Is Insta360 Still Overvalued?

By | Rong Caijing

Author | Mei Wen

Arashi Vision's share price has fallen from a September 2025 peak of RMB 377.54 to less than RMB 100 now, a drawdown of more than 70% (source: Eastmoney, as of the close on September 10).

After such a drop, is it cheap? Not at all.

As of September 8, Arashi Vision had a total market capitalization of about RMB 42 billion, with a price-to-earnings ratio (TTM) as high as 95x, a price-to-sales ratio of 3.67x, and a price-to-book ratio of 8x.

More critically, the 227 million shares unlocked on June 11 (56.5% of total share capital, representing a market value of over RMB 37 billion) have seen only about RMB 1.5 billion in block trades over the past three months. Some financial investors with extremely low holding costs have yet to issue formal pre-disclosure announcements of share reductions.

If Insta360's post-lockup-expiry trajectory follows that of Roborock, its subsequent capital-market valuation is unlikely to be favorable.

Is a 95x P/E premium to peers a bit too expensive?

First, consider a comparison.

Anker Innovations, a leading cross-border consumer electronics company, had a total market capitalization of 77.7 billion yuan on September 7, 2026, with a PE (TTM) of 25.25 and a price-to-sales ratio of 2.27.

Roborock, one of the two leading robot vacuum makers, has a total market capitalization of 33.4 billion yuan, a PE (TTM) of 19.95, a price-to-sales ratio of 1.60, and a price-to-book ratio of 2.3.

Ecovacs, another leading robot vacuum maker, has a total market capitalization of 30.4 billion yuan, a PE (TTM) of about 15-19x, and a price-to-book ratio of 3.02x.

Both are Chinese consumer hardware brands targeting the global market, yet Insta360 trades at 3.8 times Anker's PE, 4.8 times Roborock's, and five to six times Ecovacs'. Its price-to-sales ratio is also 60% higher than Anker's and 130% higher than Roborock's.

Some will argue that Insta360 is growing fast. But in the first half of 2026, Insta360's revenue rose 50% while net profit plunged 94%, and it posted a loss on an adjusted basis.

Anker Innovations still grew net profit in the first half, and Roborock's net profit rose 45.6% year on year. Paying 95 times earnings for a company whose profit is down 94% and which is loss-making on an adjusted basis — how much of that price is a "growth illusion"?

UBS forecasts Insta360's 2026 EPS at RMB 1.62, implying a P/E of about 64x at the current share price; Goldman Sachs forecasts RMB 3.75, implying a P/E of about 28x.

Same company, valuations more than twice apart — it all depends on whose forecast you believe.

Using a more conservative forecast — for example, full-year net profit of 280 million yuan (China Galaxy Securities' revised estimate) — the P/E ratio would be as high as 150.

Whether it's expensive or not is clear at a glance.

Three months after the lock-up expiry, it has traced Roborock's first-stage pattern

On June 11, one year after Insta360's listing, 227 million restricted shares were released from lock-up, expanding the tradable float from 32.8 million shares to 259 million shares, an eightfold increase.

On the day of the lock-up expiry, Insta360 closed at about 163 yuan.

Three months later, the share price stands at 104 yuan, down 36%.

The pattern closely resembles Roborock's back in the day: 30 billion yuan worth of shares were released from lock-up on February 22, 2021, and the stock plunged 12.97% the next day. It then rebounded for a while before entering a year-and-a-half-long slide after June 2021, losing 83% cumulatively.

During this period, Xiaomi-affiliated and other pre-IPO shareholders cashed out about 6.6 billion yuan through stake cuts. The lesson is clear: right after the lock-up expiry, the share price may hold up for a while, but as pre-IPO shareholders keep selling and earnings growth slows, the valuation will be repeatedly marked down, with the declines becoming increasingly severe.

Where does Insta360 stand now? Three months after the lock-up expiry, the stock is down 36%, and block trades totaling about 1.5 billion yuan account for just 4% of the unlocked market value. That means 96% of the unlocked shares are still held by shareholders and have not been sold.

If Roborock's first phase after the lock-up expiry was a rise followed by a fall, Insta360's has been a fall followed by stabilization — but the essence is the same: large-scale selling has not truly begun. Once some major shareholders announce formal reduction plans, the market will face far greater selling pressure than it does now.

Unlocked shareholders have yet to sell their remaining stakes, leaving huge selling pressure

Of the 28 shareholders whose lock-up expires this time, the three most significant are EARN ACE LIMITED (IDG-affiliated), QM101 LIMITED (Qiming Venture Partners-affiliated), and Xunlei Network.

Together, the three hold about 113 million shares, representing 28% of total share capital and a market value of about 11.8 billion yuan.

