The average price of LED displays has been halved over three years, but this leading company's profits have doubled instead.

Ask AI · Why overseas market expansion became the key to Absen’s growth against the tide?

In everyday life, most people probably don’t pay much attention to LED display screens, but every day they’re looking at them.

That massive screen above the NBA court, the flight information boards scrolling in airport terminals, the naked-eye 3D ads playing on a mall’s exterior wall, and the display backdrops covering an entire wall behind the concert stage—these are all LED display screens.

The production capacity hub of this industry is in China. About 80% of global LED display screen manufacturing capacity is concentrated in mainland China. Among the top seven companies in the industry, five are Chinese firms. In recent years, China’s LED display companies have been competing with each other domestically while also selling products worldwide. But this business has become much harder to do in 2025.

According to data from 洛图科技 (RUNTO Technology), in 2025, the shipment area of China’s small-pitch LED display screen market was 1.39M square meters, up 21.6% year over year, but sales revenue was only 13.82 billion yuan, down 3.8% year over year. Screens sold more, but revenue shrank. The reason is simple: prices have kept falling. In 2022, the market average price of an LED display screen per square meter was about 18,000 yuan. By 2024, that figure dropped to around 12,000 yuan. By the second quarter of 2025, the average price fell below 10,000 yuan per square meter for the first time, down to about 9,800 yuan. In three years, it’s nearly halved.

According to RUNTO Technology statistics, in 2025, nearly 70% of LED display screen companies adopted a price-cutting strategy, and the proportion of special-priced products on the channel side exceeded 30%. As of March 25, there were 13 A-share LED-related listed companies that had released their 2025 annual reports. For many, profits fell sharply, and a few even posted losses directly. But in this industry, there is one LED display screen company headquartered in Shenzhen, with about 76.5% of its revenue coming from overseas, that not only didn’t lose money—its profits actually doubled. This company is Absen (300389.SZ).

On the evening of March 30, Absen released its 2025 annual performance report. Full-year revenue was 4.16B yuan, up 13.53%; net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was 252 million yuan, up 115.47%. Revenue rose by more than 10%, and net profit surged by more than 100%. Over three years, the average selling price of LED industry products fell by nearly half. With most companies’ profits shrinking, how did Absen’s profits double—what’s the source?

** The screens sell more and more, but the money made keeps shrinking**

First, let’s look at what exactly happened in the LED display screen industry in 2025. An LED display screen isn’t a single product—it’s a whole category of products. By pixel pitch, the smaller the spacing between pixels, the more detailed the image and the higher the price. Screens with a pitch below 2.5 millimeters are called small-pitch screens, commonly used in settings that require close-range viewing—such as meeting rooms, command centers, and studios. Outdoor screens with larger pitch show up as roadside billboards, mall exterior walls, and sports venues.

In recent years, companies in this industry have been doing the same thing: making the pitch smaller and the price lower. Technological progress drives cost down. New-generation products are cheaper than the prior generation, which increases the number of application scenarios and enlarges the market.

In 2025, the situation is that prices are falling too fast. RUNTO Technology’s data shows that in the first half of 2025, sales revenue for China’s small-pitch LED display screens fell 16% year over year. The first half was a deep pit. In the second half, shipment area jumped 36.3%, and revenue was pulled back by moving volume; second-half revenue grew 6.9% year over year. But over the full year, revenue still declined. Along with the price drop, the industry also began to diverge.

In 2025, the concentration of China’s small-pitch LED display screen market accelerated. The top companies together increased market share to more than 65%, up over 6.5 percentage points from the prior year. The outcome of the price war is that the industry’s competitive barrier has been raised.

From a technological roadmap perspective, the changes are also clear. One packaging technology called COB—put simply, it directly packages LED chips onto the circuit board—has been more durable and requires lower maintenance costs than the traditional SMD approach. In 2025, its share of sales revenue exceeded 50% for the first time.

Sales revenue and sales area of traditional SMD-packaged products declined across the board. This means that companies still using older technology are facing not only price competition, but also pressure from technology transitions.

Based on public data, in 2025, Mingwei Electronics posted an annual loss of about 46 million yuan, Xinyichang lost 133 million yuan, and Haiming Star’s total profit was negative 880 million yuan. Dragon Photo Mask’s net profit fell 36.86% year over year. Among six major LED display listed companies, only Unilumin Technology and Absen recorded positive revenue growth in their first-half reports. But from the profit side, the gap is even more obvious. Unilumin Technology’s 2025 first-half net profit attributable to shareholders grew 20.61% year over year, while Absen’s full-year net profit attributable to shareholders grew 115.47%, and its non-recurring profit-adjusted net profit growth rate reached 202.90%.

