Author | Yu Chi

Editor | Su Man

September 10, 2026, proved to be a particularly tense day for investors in Insta360 (688775.SH).

Shares of the STAR Market-listed company closed at 97.56 yuan, down 3.68% for the day, officially slipping below the 100 yuan threshold and hitting a new all-time low since its debut.

Image Source: Tonghuashun App

Compared to its peak share price in September 2025, Insta360 has seen a maximum retracement of nearly 70%. At that peak, shares reached a historic high of 377.77 yuan, with the company’s total market capitalization nearing 140 billion yuan. Now, it stands at just 39.1 billion yuan, as the dream of a trillion-yuan valuation quickly fades into reality.

The severe stock price fluctuations have left investors, once enthusiastic about this star company, feeling the strain.

In the secondary market, a large number of investors who bought in at high prices are now deeply trapped. On online stock forums and trading communities, calls from investors for a “refund” are on the rise.

The most fundamental question on everyone’s mind—and the core issue in the capital market today—is whether the stock price of this once-capital-favorite consumer hardware star, after experiencing a significant retracement, can still return to its previous highs and help ordinary investors recover their losses.

01

The Trillion-Yuan Valuation Was Built on High Expectations

At the beginning of its STAR Market listing, Insta360 was a star stock in the capital market.

The company officially went public in June 2025 with an issue price of 47.27 yuan. On its debut day, the share price surged, reaching 377 yuan within three months, with its market capitalization nearing 140 billion yuan, making it a benchmark enterprise in the consumer hardware sector on the STAR Market.

The market bestowed multiple accolades upon it: global leader in panoramic cameras, a benchmark for overseas expansion, and an AI hardware growth stock.

Image Source: Insta360 Official Website

Relying on its compelling brand narrative, Insta360 gained significant market recognition, with capital willing to pay a premium for its growth story.

The formation of this round of high valuations was also inseparable from the support of well-known capital. Throughout its development, the company received investments from a host of top-tier institutions, including IDG Capital, Qiming Venture Partners, Cornerstone Capital, CITIC Securities Investment, and Xunlei.

The endorsement from these star institutions brought strong confidence to the secondary market, further raising market expectations for the company’s valuation and driving up the share price.

At that time, the market consensus was that the company could rely on its advantages in niche sectors to continuously unlock growth potential and achieve long-term high growth.

Meanwhile, the personal brand of founder Liu Jingkang also played a role in fueling the hype. As a post-90s entrepreneur, he was known for his high-profile style.

In August 2024, during the IPO registration phase, faced with regulatory inquiries, Liu Jingkang publicly posted a long article on WeChat Moments, expressing his appeals to regulators regarding IPO review-related issues, sparking widespread public discussion.

This incident established Liu Jingkang’s persona as “daring and outspoken,” earning him significant goodwill among his supporters and sustaining high online attention.

On August 14, 2025, during an internal celebration for the public beta launch of the panoramic drone “Yingling Antigravity,” Liu Jingkang stood on the second-floor stair landing of the company and threw cash down to the R&D team below as a reward for the project staff. The related video quickly went viral online.

Image Source: Insta360 Official Website

Although this incident drew significant criticism, from a capital market perspective, such behavior signaled that the company had abundant funds and that the founder was bold and ambitious, implying high growth potential.

At the same time, the company continued to increase its marketing investments to complement this growth narrative.

Financial report data shows that the company’s marketing expenses have grown rapidly year after year. In 2024, sales expenses were 826 million yuan, surging to 1.679 billion yuan in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 103.31%. The growth rate significantly outpaced revenue growth during the same period, with market promotion expenses alone skyrocketing by 145.4% year-on-year. Substantial funds were invested in advertising, KOL collaborations, and brand building.

The founder’s attention-grabbing personal image, combined with sustained high marketing investments, jointly pushed the company’s growth story to its peak.

This valuation logic is not uncommon on the STAR Market.

Take Roborock (688169.SH) as an example. Similarly, as a hardware leader on the STAR Market, it received early support from Xiaomi-affiliated capital, including Shunwei Capital and Tianjin Jinmi, making it a typical hardware stock backed by star capital.

After listing, Roborock’s share price surged, but later, as competition intensified and growth slowed, its share price weakened over the long term, with a maximum retracement also exceeding 70%.

The consumer hardware sector is prone to valuation bubbles. When market sentiment is high, capital amplifies growth expectations, assigning very high valuation multiples. Once performance falls short of expectations, valuations quickly regress, leading to a double whammy of declining earnings and valuations.

02

Internal and External Pressures Intensify Challenges

The valuation correction is just a surface phenomenon. What truly determines the ceiling for the share price is the company’s underlying industrial strength.

From an industrial perspective, Insta360’s fundamentals are facing real challenges.

