1. Why Jingce Electronics Is Worth Studying

At the upstream of both the display and semiconductor supply chains lies a category of equipment outsiders often overlook, yet it is the last gate of yield: inspection and metrology equipment. It does not grow materials or etch patterns; it answers a plain but crucial question — this wafer, this panel, was it made right? The precision and speed of inspection equipment directly determine how fast a downstream line can run and how low its scrap rate can be pushed.

Jingce Electronics (Shenzhen Stock Exchange ChiNext, ticker 300567) is a Chinese manufacturer that grew up in precisely this link. Founded in 2006, the company started from flat-panel display inspection equipment and gradually extended its capabilities into semiconductor metrology and inspection and new-energy lithium-battery inspection, forming a three-line structure of "display + semiconductor + new energy." For an equipment company, standing simultaneously in three supply chains of differing rhythms is itself evidence that its underlying technology is transferable. This is why Tianxia Gongchang Industry Research Institute chose Jingce Electronics as a sample of the inspection-equipment track.

This report does not back any investment judgment. It does one thing only: to lay out, from public information, Jingce Electronics' business map, competitive position and growth logic, and to honestly note its present profit pressure and risks.

2. Company Overview: A Technology Backbone of "Optics, Mechanics, Electronics, Computing, Software"

Jingce Electronics' technological foundation is the integration of five capabilities — optics, mechanics, electrical engineering, algorithms and software — into a single inspection system. This combination did not appear out of nowhere; it is the result of long refinement in display inspection. Panel manufacturing happens to demand optical imaging, precision motion control, electrical-performance testing and defect-algorithm discrimination all at once, and once that capability matures, migrating it to semiconductors and new energy has a basis.

The company's expansion path is clearly traceable. Around 2018 Jingce Electronics began optimizing its full-chain layout, successively establishing subsidiaries such as Shanghai Jingce, Wuhan Jinghong and Wuhan Jingneng, formally entering semiconductor inspection and new-energy tracks. The pace of new entities then quickened: in 2021 it founded Shanghai Jingjiwei (semiconductor metrology equipment) and Changzhou Jingce (new-energy inspection); in 2023 it added Shenzhen Jingce (augmented- and virtual-reality display businesses), Shenzhen Jingjiwei (advancing products toward more advanced process nodes) and Beijing Jingcai (semiconductor core components). From inspection equipment itself to upstream core components, the company is extending vertically along the chain.

This structure of clearly divided subsidiaries gives each business line dedicated technology and customer accumulation, rather than piling every product into one entity. The upside is specialized depth; the cost is a wider management radius and higher coordination overhead.

3. Display Inspection: The Bedrock of Leadership

Display inspection is Jingce Electronics' foundation and currently its largest revenue contributor.

Panel inspection runs through the three major manufacturing stages: the front-end Array process, the mid-stage Cell process and the back-end module assembly. The three stages demand different inspection principles — the front end leans optical, the back end leans electrical. For a long time domestic firms achieved local supply in mid- and back-stage Cell and module inspection, while the front-end Array-process inspection equipment, with its higher technical threshold, was long held by overseas players.

Jingce Electronics' value lies precisely in being one of the few domestic firms able to supply inspection systems across all three stages, and in being first to achieve import substitution in the Array process. This breakthrough is not an isolated event. According to display-industry research firms, the localization rate of domestic Array-process inspection equipment rose from nearly 10% in 2020 to close to 50% by 2024, with Jingce Electronics a representative force in this progress.

Underpinning this business is a solid customer list. The company's flat-panel display inspection clients already cover major domestic and overseas panel and module makers, including domestic leaders such as BOE, CSOT, Tianma and HKC and Visionox, as well as overseas makers with production capacity in mainland China. In the inspection-equipment industry, getting onto a top customer's supplier list is itself proof that technology and service have been validated.