In this environment, Absen’s 2025 annual report shows a set of figures that differ clearly from the industry trend. Full-year gross margin was 31.13%, up 3.65 percentage points from 27.48% the previous year. After deducting non-recurring gains and losses, net profit was 230 million yuan, up 202.90% year over year. Net operating cash flow was 820 million yuan, up 436.84% year over year. Profit growth far outpaced revenue growth. If you break it down, there are several reasons.

First, the product mix changed. In 2025, Absen firmly implemented a strategy centered on a few “hero” products, and several key products showed standout sales performance.

The A25 series is an outdoor advertising screen, launched in January 2025. It focuses on power saving—consuming less than one kilowatt-hour of electricity per square meter per day, over 50% more energy-efficient than comparable products. It offers a 10-year warranty, and its waterproof rating is IP66. This product generated over 1 billion yuan in signed orders for the full year. Another product, the NT V2 series leasing screen, can simultaneously meet both indoor and outdoor leasing scenarios—from concert stages to holiday celebrations—and is widely used in large global creative stage settings. After being launched for four months, sales reached 100k units.

Absen’s products have strong quality and can cover multiple scenario needs, providing customers with lower total lifecycle-cost solutions. When these products scaled up in volume, they directly boosted the company’s overall gross margin.

Second, low-value domestic orders were actively cut off.

Absen’s 2025 interim report shows that in the first half of the year, the sales area of LED display screens within China fell from 61,414.91 square meters in the same period last year to 44,553.33 square meters, a year-over-year decrease of 27.5%. But domestic sales revenue only fell 3.8%. The area dropped by nearly 30%, while the amount barely moved. In other words, the orders that were cut were mainly those with low unit prices and thin margins.

Looking at the full year, Absen’s domestic market revenue was 981 million yuan, up 34.02% year over year. After “doing less” in the first half, it “pulled back” performance in the second half relying on higher-value orders; domestic business for the full year actually grew positively.

Third, it spent less money and got it back faster.

In 2025, Absen’s period expense ratio decreased by 0.88 percentage points year over year. In its annual report, the company said the reason was that it proactively reduced investment in inefficient markets and concentrated expenses on markets and customers with higher output. Days sales outstanding improved by about 16 days, and inventory turnover days improved by about 3 days. These two improvements directly drove a large increase in operating cash flow from a low base.

Put all these data together, the reason profits doubled becomes much clearer.

However, Absen’s playbook has a prerequisite: the company’s revenue head is not in China. Domestic market is experiencing intense price competition. Absen can cut orders domestically without being badly hurt because over 76% of its revenue comes from overseas.

** A business covering 165 countries**

Absen hasn’t started exporting only recently.

The company was founded in Shenzhen in 2001. In 2005, it lit up its first overseas LED screen in Saudi Arabia. It was listed on the Growth Enterprise Market of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2014. Now, after 21 years, overseas markets have become its largest source of revenue.

In 2025, Absen’s overseas market generated revenue of 100k yuan, up 8.41% year over year. Its business covered more than 165 countries and regions. Globally, it has 20 local and overseas companies, more than 70 brand experience showrooms, and more than 6,000 channel partners.

Doing overseas business in this industry is somewhat different from consumer electronics exports. A phone ships out of a factory, then is sold to consumers through distributors—basically that’s it. LED display screens are not like that. A circular ring screen installed under the dome of a stadium and a small-pitch screen installed in a company meeting room require almost two completely different businesses—from solution design, structural customization, and on-site installation to system commissioning. Every major project needs a team locally to follow through. This is why the barrier to taking LED display screens overseas is not low. Shipping the goods out isn’t enough—you need to build service capability overseas.

Absen currently deploys 40 service centers globally, with more than 1,000 service partners, providing 7×24 specialized services. The company also pioneered an ACE engineer training program in the industry. The number of engineers worldwide who have obtained ACE service certification exceeds 5,400.

The value of overseas revenue can be seen in a few projects that landed in 2025. In December 2025, the 35th Africa Cup of Nations opened in Rabat, Morocco, the country’s capital. Absen built a 360-degree panoramic ring screen with a total display area of 2,570 square meters for the home venue, the Prince Moulay Abdallah Stadium. The stadium’s architectural structure is complex; its top forms a non-standard circular shape with multiple concave and convex arc lines. The opening ceremony night saw heavy rain, but the screen operated normally thanks to IP66-grade protection. The venue is also one of the joint host stadiums for the 2030 World Cup, and this screen will continue to serve future international events.

