On Oct 15, Zhuhai CosMX Battery became the first enterprise in the city to be listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's STAR Market, opening the door for perhaps 600 other Zhuhai companies to follow suit.

The STAR market is China's Nasdaq-style sci-tech innovation board. CosMX's share price surged 133 percent from debut to 33.6 yuan ($5.22) per share. Funds raised from the IPO are to be used to expand production capacity of lithium batteries, build a lithium battery cell packaging production line in Chongqing, and to supplement working capital.

The electronic information industrial leader echoes STAR Market's mission to support enterprises from high-tech and strategic emerging industries to achieve breakthroughs in core technologies and serve national strategies. It met listing requirements of a market value of 1 billion yuan ($155 million) and had positive net profits over the past two years and total net profits of 50 million yuan ($7.8 million) or more, or a positive net profit and operating revenue of at least 100 million yuan ($16 million). It ranked 2nd worldwide in sales of lithium-ion batteries for laptops and tablet computers and 5th in smartphones in 2020.

STAR Market-listing ceremony [Photo by She Yingwei / Zhuhai Daily]

CosMX was established in Doumen District in 2007. It became a unicorn in the Zhuhai High-Growth Innovation (Unicorn) Enterprise Cultivation Repository in January when it also began expanding by building a new soft-pack polymer intelligent manufacturing plant in Doumen costing 2 billion yuan ($309 million).

Operating revenue increased by 88.63 percent to 5.09 billion yuan ($791 million) in the first half of this year. Net profits attributable to the parent company rose by 126.6 percent to 576 million yuan ($90 million).

Following its footsteps, Actions Technology and Comleader Information have passed review of STAR Market's Listing Committee and are pending registration. Founded in the National Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone (Tangjiawan) in 2014, Actions engages in the R&D, design, and sales of System-on-Chip for medium and high-end intelligent audios. Comleader was founded in Nanping Sci-tech Industrial Park in 1999 to research, produce, and market communication network equipment, internet and information security products, and Internet of Things products for environmental protection.

In addition, Tangjiawan-based Naruida, Yunzhou-Tech, and Coligen, and ACCESS Semiconductor in Doumen are also preparing for listings on the sci-tech innovation board. Zhuhai has 2,101 high-tech enterprises, many of them high-quality sci-tech innovation firms. The city has screened out some 600 enterprises in the STAR Market listing reserve repository for key cultivation.