Yuan Guang Technology's adjusted net profit in 2025 is 40.69 million: Initial results of internationalization and Robobus deployment emerge

Ask AI · After accounting factors are removed, how does the outlook for profitability look behind MetaLight’s book loss?

Lei Di Network March 26, 2026

Real-time public transit information platform “Che Laile” is operated by its parent company MetaLight Inc. (MetaLight Technology, 2605.HK). The company has recently disclosed its annual results for the year ended December 31, 2025. This is the first annual performance report the company has delivered since listing on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in June 2025.

According to the financial statements, MetaLight’s revenue for 2025 was RMB 206.3 million, basically flat year over year; the company recorded a net loss of approximately RMB 127.6 million on its books. However, under an adjusted net profit basis that follows non-IFRS reporting—after excluding items such as changes in the fair value of preferred shares—its adjusted net profit was approximately RMB 40.69 million, marking a positive result for the fourth consecutive year.

Behind the book loss: an accounting factor that has already disappeared

MetaLight’s stated net loss figure may easily leave the impression of poor operations. But when you look into the income statement details, of the RMB 127.6 million loss, RMB 119.2 million came from the same line item—fair value losses on financial liabilities measured at fair value through profit or loss.

This line item corresponds to the company’s convertible redeemable preferred shares issued before going public. Simply put, these preferred shares are classified as financial liabilities for accounting purposes, and changes in their redemption price will be reflected as fair value fluctuations in the income statement. If the price rises, the books will record a “loss”—but this “loss” involves no cash outflow and has nothing to do with the company’s day-to-day operations.

After the company completed its listing in June 2025, these preferred shares have all automatically converted into ordinary shares in accordance with the terms. This line item that has been dragging down reported profits for many years will no longer appear starting in 2026.

From the reconciliation table, it can be seen that non-operating items affecting reported profit—besides changes in the fair value of preferred shares—also include: share-based payment expenses (about RMB 27.44 million), listing expenses (about RMB 17.50 million), and gains/losses related to equity investments. Among these, listing expenses are one-off costs that will not be repeated in later years; changes in the fair value of preferred shares have, as mentioned, been permanently eliminated.

After excluding the above items, with an adjusted net profit of approximately RMB 40.69 million, this represents a decline from RMB 52.42 million in 2024. The main reasons include an increase in compliance costs in the first year after listing and higher R&D personnel cost spending—R&D expenses increased from about RMB 42.51 million to about RMB 49.93 million during the year.

The core base: steady revenue, and gross margin continues to improve

MetaLight’s total revenue in 2025 was RMB 206.3 million, basically flat versus the prior year. By segment:

Of this, MetaLight’s mobile advertising services contributed approximately RMB 200.4 million, down slightly by 0.8% year over year; data technology services contributed approximately RMB 5.96 million, up 45.7%. The growth in the latter came from the company’s continued expansion of its public-transport analytics platform business and collaborations with more transportation agencies.

The chairman of MetaLight’s board of directors said: In the first three quarters of 2025, China’s internet advertising market’s year-over-year growth ranged between 4.1% and 6.8%. Advertisers’ budgets are generally becoming more cautious, and spending is accelerating toward leading platforms such as short-form video, content discovery (“chao cao”), and e-commerce live streaming. Competitive pressure on vertical media has further intensified. Management said directly, “This performance is lower than what we expected at the beginning of the year.”

MetaLight’s gross profit in 2025 was approximately RMB 159.9 million, and the gross margin improved from 76.4% in the prior year to 77.5%. The improvement was mainly due to a decline in cross-network advertising fees, reflecting optimization in traffic acquisition costs. With a gross margin close to 78%, MetaLight is at a relatively high level among mobile internet companies.

Growth on the user side is still continuing. The cumulative number of users on the Che Laile platform increased from about 298 million to about 334 million, while average monthly active users rose from about 29.08 million to about 30.31 million, up approximately 4.2% year over year. In the broader environment where the growth rate of monthly active users for the mobile internet is only around 2%, the platform’s users are supported by the “must-have” demand of public transit queries.

While revenue is flat and user growth remains steady, the product side is not standing still. The earnings announcement discloses that the company has applied a time-series prediction model based on new-generation deep learning technology to online services, and that the accuracy of arrival prediction has achieved a clear improvement. At the same time, the company is integrating natural language interaction into existing product scenarios, driving “Che Laile” to evolve from a query tool into an intelligent travel assistant—relevant functions are being advanced through the filing process in accordance with regulatory requirements.

In his remarks, MetaLight’s management discussed this direction against the industry backdrop of the rise of AI-native applications and the decline in usage time for tool-type applications. They believe that in the new software ecosystem for Agents, high-quality data and the analytical capabilities built around it have infrastructure value.

New direction: exploring diversification beyond a single advertising model

Compared with the financial figures, this earnings announcement may be worth reading more closely for management’s discussion of the business expansion direction. Several new leads have surfaced at the same time.