It is worth noting that the display industry is itself cyclical. When panel makers cut capital expenditure, demand for inspection equipment comes under pressure. Jingce Electronics' recent response has been to seek growth from new displays: positioning early in Mini/Micro-LED and silicon-based OLED technologies, and reinforcing its product matrix for large-size and new-display fields through fundraising projects. The manufacturing processes of these new technologies are more complex than conventional LCD and yield is harder to improve, which in turn opens new demand space for inspection equipment.

4. Semiconductor Metrology and Inspection: The Hard Bone of Import Substitution

If display inspection is Jingce Electronics' root, semiconductor metrology and inspection is its most imaginative extension — and the hardest bone to gnaw in import substitution.

Inspection and metrology equipment runs through the entire chip-manufacturing process and is key to securing yield. Inspection finds defects on the wafer surface or in the circuitry; metrology precisely quantifies physical parameters such as film thickness, critical dimensions and overlay accuracy. As processes grow more advanced and steps multiply, the importance of this link only rises. In the global distribution of semiconductor-equipment value, process control and inspection/metrology hold a considerable share, a major category second only to lithography and thin-film deposition.

But this market is highly concentrated. Global metrology and inspection equipment has long been dominated by U.S. and Japanese firms, with industry leader KLA standing alone — its global share in this field climbing from around 50% in 2010 to over 60% by around 2023; Applied Materials and Hitachi follow. Overseas giants, with decades of process-control experience and software-analysis capability, have built deep moats, and the domestic market has likewise long been led by them. This means domestic firms face not a blank market but an incumbent one cultivated for years by the giants.

Jingce Electronics' progress on this hard bone is concentrated in two subsidiaries. Shanghai Jingce focuses on semiconductor front-end metrology and inspection, mastering core technologies such as spectroscopic scatterometry, optical imaging and electron-beam imaging, with products covering film-thickness metrology, optical critical-dimension metrology, electron-beam defect inspection, wafer-stress measurement and bright-field optical defect inspection. Wuhan Jinghong focuses on back-end automatic test equipment, building three product series — burn-in test, wafer probing and final test — around memory chips. The company's semiconductor customers already span mainstream domestic fabs including SMIC, Hua Hong Group, YMTC, CXMT and CanSemi, and some front-end metrology equipment has entered top customers' production lines.

Two long-term forces drive this business. First, mainland China has become the world's largest semiconductor-equipment market, with wafer lines continuously expanding. Second, the overall localization rate of semiconductor equipment remains low, and metrology/inspection in particular is especially low, leaving ample substitution space. Jingce Electronics' semiconductor backlog has grown rapidly in recent years; public information shows its semiconductor backlog approached RMB 1.5 billion in 2023, accounting for close to half of total orders — a clear ramp.

Still, this progress must be viewed objectively. Import substitution in metrology and inspection remains at an early stage; high-end equipment for advanced nodes has long validation cycles and high customer-introduction thresholds, and the technology gap with overseas leaders cannot be closed in the short term. Jingce Electronics' opportunity is to first make mature-node substitution solid, then penetrate step by step toward more advanced nodes.

5. New-Energy Inspection: Differentiated Positioning in the Mid- and Back-Stages

New energy is the youngest of Jingce Electronics' three lines, and the one most tightly bound to downstream conditions.

Lithium-battery production divides into front, mid and back stages. The company has not spread across the full line but focuses on the higher-value mid and back stages, concentrating on lithium-battery formation-and-grading systems, integrated cutting-stacking machines and battery-management-system testing equipment. The mid and back stages account for a relatively high share of lithium-battery equipment value and are the key nodes of line integration and intelligence; this focus reflects an inspection-equipment company's clear sense of its own capability boundary — applying the strength of inspection where it works best.

On customers, Jingce Electronics has established deep strategic cooperation with leading power-battery maker CALB, positioned as a preferred partner for its lithium-battery equipment, and has expanded mid- and back-stage equipment capacity through fundraising projects. The growth of this line depends largely on the capacity-expansion pace of downstream power and storage batteries. The long-term rise of EV and storage demand is the underlying support; but intensified competition and price pressure in the lithium-battery equipment industry over the past two years is a reality that cannot be avoided.

