INTERNATIONAL EDITION · 2023–2026 H1
China’s Listed Lighting Companies: A Three-Year Scorecard
Growth is no longer the question. Value creation is.
2023–2025
gross-margin change
revenue growth
gross margin
EXECUTIVE TAKEAWAY
China’s lighting industry has entered a value-defence phase
For more than a decade, Chinese lighting companies won through scale, speed and cost. Those capabilities remain formidable. What has changed is the market around them.
The LED replacement cycle has matured, China’s property and infrastructure demand has weakened, export markets have become more fragmented, and manufacturing capacity remains abundant. Volume growth therefore no longer guarantees revenue growth, and revenue growth no longer guarantees value creation.
This analysis reconstructs the operating performance of major listed lighting companies from 2023 through 2025, with H1 2026 used where comparable disclosure is available. It asks five questions familiar to institutional investors: Where did growth come from? Did gross margin hold? Did earnings convert into cash? Did capital earn an adequate return? And did “smart lighting” or IoT actually change the economics of the business?
China does not lack lighting competitiveness. It has not yet converted enough of that industrial strength into pricing power, cash flow and returns on capital.
01 · GLOBAL CONTEXT
Lighting has become a value-defence business
The structural challenge is global. LED adoption delivered dramatic energy savings and rapid product replacement. Its success also extended product life and reduced replacement frequency. In mature markets, lighting is no longer naturally a high-growth category.
Signify’s medium-term framework illustrates the shift: limited comparable sales growth, but stronger adjusted EBITA margin and free-cash-flow conversion. Acuity offers another reference point. Its Acuity Brands Lighting business saw revenue decline modestly from fiscal 2023 to 2025, while operating margin improved from 13.7% to 16.4%.
Margin, cash generation and capital discipline take priority over volume.
Portfolio mix, pricing and channel efficiency protect mature-market returns.
Industrial strength is not automatically pricing power.
China faces the same market maturity, but with a distinctive industrial structure: the world’s deepest and fastest lighting supply chain, alongside a large pool of overlapping manufacturing capacity. When demand slows, this strength can become a source of severe price pressure.
02 · METHOD
Listed does not automatically mean comparable
The universe is filtered twice: first by the economic substance of the business, then by whether segment disclosure is continuous enough to support comparison.
Luminaires, lamps, lighting electricals, LED drivers, dimming and controls, plus directly lighting-linked IoT devices.
LED packages, epitaxy, chips, raw materials and generic electronics without identifiable lighting use.
Mixed segments—such as MLS, Leedarson IoT and Goneo Group’s smart electrical and lighting business—are shown separately rather than forced into a pure-lighting ranking.
Important: consolidated net profit is never divided by one segment’s revenue and presented as a “lighting net margin” unless segment profit is explicitly disclosed.
03 · SECTOR SCORECARD
Growth and margin moved in different directions
| Core sample | 2023 revenue | 2025 revenue | Change | GM 2023 | GM 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| General lighting | RMB 30.68bn | RMB 27.63bn | −9.9% | 36.5% | 34.8% |
| Drivers & controls | RMB 4.67bn | RMB 4.65bn | Broadly flat | 30.3% | 22.9% |
| Professional lighting | RMB 2.25bn | RMB 2.13bn | −5.5% | 53.3% | 51.4% |
| Automotive lighting | RMB 12.02bn | RMB 17.56bn | +46.2% | 23.3% | 21.3% |
| Lighting engineering | RMB 1.19bn | RMB 0.92bn | −22.7% | 32.0% | 26.4% |
The central pattern is divergence. Automotive lighting delivered the strongest growth, but at a lower margin. Professional lighting retained the highest gross margin, but must still pass the cash-conversion test. Drivers and controls kept revenue broadly stable while losing 7.4 percentage points of margin—the clearest warning that stable sales can conceal deteriorating economics.
04 · GENERAL LIGHTING & EXPORT ODM
OPPLE defends scale; growth elsewhere often comes at a price
OPPLE
Revenue ~−10%Domestic retail and residential channels cushion the downturn, but have not yet restored counter-cyclical pricing power.
YANKON
Revenue −13.4%Scale and engineering remain strong; standardised products and OEM exposure limit cost pass-through.
PAK
Revenue below −20%Project exposure and fixed channel costs create the weakest operating leverage of the three established brands.
SNC
Revenue +4.8%Growth was preserved while gross margin fell from roughly 25% to 19%—more scale, lower value density.
If sales growth is the sole metric, SNC appears stronger than OPPLE. If the test is pricing power and value density, OPPLE’s business quality remains higher. For ODM manufacturers, the next decisive indicator is not whether revenue continues to grow, but whether margin stops falling.
05 · DRIVERS & CONTROLS
Control intelligence commands a premium. Standardised power does not.