EARN ACE (an IDG affiliate) holds 47.97 million shares, or 21.2% of the total unlocking volume. According to Xueqiu's unlocking analysis, IDG's estimated cost is about 0.4 yuan per share; at the current share price of 104 yuan, that represents a paper gain of roughly 260 times.

Put that in perspective: an investment of 1 million yuan is now worth 260 million yuan. What's more, IDG entered in 2015-2016 and has held the shares for more than 10 years, far beyond the normal life of a fund. For IDG, even if Insta360 falls to 50 yuan, that is still a 125-fold return; even at 20 yuan, it is still a 50-fold return. For an early-stage fund that has held for 10 years, selling at any price means a huge profit. Exiting is not a choice — it is a must.

Moreover, this cost structure means the unlocking shareholders have very little sensitivity to the share price.

They will not wait for a rebound to sell, as secondary-market investors do. They will sell at any price they can get — because they profit no matter what price they sell at.

This is also why, after Roborock's share unlocking, the original shareholders' sell-down was almost cost-insensitive. Xiaomi-affiliated investors cashed out 6.6 billion yuan from Roborock, selling all the way from a share price of more than 1,000 yuan down to just over 300 yuan — selling more as the price fell, because their cost was only a few dozen yuan.

Insta360's situation is even more extreme. IDG's cost in Insta360 is lower than the original shareholders' cost in Roborock, and Insta360's fundamentals are deteriorating — net profit plunging 94%, a loss on an adjusted basis, operating cash flow of -2.76 billion yuan, inventory of 6.2 billion yuan, an ongoing price war among industry giants, and rising memory chip prices. All of these are eroding the reasons for shareholders to hold long term.

The logic of financial investors is simple: an IPO exists to exit. When a company's fundamentals start to deteriorate and competitors grow stronger, why wait?

QM101, an entity affiliated with Qiming Venture Partners, holds 33.84 million shares, while Xunlei Network holds 31.44 million shares. Both are early-stage financial investors with very low cost bases and substantial unrealized gains. Behind these shareholders are funds, which have fixed lifespans and face pressure from LPs to return capital. The USD-denominated funds of IDG and Qiming typically have terms of 10+2 years; projects invested in 2015-2016 have now reached the window in which an exit is mandatory.

To sum up, the question is not whether they will reduce their holdings, but when large-scale selling will happen.

So far, only 1.5 billion has been sold over three months, most likely because the share price fell too quickly and shareholders are waiting for a relatively favorable exit window — such as a product launch, upbeat earnings or a market rebound. But once that window opens, the selling pressure will be released all at once.

Yet oddly, as of now, none of the three major shareholders with stakes above 5% has issued a formal advance disclosure announcement of a share reduction.

This has raised questions in the market. An analysis on Eastmoney, for example, asked directly: "Are leading venture capital firms splitting their shares and distributing them across multiple accounts, liquidating in small block-trade batches to avoid the 5% disclosure requirement?"

The data shows that block trades totaled more than 1.5 billion yuan in the three months after the lock-up expiry. If the sellers in those block trades were the shareholders whose shares had just been released, it means they were quietly selling all along, simply without telling the market through public announcements.

When the remaining bulk of the unlocked shares will be sold, how they will be sold, and at what price remain a sword of Damocles hanging over Insta360's share price.

Beyond this June's unlock, two more rounds are coming: 1.2693 million shares from the strategic placement will be released in June 2027, and 140 million restricted shares held by pre-IPO shareholders will be released in June 2028 (worth about 14.6 billion yuan at the current share price).

In other words, Insta360's free float will keep expanding over the next two years.

Is a Valuation Reset Inevitable?

Is Insta360 a good company? From a product standpoint, yes. It has become the world's No. 1 in 360-degree cameras, with cumulative shipments of 10 million units, carving out a path amid the squeeze from GoPro and DJI.

But a good company does not necessarily make a good stock.

Signs suggest that Insta360's valuation reset is not over yet.

To be sure, Insta360 may be growing faster than companies like Roborock, but even at 30 times PE (still the highest among its peers), based on UBS's forecast EPS of 1.62 yuan, a fair share price would be 48.6 yuan — 53% below the current 104 yuan.

Over the next few quarters, major shareholder sell-downs, net profit trends and price wars in the market all carry significant uncertainty. If shareholders begin offloading shares on a large scale and earnings continue to deteriorate, Insta360's stock could replay the second phase of Roborock's trajectory — a slow but steady decline until its valuation returns to a normal level for a consumer hardware company.

After all, the rule of the capital markets is simple: a good company that gets too expensive will fall, and a bad company that gets cheap enough will rise.

Insta360 today looks like a good company that is getting worse, priced like a great one.

*All images in this article are sourced from the internet

       Original title : Benchmarking Anker, Roborock and Ecovacs, with the lock-up expiration selling pressure not yet fully released, is Insta360 still overvalued?