The first is internationalization. The company launched a real-time public transit query app for overseas markets called Busio, which went live on iOS and Android in June and August 2025, respectively. It already covers more than 10 cities and regions, including Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne, and Sydney. Management acknowledged in the announcement that this business is still in an early stage and has not generated material revenue. However, it pointed out that overseas markets lack specialized professional applications focused on the public transit vertical. It noted that the retention rate of new users in some cities has “shown positive signals.”

Second is autonomous-driving public transit. MetaLight positions itself as a technology services provider enabling public transit operators to complete the operational transformation to Robobus—its goal is not to make vehicles, but to build the operational optimization and decision-support systems behind the vehicles. Supporting this positioning are its network covering 488 cities, its cooperation with 312 transportation entities, and the time-series data foundation models the company has accumulated in public transit scenarios. After the reporting period, the company has reached a strategic investment and cooperation arrangement with Hangzhou Shuozhi Mengda; the latter has significant accumulation in public-transit data middleware and intelligent dispatching.

Third is the AI venture capital fund. After the reporting period, the company plans to contribute approximately RMB 40 million from its own funds, together with Chuangxiang Shidai Investment, Guangzhou Angel Mother Fund, and others, to establish a venture investment fund focusing on seed-stage and early-stage projects in the AI field. The fund’s total size is currently approximately RMB 101.1 million. The company will have the preferential right to follow-on investments in the projects it invests in. The fund’s general partner, Chuangxiang Shidai Investment, is an investment institution that focuses on early-stage deployment around “technology + industry.” It has already launched and established more than a dozen funds, investing in over 80 innovative companies across hard-tech sectors such as artificial intelligence, robotics, commercial space, and semiconductors. Among those, the share of investments in smart-tech-oriented companies exceeds 60%. As Guangzhou Angel Mother Fund participates as a government-guided fund, it also provides MetaLight with a new window for industrial cooperation in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

A common feature of the directions above is: they are all in the early stage and, in the short term, will not make a significant contribution to revenue. But each step is an attempt to broaden the sources of income beyond mobile advertising. For a company in which about 97% of revenue comes from a single business line, even initiating diversification exploration is worth paying attention to.

AI-native organization: not just getting employees to use AI tools

“AI-native” is a label frequently mentioned by technology companies right now, but most companies’ practices stop at helping employees use AI tools to improve individual productivity. MetaLight’s approach described in its earnings announcement is different—it is not “adding AI” to an existing organization, but redesigning how organizational roles and collaboration work around AI.

Specifically, the company has completed the split of the technology middle-office department, mixing business personnel with technical engineers into collaboration teams directly aligned with business objectives. It has also introduced AI agents to take on specific tasks in business processes such as research and development and testing, with human experts focusing on designing and optimizing the Agent collaboration workflows. In other words, AI here is not a supporting tool, but a formal participant in the workflow.

Even more noteworthy is the design of the validation path. The company chooses to deepen the AI-native model first in innovative business areas such as education. Each time a practice closed-loop is validated, it is migrated to the core business. For a team that, according to the earnings announcement, has only 139 people, this “edge validation, core migration” cadence has its practicality—meaning trial-and-error costs are controllable.

Changes in the financial structure after listing

The most direct changes brought by the listing are reflected on the balance sheet. With all preferred shares converted into ordinary shares, the previously classified current liability preferred shares of approximately RMB 465 million moved into equity. As a result, the company changed from a deficit in assets to net assets of approximately RMB 357 million, and the current ratio jumped from 0.3 to 8.5. By year-end, the company’s total assets were approximately RMB 400 million, up about 78% from approximately RMB 224 million in the prior year. Net proceeds from the global offering of about HKD 159.7 million, as stated in the prospectus, will be gradually invested in building technical capabilities, hiring AI talent, leasing GPU computing power, and marketing promotions, among other areas.

2026: core base and new directions

Management’s tone for 2026 is “to hold onto the core base while rolling out the new directions in a planned manner.” In the core advertising business, the plan is to optimize ad inventory pricing and ad targeting precision through AI algorithms, while expanding the collaboration network of programmatic advertising platforms. In terms of user growth, the company will continue to deepen efforts in cities tier-3 and below, and further integrate AI capabilities such as natural language interaction.

The challenges are also clear. Mobile advertising services account for about 97% of total revenue, making the revenue structure relatively concentrated. Advertising budgets continue to shift toward leading platforms. According to QuestMobile data, the top 15 media outlets captured 95.6% of ad spend in the first 15 media outlets in 2025, and the pressure on vertical platforms’ pricing and inventory monetization is increasing. The rapid rise of AI-native applications is diverting user time from tool-type applications. In addition, the company has clearly stated that it does not recommend paying an interim dividend for 2025’s year-end.

With the preferred share accounting factor fully eliminated, MetaLight’s 2026 performance will for the first time present an income statement not disturbed by large non-operating fluctuations. At that time, the market will be able to assess this company’s true level of profitability more directly—and judging from the trajectory of adjusted profits over the past four years, the answer may not be too bad.

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Lei Di Network was founded by media person Lei Jianping. If reprinted, the source must be stated.