectively, with a cumulative loss of 5.496 billion yuan.

cambrian, which has suffered losses for seven consecutive years, attributed the loss in its 2024 interim report to large-scale research and development investment.according to the data, cambrian invested 450 million yuan in r&d in the first half of the year, but the salaries of r&d personnel exceeded 230 million yuan, and the average salary per person exceeded 311,800 yuan.

however, according to the "digital intelligence research society", since cambrian was included in the "entity list", cambrian has stopped many r&d projects and the number of r&d personnel has been reduced. at the end of 2022, cambrian still had 1,205 r&d personnel. by the mid-year report of 2023 and 2024, the number was reduced to 980 and 727 respectively.

however, despite such a "dismal" performance, cambrian is extremely popular among investors in the secondary market, and its current market value has exceeded 105 billion yuan. if calculated based on the closing price of 252.14 yuan per share on september 2, cambrian's increase since 2024 is close to 90%.

as of the first half of the year, cambrian had a total of 27,683 shareholders, all of whom enjoyed the fun and tangible benefits of investing in cambrian.

is 7 consecutive years of losses worth hundreds of billions?

as the "first domestic computing chip stock", cambrian is questioned and praised at the same time. the questioners believe that cambrian is not worth a market value of 100 billion yuan and has a huge bubble. the praisers believe that there is no domestic computing chip company that can match cambrian. although cambrian is still relatively weak now, there is huge room for imagination.

every man has his own reason, and every woman has her own reason.

an industry insider told "shuzhi research society" that the only listed company that can compete with nvidia in the computing power field is cambrian. huawei is not listed, so it is impossible to know the specific situation.

for a company like cambrian, financials are not representative at all. we only need to pay attention to its cash flow, how long it can last, whether it needs financing, etc. currently, every technology company doing ai is losing money, so simply comparing revenue and net profit does not seem to make much sense.

"digital intelligence research society" believes that as the leading domestic ai chip company, cambrian is likely to benefit from both the development of the ai ​​industry and the development of computing power in the future. therefore, there is such a high valuation premium now. in the short term, cambrian's revenue may remain the same, and the profit problem cannot be solved immediately. we can only look to the future.

the original shareholders have long since fled.

at the beginning of 2023, chatgpt on the other side of the ocean exploded around the world. domestic concept stocks such as cambrian and other listed companies saw their share prices soar in the first half of 2023. but just as the share prices were rising, a large number of original shareholders sold all their stocks and cashed out.

"digital intelligence research society" checked cambrian's prospectus and found that since cambrian was established in march 2016, suzhou industrial park paleozoic venture capital fund (hereinafter referred to as "paleozoic venture capital") has participated in three investments, with a total investment of 57.8906 million yuan.

guotou (shanghai) science and technology achievement transformation venture capital fund enterprise (limited partnership) also participated in three investments, with a total investment of 776 million yuan.

suzhou industrial park zhike shengxun participated in one investment, with an investment amount of 187 million yuan. nanjing zhaoyin and hubei zhaoyin each participated in one investment, with investment amounts of 800 million yuan and 400 million yuan respectively. ningbo hangao investment partnership (limited partnership) participated in two investments, with a total investment of 600 million yuan. in other words, these six major shareholders participated in the early investment in cambrian for a total of 2.82 billion yuan.

after cambricon went public on july 20, 2020, the original shareholders all reduced their holdings on a small scale. by 2021, zhike shengxun had already sold all its shares. by 2023, cambricon's stock price soared due to the popularity of ai big models, and the original shareholders took this opportunity to cash out. overall, the six original shareholders cashed out nearly 6.8 billion yuan through equity transfers and post-ipo reductions, and the cumulative profit after deducting the initial investment was close to 4 billion yuan.

the negative impact of the original shareholders' large-scale share reduction and escape affected cambrian's subsequent performance in the capital market.from september 2023 to early 2024, cambrian has been in a downward trend, with its stock price falling below the 100 yuan mark. however, as a chip design company, cambrian is different from thousands of its peers. it directly targets international giants such as nvidia and amd. therefore, taking advantage of nvidia's soaring stock price and explosive performance, cambrian ushered in another wave of soaring.

since entering 2024, cambrian's stock price has risen by nearly 90%. based on the 27,683 shareholders at the end of the first half of the year, these investors have won a lot.

as of the close of september 2, 2024, cambrian’s market value exceeded 105 billion yuan.