The balanced drivers-and-controls sample generated roughly the same revenue in 2025 as in 2023, yet weighted gross margin fell from 30.3% to 22.9%. Price concessions preserved shipments while economic value eroded.
LTECH’s scale is modest, but its value density is high. Protocol capability, intelligent power supplies, dimming expertise and system integration make its products harder to replace than standard drivers. Inventronics, MOSO and similar suppliers can sustain volume through scale, but remain more exposed to material costs, customer concentration and annual price reductions.
The strategic dividing line is no longer whether a company sells “smart lighting.” It is whether the company owns protocols, system entry points and recurring customer relationships.
06 · PROFESSIONAL LIGHTING
High gross margin must still pass the cash test
Certification, reliability, specialised environments, direct service and long customer relationships clearly support premium economics. Ocean’s King’s margin is roughly 23 points above OPPLE’s H1 2026 lighting margin and almost 40 points above SNC’s FY2025 margin.
Yet gross margin is not the final answer. Professional-lighting companies can carry high sales and service costs, while controls specialists must continue funding R&D and protocol compatibility. Margin stability, sales-expense discipline, receivables and operating cash flow are the decisive tests.
07 · AUTOMOTIVE LIGHTING
The strongest growth, but not the safest margin
The Xingyu–Keboda balanced sample significantly outgrew every other lighting segment. Weighted gross margin nevertheless declined from 23.3% to 21.3%.
Xingyu Automotive Lighting
Programme development, OEM qualification and large-scale production create meaningful barriers. But project wins require front-loaded R&D and capacity, while automakers continue to demand annual price reductions.
KEBODA
Lighting-control products sit closer to automotive electronics and software. Technical stickiness is higher, but customer concentration, programme timing and cycle risk remain.
08 · LIGHTING ENGINEERING
The business model under the greatest pressure
2023–2025
change
HES Technology suffered severe revenue contraction and continuing losses; MINKAVE faced restructuring and going-concern issues; Luoman retained project capability but remained highly exposed to project timing and non-core capital allocation.
For engineering companies, reported revenue is a poor standalone indicator. The essential questions are whether revenue produces cash, whether contract assets are rising, whether receivables are ageing, and whether final settlement preserves the booked project margin.
09 · MLS / LEDVANCE
One group, two very different economic models
In 2025, LEDVANCE generated approximately RMB 9.25 billion of revenue at about 40% gross margin. The MLS mixed product line generated roughly RMB 7.63 billion at about 10.2%. The revenue pools are similar; their margins differ by almost 30 percentage points.
The contrast demonstrates the value of global brand, distribution and market access. It also shows why MLS cannot be evaluated through a single lighting number. H1 2026 cash recovery was meaningful, but still requires separation of working-capital effects, impairment comparisons, consolidation changes and non-recurring items.
10 · LEEDARSON
A lighting ODM core with adjacent IoT capabilities
Leedarson should not be presented primarily as a controls or software-platform company. Its economic foundation remains lighting ODM: scale manufacturing, engineering, cost management, delivery and global customer relationships.
Lighting plus IoT generated approximately RMB 6.04 billion in 2025 at a weighted gross margin near 26.3%. From 2023 to 2025, combined revenue was broadly flat while margin declined by about five points. “Having IoT products” is not the same as “capturing IoT economics.” The proof must come through margin, customer lock-in, recurring software or service income and capital returns.
11 · GONEO GROUP / BULL
Not a pure lighting company—but a valuable strategic benchmark
The segment also includes wall switches and sockets, circuit breakers, bathroom appliances, clothes-drying systems, smart locks and curtain motors. It cannot be counted as pure lighting revenue.
Its strategic relevance is different. Goneo Group, through the BULL brand, places lighting within a broader home-electrical entry point and monetises brand, distribution and consumer trust. Most manufacturers cannot copy this model directly, but they can learn from the logic: own more of the spatial or household relationship rather than selling an isolated luminaire.
12 · THE REAL SCORECARD
Five tests for value creation
- Is growth organic and economically valuable?
Separate unit growth, price, mix, acquisitions and accounting-scope effects. Growth matters only when incremental revenue improves margin and cash.
- Does gross margin demonstrate pricing power?
Rising revenue with falling gross margin often means that scale is being purchased through price concessions.
- Do earnings become cash?
Operating cash flow, free cash flow, receivables and inventory are often more revealing than reported net income.
- Does invested capital earn an adequate return?
New capacity and acquired goodwill should be tested against utilisation, incremental gross profit and returns above the cost of capital.
- Has “transformation” changed the business model?
IoT, AI and smart lighting are not outcomes. The evidence is higher willingness to pay, recurring revenue, customer lock-in and improved capital returns.
