US Stock IPO Preview | Qingmin Digital Technology: Annual revenue of approximately $38 million, industry expansion still difficult to change the dilemma of survival in a tight space

In 2024, the auto insurance industry premium scale reached a historic high, surpassing 900 billion yuan for the first time, reaching 913.673 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.08%.

Recently, QMSK Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as: Qingmin Shuke), an auto insurance service provider from Qingdao, Shandong, publicly disclosed its prospectus with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), with the stock code QMSK, planning to go public on NASDAQ in the United States. It submitted its prospectus confidentially to the SEC on July 23, 2024.

Qingmin Shuke plans to issue 1.5 million shares at a price of $4 to $6 per share, raising $8 million. Based on the midpoint of the proposed range, Qingmin Shuke's market value will reach $83 million.

Revenue Growth Without Profit Increase in the First Half of Fiscal Year 2025

The company serves enterprise clients in China's insurance industry, primarily providing comprehensive business solutions for auto insurance third-party service providers and insurance companies. Since the establishment of its operating entity in China in 2013, the company has accumulated rich knowledge in the auto insurance industry, focusing on providing after-sales market services for auto insurance, including insurance risk assessment services and value-added services such as vehicle safety inspections and vehicle repair services. Additionally, it provides other scenario-based customized services, such as IT services and promotional services, based on specific circumstances. With strong technical capabilities, the company has independently developed the "Qingmin Service Platform" (QMSP), facilitating integration with enterprise client systems and improving service efficiency. At the same time, the company has established a wide service network through cooperation with external suppliers, covering 10,651 service locations across 30 provincial-level administrative regions in China. In the six months ending September 30, 2024, Qingmin Shuke provided services to a total of 57 enterprise clients.

According to the prospectus, during the reporting period, Qingmin Shuke's revenues for the past fiscal year 2023, fiscal year 2024 (with a fiscal year-end date of March 31 each year), and the first six months of fiscal year 2025 (ending September 30, 2024) were $14.2147 million, $38.1610 million, and $25.8140 million, respectively, representing year-on-year growth of 168.5% and 85.6%; the corresponding net profits were $75,550, $2.4421 million, and $632,000, with year-on-year growth of 313.5% and a decline of 19.1%.

In terms of business segments, revenue from after-sales market services for auto insurance is the main source of income. During the reporting period, the revenue from this business was $8.516 million, $34.638 million, and $23.080 million, accounting for approximately 59.9%, 90.8%, and 59.4% of total revenue, respectively. This indicates that the significant growth in after-sales services for auto insurance has driven the company's revenue increase.

According to Zhitong Finance APP, during the reporting period, the number of clients of Qingmin Shuke continued to increase, reaching 57 by the first half of fiscal year 2025, an increase of 41 clients year-on-year Among them, the number of customers for automotive insurance after-sales services is 44, and the total volume of automotive insurance after-sales market services is 647,000, a year-on-year increase of 125.5%; the volume of automotive insurance after-sales services is 298,000, a year-on-year increase of 107.7%.

Despite the significant growth in business scale, the company's gross profit margin has not kept pace. In the first half of the 2025 fiscal year, the company's gross profit margin was 7.3%, a year-on-year decrease of 1.7 percentage points. This also means that the profit margins of the projects the company serves are generally low. As a result, despite the gross profit amount increasing by 49.8% year-on-year, the gross profit margin is difficult to hide the downward trend.

It is noteworthy that, against the backdrop of gross profit growth not keeping up with revenue, the company's expense growth is even more intense. In the first half of the 2025 fiscal year, the company's total operating expenses were 1.137 million, a year-on-year increase of 251.6%. Among them, the growth rate of sales and marketing expenses was the strongest, with a year-on-year increase of 460.8%.

In short, behind Qingmin Digital's revenue growth without profit growth is the low gross profit margin of its service projects, leading to gross profit growth far below revenue growth, while its expense growth rate is far higher than revenue growth.

