Onyx Refiles for IPO: 200 Million Yuan in Dividends Paid Over Three Years, Directly Facing Cash Flow Test
Three years after Kindle withdrew from the Chinese market, the "Chinese version of Kindle" has arrived at the door of the capital market.
On September 23, 2026, Onyx Information submitted its listing application to the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for the second time. In January this year, it submitted its first IPO application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, which expired in July as the listing process was not completed within six months.
The difficulty for Onyx Information to push open the door of the capital market does not lie in poor performance. From 2023 to 2025, Onyx Information's revenue reached 804 million yuan, 1.018 billion yuan and 1.128 billion yuan respectively; its net profit was 124 million yuan, 121 million yuan and 131 million yuan respectively. Not only has the revenue climbed steadily, but the company has also maintained continuous profitability.
The capital market's concern is that e-ink screen devices have long been limited to a niche market, and under the squeeze of devices such as mobile phones and tablets, the market space has shown signs of narrowing. If a more robust growth curve cannot be depicted, even if it successfully lands on the capital market, Onyx Information may find it difficult to win the trust of investors.
The e-paper screen market shrinks, Onyx's core hardware revenue declines
Although e-ink screens have been born for nearly 20 years and have not yet become a mass product comparable to smartphones, the market has remained relatively stable because it meets the rigid needs of some users.
However, in recent years, with the weakening of the overall consumer electronics market and the maturity of paper-like LCD products, the e-ink screen market has begun to decline. Data disclosed by Luotu Technology shows that in the first half of 2026, the total channel sales volume of China's e-paper tablet market was 646,000 units, a year-on-year decrease of 22.1%. It is estimated that the total channel sales volume this year will be about 1.55 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 12.8%.
Source: Luotu Technology
Among them, the online total channel sales volume of office notebooks and learning notebooks was 126,000 units and 30,000 units respectively, down 30.5% and 84.6% year-on-year respectively, which greatly dragged down the overall market; the online total channel sales volume of e-readers was 380,000 units, up 22.3% year-on-year.
Combined with the market data, it is not difficult to find that in China's current e-paper tablet market, office notebooks and learning notebooks are under pressure, while e-readers maintain growth, showing obvious category differentiation.
The above changes in market trends have brought a huge impact to Onyx Information. In order to obtain higher premiums, in recent years, Onyx Information's business focus has shifted to productivity tablets, and the revenue proportion of e-readers has been declining all the way.
Source: Onyx Information's prospectus
The prospectus shows that in 2025 and the first half of 2026, the revenue proportion of Onyx Information's productivity tablet business was 61.3% and 66.9% respectively, while the revenue proportion of the high-speed e-reader business dropped from 33.8% to 18.2%.
Source: Onyx Information's prospectus
Against the background of the shrinking market size of office notebooks and learning notebooks, although the sales volume of Onyx Information's productivity tablets has climbed steadily, it has paid the price of declining unit price. In the first half of 2026, the sales volume of Onyx Information's productivity tablets was 205,300 units, up 69.28% year-on-year; the average selling price was 1,869 yuan, down 22.06% year-on-year.
On the other hand, contrary to the growth of online sales of e-readers in China, Onyx Information's high-speed e-reader business has seen both volume and price decline. In the first half of 2026, the sales volume of Onyx Information's high-speed e-readers was 116,600 units, down 42.76% year-on-year; the average selling price was 895 yuan, down 17.66% year-on-year.
If only the performance of productivity tablets and high-speed e-readers is counted, in the first half of 2026, Onyx Information's revenue from core hardware products was 488 million yuan, a decrease of 23.982 million yuan compared with 512 million yuan in the same period of the previous year, down 4.7% year-on-year.
The reason why Onyx Information's revenue achieved a positive growth of 7.4% in the first half of 2026 is mainly due to the 55.745 million yuan revenue from reselling third-party manufactured chips, accounting for 9.7% of the total revenue in the current period. As the resale of raw materials business is not sustainable, Onyx Information will face the challenge of shrinking performance in the future.
High sales expenses, rising inventory squeezing cash flow
In addition to the problem of declining performance of core hardware products, Onyx Information's operating cash flow is also in a state of continuous blood loss.
Source: Onyx Information's prospectus
Since e-ink screens are relatively niche, Onyx Information has invested massive resources in the market to persuade consumers to make purchases. The prospectus shows that from 2023 to 2025 and the first half of 2026, Onyx Information's sales and distribution expenses were 73.174 million yuan, 144 million yuan, 157 million yuan and 82.91 million yuan respectively, and the expense ratio rose from 9.1% to 14.5%.
Among them, advertising and publicity expenses are the main expenditure items, and their proportion in sales and distribution expenses increased from 23.7% to 44.8%. The average daily advertising expense in the first half of 2026 was 205,300 yuan.
However, as mentioned above, with the shrinkage of China's e-paper tablet market, Onyx Information's huge investment in marketing can no longer efficiently obtain core business growth. As the gap between expense input and revenue growth is widening, Onyx Information's net profit in the first half of 2026 decreased by 23.96% year-on-year.