13 · H1 2026 & OUTLOOK
Selective repair, not a comprehensive turnaround
Several listed lighting companies reported better revenue or profit in H1 2026. Part of the improvement reflects low bases, consolidation changes, currency movements or lower one-off expenses. Some companies also disclosed less product-level revenue and cost information than in their annual reports, reducing comparability.
A genuine recovery requires three conditions to appear together:
What should Chinese lighting companies do next?
- Exit scale that does not earn its cost of capital.
- Move from product specifications to measurable spatial performance.
- Make controls and data a capability, not an accessory.
- Reframe globalisation around brands, channels and disciplined integration.
- Use cash flow to constrain acquisitions and capacity expansion.
- Improve product-line and segment disclosure.
CONCLUSION
Lighting will endure. The old growth logic will not.
Buildings, cities, vehicles, healthcare, agriculture, culture and intelligent spaces will continue to need better light. What is becoming obsolete is the assumption that LED replacement, capacity expansion and lower prices will automatically produce growth.
The next winners may not have the highest output. They will have a clearer value proposition, stronger pricing power, more reliable cash conversion and a credible ability to connect light with controls, space, health, energy and service.
China has already proved that it can make lighting cheaper, more efficient and more widely available. The next test is whether it can make light more valuable.
Sources & methodology
Company figures are drawn from public annual and interim reports and announcements. Segment and consolidated figures are kept separate. Undisclosed data are not filled with zeroes or unsupported estimates. Approximate figures reflect differences in company disclosure and reporting periods. This article is industry and operating analysis, not investment advice.
- MLS Co., Ltd., 2024 and 2025 annual reports and H1 2026 interim report.
- Leedarson IoT Technology Inc., annual and interim reports.
- GONEO GROUP CO., LTD., public segment disclosures.
- Acuity Inc., fiscal 2025 results and fiscal 2026 quarterly disclosures.
- Signify, 2025 results and 2026 Capital Markets Day materials.
- Guangya Lighting Research Institute, H1 2026 industry-chain review.
- Public filings of OPPLE, YANKON, PAK, SNC, LTECH, Ocean’s King, Xingyu, KEBODA, Inventronics, MOSO, HES Technology, MINKAVE and Luoman.
Postscript — 8 September 2026
I thank Simon Häger for his careful reading and specific questions about the figures and comparisons in this article. His comments highlighted several distinctions that deserve clearer treatment. The following clarifications qualify the relevant statements in the article.
Sample coverage
The professional-lighting discussion draws on selected listed companies. Ocean’s King provides a case study of a particular business model; its margins cannot represent the wider Chinese professional-lighting sector.
Similarly, the approximately 46% automotive-lighting revenue increase refers to the combined selected businesses of Xingyu and Keboda between 2023 and 2025. It should be read as growth within that two-company sample, rather than an estimate of total sector growth. The same distinction between sample results and market-wide performance applies to the other category aggregates.
Reporting periods and comparisons
H1 2026 and FY2025 margins cover different periods and may reflect seasonality, product mix and other changes. Their presentation together does not establish a comparable ranking. Any suggestion that these figures alone demonstrate one company’s superior performance, including the SNC–OPPLE comparison, should therefore be disregarded.
Acuity: the segment basis is consistent
The 13.7% figure for FY2023 and 16.4% for FY2025 both refer to reported ABL segment operating margins. They do not combine a consolidated margin with a segment margin, and neither is an adjusted operating margin. However, consistent reporting scope does not establish what caused the improvement; charges and other period-specific factors also require consideration.
Sources: Acuity FY2023 Form 10-K and Acuity FY2025 results.
LEDVANCE: the reporting scope matters
MLS’s 2025 annual report discloses revenue of RMB9.250 billion, cost of revenue of RMB5.552 billion and a gross margin of 39.98% for its LEDVANCE product category. This supports the rounded figure of approximately 40% used in the article.
The figure refers specifically to the category disclosed by MLS. It should not be interpreted as a replacement-lamp-only margin, a standalone LEDVANCE GmbH operating margin or a net profit margin. It also does not, by itself, establish the return achieved on the acquisition.
Source: MLS 2025 annual report, revenue and cost analysis by product.
Margins and analytical boundaries
OPPLE can have a relatively high gross margin while experiencing margin pressure. These statements are compatible, but gross-margin movements alone cannot establish changes in pricing power. Costs, product mix, exchange rates and accounting classifications may also affect the result. Likewise, falling revenue and gross margin alone do not prove that both sales volumes and selling prices declined.
The study seeks to exclude non-lighting activities wherever disclosures permit. Some mixed categories, including broader IoT and electrical-product businesses, cannot be fully separated. These figures should be treated as broader business references, not pure-lighting totals or directly comparable measures of business quality.
I take responsibility for these distinctions and for the conclusions drawn from the data. I welcome further scrutiny of the original disclosures and calculations, and will record any additional verified corrections in a dated note. My thanks again to Simon for helping make the analysis more precise.
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