JPMorgan Upgrades Unitree from Underweight to Overweight, Raises Target Price to 995 Yuan

According to a report from the Zhuifeng Trading Desk, on October 25, JPMorgan released a research report directly raising its rating on Unitree Robotics by two notches from "Underweight" to "Overweight," and raised its December 2027 target price from 300 yuan to 995 yuan. Unitree Robotics closed at 624 yuan on October 23, and the target price is about 59% above that.

JPMorgan's shift stems from its reassessment of the timeline for physical AI deployment. The bank said that after its earlier research at the China International Industry Fair, it had remained cautious about the commercialization progress of Chinese robotics companies: hardware leadership had not yet reliably translated into repeatable commercial demand, and orders still came mainly from R&D, developer platforms and small-batch pilots.

But after the 2026 World Physical AI Conference and Partner Ecosystem Conference held in Hangzhou, the bank adjusted its judgment. According to Wang Xingxing's remarks cited in the research report, physical AI "has shown signs of a breakthrough," and the breakthrough window may fall in "the next 1-2 years or 2-3 years"; this is significantly earlier than his previous judgment that it "could take up to 10 years." The bank therefore believes the industry's sales S-curve may shift forward.

Analysts believe a shortened timeline will raise the strategic value of deployed robots, developer ecosystems and real-world data. The report wrote that as large models advance in task planning, memory, context management and cross-tool execution, the industry bottleneck is shifting from high-level reasoning capability to "real-world execution, data generation and deployment iteration."

Analysts believe that once models become better at planning and supervision, the question facing robotics companies will become: how to translate digital intelligence into "reliable, scalable and safe" physical execution. Therefore, sensors, actuators, batteries, thermal management, calibration, safety, durability and field service capabilities remain important components of deployment.

Sales upgrades concentrated after 2028, jumping from 40,000 to 110,000

On forecast figures, JPMorgan did not raise its 2026 humanoid robot sales assumption for Unitree, keeping it at 14,163 units; but it raised its 2027 forecast from 26,226 units to 31,701 units, and sharply raised its 2028 forecast from 41,552 units to 111,554 units.

Correspondingly, the bank's forecast for Unitree's global humanoid robot market share shows: 2028 raised from the previous 8% to 21%, and 2030 raised from 4% to 12%. The bank said the new forecast assumptions reflect its judgment that the sales S-curve will shift earlier.

The bank expects Unitree's revenue from 2026 to 2028 to be 2.819 billion yuan, 4.888 billion yuan and 13.383 billion yuan, respectively, with 2028 revenue growth expected to reach 173.8% year on year; adjusted net profit is expected to be 616 million yuan, 1.125 billion yuan and 3.202 billion yuan, respectively. The above figures are the bank's forecasts, not performance already disclosed by the company.

Valuation logic also includes "scarcity"

In addition to technology and sales assumptions, JPMorgan also incorporated capital market supply into its valuation framework. The bank said that reviews of IPOs and spin-off listings by robotics companies are paying more attention to commercialization quality, sustainable order revenue and business model durability, which may slow the pace of new listings by embodied intelligence companies compared with previous expectations.

The report therefore argues that if investors seek publicly traded vehicles for the embodied AI theme, the scarcity of already-listed companies may persist. The bank said Unitree is "one of the few direct listed proxies for embodied AI investment" in the A-share market, and its listed status, hardware platform and installed base form the basis of what the bank calls a "scarcity premium."

On valuation methodology, JPMorgan used 30 times its estimated 2028 price-to-sales ratio to support the 995 yuan target price. The bank said the valuation references high-quality global comparable companies and recent private financing cases including Agility Robotics.

However, JPMorgan also clearly listed risks in the report: slower-than-expected enterprise adoption and pilot projects failing to convert into repeat orders could affect platform expansion; faster commercialization by new entrants could bring competition and margin pressure; further regulatory tightening or geopolitical changes could also limit overseas expansion and the serviceable market size.

The report wrote that Unitree will subsequently need to prove "repeat orders, dexterous manipulation reliability, safety performance and ecosystem monetization capability." This means that the earlier breakthrough window for physical AI is the core premise of JPMorgan's rating upgrade, while enterprise procurement and earnings quality are the validation indicators it needs to track going forward. Risk disclosure and disclaimer

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