6. Financials and Growth: Profit Ceded Under Heavy R&D Investment

The key to understanding Jingce Electronics' financials is to grasp one tension: revenue is growing steadily while profit fluctuates.

On revenue, the company has maintained growth over the past several years, with scale moving from just over RMB 1 billion toward the RMB 2-billion-plus magnitude, driven in turns by its display, semiconductor and new-energy businesses. But 2023 was a watershed. Hit by the bottom of the display cycle, a sharp rise in R&D investment, and equity incentives and depreciation/amortization, the company's revenue that year was about RMB 2.4 billion, while net profit attributable to the parent fell markedly to about RMB 150 million, down more than 30% year on year. The profit pressure was less a deterioration of operations than an active concession.

Where the concession went is clear from R&D spending. The company's R&D expense has climbed continuously, reaching about RMB 660 million in 2023, with an R&D-expense ratio above 25% — far higher than typical manufacturers. By the end of 2023, the company and its subsidiaries held over 2,000 granted patents, with a notable share of invention patents. For an equipment company in the thick of import-substitution attack, this intensity of investment is a necessary admission ticket; there is no shortcut to metrology and inspection equipment for advanced nodes — it can only be pounded out through sustained R&D.

R&D investment and product-mix optimization happen in step. Display inspection remains the revenue mainstay, but the shares of semiconductor inspection and new-energy equipment are rising fast. The significance of this shift is that the company is moving from an equipment maker tied to a single cycle (display panels) toward a platform-type inspection enterprise spanning multiple industrial cycles, and its cross-cycle resilience should strengthen.

For upstream suppliers serving links such as panel inspection and semiconductor metrology, to reach equipment-making factory customers in this field at scale, you can use Tianxia Gongchang to filter precisely by industry the factory directory and decision-maker contacts of the electronic-measurement-instrument manufacturing track, turning upstream sales' customer development from door-to-door inquiry into following a map.

7. Risks and the Institute's Judgment

Pulling the threads together, Jingce Electronics presents the profile of a typical domestic high-end equipment company: a clear technological backbone, a solid customer structure, and a three-line layout that hedges a single cycle — yet still on a climb of trading profit for technology and time for share.

Its risks are equally concrete. The display business is governed by the panel capital-expenditure cycle and has little short-term elasticity; semiconductor metrology/inspection, while the biggest highlight, must confront the deep barriers of global leaders like KLA, with advanced-node introduction requiring lengthy validation; new-energy equipment rises and falls with lithium-battery expansion, and the industry's price war is not over. Heavy R&D, while opening the future, also continually suppresses near-term profit release; when profitability returns to an upward channel depends on whether the ramp of the semiconductor business can outrun the growth of R&D and expenses.

Tianxia Gongchang Industry Research Institute's judgment is this: Jingce Electronics' story is, in essence, not any single year's earnings but whether import substitution in the metrology-and-inspection link can hold. It has proven this once in display inspection — moving from mid- and back-stage to Array-process substitution; semiconductor metrology and inspection is the harder version of the same proposition, similar rules, stronger opponents. Whether the company can reuse the path it ran through in display — making mature nodes solid, then penetrating step by step toward advanced nodes — is the single most valuable line for observing this company. The moat of inspection equipment has never been the spec lead of one machine, but the process understanding iterated together with generation after generation of downstream lines. That cannot be rushed, and it cannot be skimped.

Data Sources

  • Tianxia Gongchang (factory directory and industry data for electronic-measurement-instrument manufacturing and related equipment)
  • Wuhan Jingce Electronics Group Co., Ltd. public annual reports and announcements (disclosed via CNINFO)
  • Jingce Electronics 2023 Annual Report (disclosed via Sina Finance)
  • CINNO Research: Display industry upgrade drives upstream equipment firms' localization breakthrough
  • KLA: Semiconductor Inspection Market Leader (Yahoo Finance)
  • Semiconductor Metrology and Inspection Equipment Market (Fortune Business Insights)
  • Jingce Electronics "measures out" a new future (CNStock)