In July of the same year, Absen and Zhejiang Boci Media jointly enabled the world’s largest single-unit LED virtual studio in Deqing, Zhejiang. A virtual studio is a new application scenario for LED display screens that has emerged in recent years. In the past, to shoot movies or TV shows, you either built real sets or used green screen post-production compositing.

The approach of an LED virtual studio is to surround actors with a huge high-resolution LED screen. The screen directly plays realistic scene footage—Paris street scenes, the starry galaxies of outer space—and these can be switched in real time. What the cameras capture is the final image; there’s no need for post-production compositing. Some Hollywood and domestic film projects are already using this technology. The studio that Absen built in Deqing features a 270-degree curved screen, with a 50-meter diameter and a 12-meter height. The single unit area is 5,000 square meters, with the screen area of about 1,700 square meters. Pixel pitch is controlled at 1.8 millimeters, and with 600 million pixel points refreshed, it set a global record for the number of pixels on a single LED display unit. This is also the first time in the industry that a virtual studio of this scale achieves a pixel pitch below 2 millimeters.

Also in 2025, at the World Aquatics Championships held in Singapore, the three main competition venues cumulatively used about 1,000 square meters of Absen’s LED display products. Beyond the Africa Cup of Nations, the virtual studio, and the World Aquatics Championships, Absen had also previously provided LED display products for the Paris Olympics, the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting, and the home venue of the NBA Kings team, among other projects. These large-scale projects have extremely high requirements for LED display screens. Stadium venues must run all day, handling rain, high temperatures, and intense sunlight. Virtual studios must maintain extreme color reproduction and refresh rates under camera lenses. Being able to continuously secure projects of this type is itself the result of brand and technical accumulation.

From the global export landscape of LED display screens, Chinese companies are major suppliers. In the United States—one of the largest single markets outside China—the top three import suppliers are all Chinese companies, and Absen is one of them. According to industry data, Absen has ranked among the top export brands of LED display screens for multiple consecutive years. However, overseas markets also come with their own uncertainties.

The U.S. imposes tariffs on LED display products at rates ranging from 30% to 55%. In the first half of 2025, the value of China’s exports to the U.S. of LED display-related products declined. But Absen’s overseas market is not concentrated in a single country. In the first half of 2025, its display screen sales area in Europe grew over 35% year over year, and North America also maintained about 15% growth. This kind of multi-region layout, to a certain extent, disperses the impact of volatility in a single market. In terms of long-term brand and technology investment, Absen did several things in 2025.

Its brand positioning was adjusted from the previous “an authentic LED display applications and services provider” to “a global leading brand in LED display technology and applications.” In June, the World Brand Lab released the 2025 “China 500 Most Valuable Brands.” Absen was selected with a brand value of 3.18B yuan. In November, Absen received the “Peter Drucker China Management Award.” In addition, it was selected for the fourth consecutive time as a Deloitte “China Excellence Managed Companies,” and it was rated as a “National Manufacturing Single Champion Demonstration Enterprise” by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

In terms of technology investment, Absen’s R&D investment in 2025 was 184 million yuan. Over the past five years, cumulative R&D investment was about 754 million yuan. As of the end of 2025, the global cumulative number of intellectual property applications exceeded 1,300, with invention patents accounting for about 30%. At an annual meeting of core suppliers at the start of 2025, Absen’s chairman Ding Yanhui provided a strategic summary for 2025: “Strategy is products; products are strategy.” Judging from the year’s performance trend, product performance indeed serves as a direct support for profit growth.

Looking ahead, this industry’s incremental growth is shifting from traditional billboards and meeting rooms toward some new directions. LED movie screens are entering commercial cinema chains. Demand for virtual studios is expanding as the film and television industry becomes more industrialized. The transformation cycle for educational informationization is also just beginning.

The directions Absen plans to advance in 2026 include the large-scale commercialization of COB and MIP packaging technologies, scenario deployments combining AI with LED displays, and LED movie screens and AR displays. These basically all fall into these tracks. And the projects Absen has already landed are also laying the groundwork for future business.

This is the 25th year since Absen was founded. It started in Shenzhen in 2001, lit up its first overseas screen in Saudi Arabia in 2005, and listed in 2014. By 2025, it had taken its business to 165 countries and regions, with annual revenue exceeding 4.1 billion yuan.

According to the recently released 2025 annual report, Absen’s cumulative R&D investment over the past five years totaled 754 million yuan. In the annual report, Absen also disclosed its next-step plan: in the coming three years, it will continue to invest 100 million yuan in a technology leadership special fund and bring in 100 master’s and PhD talents in science and engineering disciplines.