Significant Matthew Effect in the Industry, Struggling to Survive in the Cracks

The automotive insurance industry is rapidly moving towards a new era, characterized by a dramatic shift in market vitality, rapid technological advancement, and the emergence of autonomous vehicles. It is expected that the market size of China's automotive insurance market will increase to USD 145.5 billion by 2028, with a compound annual growth rate of 6.3%.

In this rapidly growing market, the company intends to expand its market share by accelerating marketing and sales efforts, enhancing customer value, incentivizing talent, and investing in internal technology.

Specifically, in the area of risk assessment services, the company has developed a risk assessment process using "large language models," which is a computational model known for its ability to achieve general language generation and other natural language processing tasks (such as classification). To accurately assess risk value, Qingmin Digital collaborates with after-sales service platform operators, who work with individual service providers such as dealers, automotive repair, and maintenance shops. These service providers conduct face-to-face inspections and professional assessments of vehicles at their service locations. Subsequently, they input specific information about the vehicles and drivers into the insurance company's system as required by the insurance company, which interfaces with QMSP. Then, QMSP uses the company's risk assessment process to calculate the risk value and create personalized risk assessment reports for the insurance company.

During the period, the company's risk assessment services received high praise from corporate clients and have become the most important source of revenue in the business. For the six months ended September 30, 2024, and September 30, 2023, 69.8% and 49.2% of Qingmin Digital's total revenue came from risk assessment services, respectively In the six months ending September 30, 2024, the number of clients purchasing risk assessment services increased from 4 in the six months ending September 30, 2023, to 22. Meanwhile, the number of risk assessment reports provided to insurance companies rose from 143,539 reports in the six months ending September 30, 2023, to 298,099 reports by September 30, 2024.

However, the trend of the strong getting stronger in the domestic auto insurance market is significant. Specifically, looking at the auto insurance premium income of individual property insurance companies, in 2024, a total of 10 property insurance companies had auto insurance premium income exceeding 10 billion yuan. Among them, the "big three" in property insurance—People's Insurance Company of China, Ping An Property & Casualty Insurance, and China Pacific Insurance—had auto insurance premium incomes exceeding 100 billion yuan, amounting to 297.394 billion yuan, 223.301 billion yuan, and 107.302 billion yuan, respectively. Following them are China Life Property & Casualty Insurance, China United Property Insurance, Sunshine Property Insurance, Dadi Property Insurance, Taiping Property Insurance, Huazhong Property Insurance, and Sheneng Property Insurance, with auto insurance premium incomes of 65.167 billion yuan, 29.323 billion yuan, 26.707 billion yuan, 25.851 billion yuan, 19.144 billion yuan, 11.451 billion yuan, and 10.405 billion yuan in 2024, respectively.

From the premium scale of the top 10 auto insurance companies, it is evident that the trend of the strong getting stronger and the Matthew effect in the auto insurance market further intensified in 2024. The premium scale of the "big three" in property insurance accounted for 69% of the overall market, while the total premiums of the top 10 auto insurance companies accounted for nearly 90% of the industry. The remaining 10% is left for the other 56 property insurance companies to compete for.

In terms of the growth rate of auto insurance premiums, influenced by factors such as new energy vehicle insurance, ride-hailing business, and technological empowerment, some small and medium-sized property insurance companies have broken through against the trend, showing impressive growth in auto insurance premiums. For example, ZhongAn Property Insurance and Taikang Online, both internet property insurance companies, as well as Guotai Property Insurance, which relies on its major shareholder Ant Group, have all demonstrated strong growth momentum. Another company, Samsung Property Insurance, backed by internet giant Tencent, also achieved a 13.35% growth rate in auto insurance premiums in 2024. Industry insiders believe that these phenomena reflect the gradual formation of commercial advantages of the internet model in the auto insurance business.

Through the auto insurance operating data of 2024, it is not difficult to feel that the concentration of the auto insurance market is increasing, and the survival space for small and medium-sized insurance companies is becoming increasingly narrow. Under the dominance of new and old forces, the survival path for Qingmin Digital Technology is indeed challenging