At the same time, Onyx Information's stocking scale has expanded significantly. The prospectus shows that from 2023 to the first half of 2026, Onyx Information's inventory increased from 242 million yuan to 749 million yuan; the turnover days extended from 153 days to 313 days.
In response to the question of why inventory has increased, Onyx Information explained that "because we expect future sales growth and build a strategic reserve of key components to mitigate the impact of price fluctuations and the risks associated with long lead times, including risks arising from global trade frictions and potential supply chain uncertainties."
In the era of rising memory prices, hoarding inventory in advance does help to improve Onyx Information's stress resistance, but if the goods cannot be shipped smoothly, it may also bring huge impairment risks to the company.
Source: Onyx Information's prospectus
In fact, as sales and stocking continue to occupy funds and operating returns have not improved simultaneously, Onyx Information's capital turnover pressure has begun to increase. In 2025 and the first half of 2026, the net cash flow generated by Onyx Information's operating activities was -70.987 million yuan and -199 million yuan respectively.
As of the end of June 2026, Onyx Information's cash and cash equivalents stood at 118 million yuan, while the interest-bearing bank loans due within one year amounted to 329 million yuan, with a book difference of 211 million yuan. Coupled with the net operating cash outflow of 199 million yuan in the first half of the year, the company's dependence on subsequent payment collection and financing has increased.
However, it is quite abnormal that although the company is facing a funding gap, Onyx Information has made large-scale dividends for consecutive years. From 2023 to 2025, Onyx Information declared dividends of 10 million yuan, 90 million yuan and 100 million yuan respectively, with a total declared dividend of 200 million yuan, accounting for 53.2% of the total net profit in the same period. Against the background of pressure on operating cash flow, how to balance the dividend arrangement and the capital needs of the business is worthy of attention.
R&D expense ratio is only 6%, AI is difficult to become the second growth curve
In view of the limited and shrinking market space of China's e-paper tablets, Onyx Information is committed to opening up growth space through software services.
Source: Onyx
The prospectus shows that as of mid-2026, the monthly active users of BOOX OS carried on Onyx Information's hardware products exceeded 1.2 million; the cumulative downloads of the note-taking software StarNote were about 2 million times. Onyx Information is deploying AI functions around BOOX OS and StarNote, trying to convert the existing user base into continuous paid revenue.
In fact, combined with industry survey data, the software services targeted by Onyx Information do have broad development space. Data disclosed by Frost & Sullivan shows that from 2025 to 2030, the penetration rate of knowledge-focused productivity tools will increase from 51.8% to 68.0%.
Source: Onyx Information's prospectus
With the growing demand for AI and cloud services, the market for knowledge-focused productivity tools that are gradually embedded with AI functions and cloud services is expected to expand significantly. It is estimated that from 2026 to 2030, the relevant market size will increase from 444 billion yuan to 804 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 16.0%.
The problem is that Onyx Information's R&D investment is extremely limited. The prospectus shows that from 2023 to 2025 and the first half of 2026, Onyx Information's R&D expenditures were 37.737 million yuan, 55.729 million yuan, 64.441 million yuan and 33.621 million yuan respectively, with the expense ratios of 4.7%, 5.5%, 5.7% and 5.9% respectively, which is in sharp contrast to the sales and distribution expenses.
In comparison, iFlytek, which is also a player in the e-ink screen industry and also bets on AI technology, has significantly greater R&D investment. In the first half of 2026, iFlytek's R&D expenses were 2.535 billion yuan, up 22.59% year-on-year, and the R&D expense ratio was 21.81%, both of which are higher than Onyx Information in terms of absolute value and expense ratio.
AI functions are becoming a new variable in the competition of e-paper products, but there is still a considerable distance between adding functions and building a paid business. For Onyx Information, the test of R&D investment is not only reflected in the budget scale, but also in whether it can create an experience worthy of users' continuous payment around core scenarios such as reading, annotation and note-taking.
If AI can only help promote hardware sales, its return is still subject to equipment sales. Only by forming stable paid demand can software services gradually undertake new growth tasks.
In the past, Onyx Information seized a clear market gap and provided users who were willing to get rid of the interference of mobile phones and tablets with more focused reading and writing tools. Now, China's e-paper tablet market is shrinking and core hardware revenue is declining, and it needs to find a more convincing basis for the next stage of growth.
AI provides Onyx Information with the possibility of shifting from equipment sales to continuous services, which also means continuous investment in R&D, cloud services and product maintenance. Whether users who buy a device emphasizing focus are willing to pay repeatedly for the AI services in it will determine how far this road can go.
Therefore, what is more worthy of attention behind the second submission of the listing application is whether Onyx Information can change the conditions on which growth depends, reduce the dependence of hardware sales on marketing and stocking, and make software revenue gradually cover the cost of continuous services. These changes are the key to supporting it to strive for greater valuation space beyond the niche market.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Farsight Reef", author: Farsight Reef Team, released by 36Kr with authorization.