Shenzhen, China – September 2, 2026 – In today’s volatile and uncertain business climate, the highly globalized LED display industry should be among the first to feel the impact of macroeconomic headwinds. Yet this earnings season, leading Chinese LED makers are diverging sharply, and Absen stands out as a rare multi-dimensional outperformer. How did it navigate the uncertainty?
Same Cycle, Diverging Results
Manufacturing has long worshipped scale. H1 2026 data tells a different story:
Unilumin posted revenue of RMB 3.55 billion,the industry’s largest,yet fell into a non-GAAP net loss, with gross margin near 25%.
Leyard recorded revenue of RMB 2.87 billion, down nearly 20% year on year; net profit dropped 59.7%, and non-GAAP net profit was just RMB 16 million.
Absen was the only one of the three to grow revenue, reaching RMB 1.97 billion, with the highest non-GAAP net profit (RMB 80 million) and gross margin up 5.25 percentage points year on year.
Full-year 2025 data further reinforces the point. Unilumin and Leyard generated RMB 8.09 billion and RMB 7.04 billion in revenue, but only RMB 83 million and RMB 100 million in non-GAAP net profit respectively. Absen, on RMB 4.16 billion of revenue, produced RMB 252 million in net profit (+115.4% year on year), with a 31.13% gross margin and 15.78% ROE,versus 1.35% and 3.73% for its larger peers. Operating cash flow per share was roughly five times that of its peers.
Operations tell the same story. In H1, Absen’s core display revenue grew 5.89% while its cost of sales fell. Receivable days stood at 59 versus 86 and 170 for its peers; inventory days were 102 versus 117 and 251. Unit value is rising without discounting, and customers are voting for the product. Sheer shipment volume no longer decides winners in LED.
Where Profitability Quality Comes From
Sustained profitability is the reflection projection of pricing power. Absen’s key to breaking out of the price war is to concentrate R&D, supply chain and global service resources on high-barrier scenarios and core products,in three dimensions.
First, innovation in materials and manufacturing processes. The trend toward fine-pitch displays and the maturation of COB (Chip on Board) packaging have pushed competition upstream, toward optical consistency, pixel-level color calibration, thermal management and chip failure-rate control. At ISE 2026, Absen launched three COB flagships,CL V3, SA1.5 COB and AW Pro,different in application but sharing same technology platform, generating compounding R&D returns. Years of work in high-precision COB and Micro LED have built physical barriers in image quality and long-term reliability.
Second, converting technology into a quantifiable cost equation. Total cost of ownership is considered from the design stage. The Micro LED flagship KLCOB V3 series helps customers reduce lifecycle TCO by up to 40%. During this year’s World Cup, Absen’s A25 low-carbon outdoor display at Vancouver’s BC Place integrated hardware with AI algorithms to keep power consumption under 1 kWh per square meter per day, 50% more energy-efficient than the industry average,with a 10-year warranty. When customers weigh years of electricity, maintenance and downtime costs, the true value enabled by technology becomes the only selling point.
Third, deep co-creation and system-level delivery. High-end customers are not simply buying buy a panel; they need a reliable system that supports complex commercial operations. Landmark projects,including the world’s largest single LED virtual production studio built with Bocai Media, Dataland in Los Angeles (the world’s first AI-themed art museum), and a custom 500-square-meter immersive stage for the Charming Xiangxi theater in Zhangjiajie — are all examples of system-level engineering. Meanwhile, Absen’s proprietary Aknow agent platform and its AI assistant (meeting minutes, simultaneous interpretation, multimodal interaction) are making displays more interactive and adaptive. H1 R&D spending rose 8.86% year on year, with 43 new patents granted.
When screens become deeply integrated with spatial operations, content production, and energy management, what customers are really buying is a predictable business outcome.
From Selling Products to Defining Value
Deeply embedded in global supply chains, the LED industry is directly exposed to external shocks. In a VUCA era, pricing power is not just a source of profit,it is a buffer for resilience. Michael Porter’s framework still applies: the moat that can withstand cycle is differentiation, built on years of R&D, consistent quality and customer trust — not cost leadership, which invites destructive price wars.
Absen’s results reflect a broader shift: the industry’s center of gravity has moved irreversibly from back-end scale manufacturing to front-end product definition, scenario building and full-chain services. Companies expanding overseas through low-price strategies prove fragile when demand swings; those built on high-end scenarios and integrated solutions achieve a qualitative leap in resilience.
Absen is acting on this logic. It recently published the LED industry’s first Service Standards White Paper and its ESG report, and in H1 established a Middle East subsidiary while expanding localized service networks,bringing system-level delivery capabilities to high-purchasing-power growth markets.
Scenario-driven, technology-led, standard-setting: Absen shows that the rules for next-generation industry leaders have changed. True competitiveness lies not only in hardware customers find “worth buying,” but in scenario value, quantifiable economic benefits, and a system-level ecosystem that make customers indispensable to their long-term operations.
Note: All figures are stated in RMB and sourced from the companies’ publicly disclosed financial reports.
About Absen
Established in 2001, Absen is the Global Leader in LED Display Technology and Solutions. Absen’s products are exported to 165 countries and regions in America, Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa, etc., and have been used in the Presidential press conference, CIIE, FIFA World Cups, NBA games and Times Square.
Delivering more than 65,000 installations, Absen produces best in class products for DOOH , rental & staging , commercial display , data visualization, conference display and consumer markets, with the export volume of LED products being NO.1 for 16 consecutive years.
Media ContactCompany Name: Shenzhen Absen Optoelectronic Co., Ltd.Contact Person: Huilin ChenEmail: Send EmailCity: ShenzhenCountry: ChinaWebsite: www.absen.com