First, competition in the sector is intensifying, with mounting pressure from leading rivals. Originally, Insta360 held a significant market share in the panoramic camera sector, but after DJI entered the market, the two companies began infiltrating each other’s core sectors, leading to an all-out price war.

In the hardware industry, each generation of products requires re-capturing market share, and price competition directly compresses profit margins.

According to the 2026 semi-annual report, the company’s revenue grew by 50.29% year-on-year, but net profit attributable to shareholders plummeted by 94.15% year-on-year, with non-recurring profit and loss adjusted net profit even turning into a loss, indicating a situation of rising revenue but declining profits.

Second, product iteration lacks disruptive breakthroughs, leading to stagnation in the existing market and a failure to continuously widen the company’s moat.

Image Source: Insta360 Official Website

Panoramic cameras are a niche market with limited global scale and low market penetration, presenting an obvious ceiling for the sector.

Against the backdrop of stagnating growth in its core business, Insta360 attempted to explore a second growth curve, such as drones, but the new business is still in the market cultivation stage, requiring massive investments in R&D and distribution, and has yet to form stable profit contributions, failing to support the previous high valuation expectations.

At the same time, external consumption stimulus dividends are also waning. Previously, many regions included action cameras in local trade-in subsidy programs, boosting terminal demand. Now, as these local subsidies expire, the incremental demand driven by policies has disappeared.

With the disappearance of external tailwinds, companies must rely on their own product strength and market competitiveness to capture market share, further intensifying industry competition.

03

Share Price Unlikely to Return to Highs in the Short Term, Ordinary Investors Pin Hopes on External Tailwinds

Considering the valuation environment, industrial competition landscape, and the company’s current operating status, it is extremely difficult for Insta360’s share price to return to its historical highs.

After the burst of the high valuation bubble, it is unlikely to simply replicate the previous bull market.

The previous trillion-yuan market cap was priced based on optimistic expectations of high growth.

However, currently, there has been no fundamental improvement in the industry’s competitive landscape or market space, and no strong logic has emerged to drive a rapid reversal in the share price.

The market size constraints for panoramic cameras remain, and the competitive pressure from DJI continues to intensify. While the second growth curve could potentially drive growth and valuations, in the near term, it has not yet delivered financial results, making it difficult to support the previous valuation levels.

Image Source: Insta360 Official Website

Another noteworthy signal: On June 11, 2026, the company faced a massive lock-up expiration one year after its listing, with a total of 225 million shares becoming tradable, accounting for 56.1% of the total share capital. The lock-up expiration volume was nearly eight times the original free-float volume, with shareholders including early financial investors and employee strategic placement asset management plans.

After the lock-up expiration, multiple block trades occurred in the market, with some early shareholders choosing to reduce their holdings. The actions of these shareholders also reflect a cautious attitude among some internal investors toward the company’s valuation recovery.

While there may be periodic recoveries in the share price in the short term, such rebounds are more emotionally driven and do not represent a qualitative change in fundamentals. For ordinary investors, it is essential to view portfolio gains and losses rationally and not place undue hope on recovering losses.

The A-share market has seen cases similar to Insta360. Breo Electronics (688793.SH) is a typical example. As a star stock in the smart portable massage hardware sector on the STAR Market, it debuted as the “first massage device stock” in July 2021, with its share price surging to 185.58 yuan on its first trading day. The market assigned it very high growth expectations.

The company also relied on viral products and heavy marketing spending to tell its growth story, receiving support from multiple well-known institutions in its early stages.

However, after listing, intensifying industry competition and sluggish product iteration put continuous pressure on its performance, causing its share price to decline sharply. The maximum retracement from its highs approached 85%, with its debut day becoming its historical peak, and it has yet to return to those levels in the years since.

Of course, there are also rare examples of genuine turnarounds in the capital market. Cambricon (688256.SH) is one such case. This AI chip company sustained heavy losses for years after listing, with its share price experiencing a prolonged and significant correction. The market once questioned its prospects.

It wasn’t until 2025, when the company achieved large-scale product adoption and turned a profit for the year, marking a substantive inflection point in its fundamentals, that its share price saw a significant recovery.

However, such turnarounds are rare and require a qualitative change in the company’s business. Not every stock that has undergone a deep correction can replicate such a trajectory.

Both outcomes exist in the market, and neither is inevitable.

For investors trapped at high levels, it is even more important to manage expectations and objectively assess the realistic possibility of recovering losses.

If choosing to hold, investors must be prepared for prolonged sideways trading and continued pressure on the share price, rather than hoping for a miraculous sudden reversal. Investment decisions should ultimately return to the company’s fundamental operating performance.

The experience of Insta360 also serves as a warning to investors in the consumer hardware sector on the STAR Market.

Many companies tell compelling growth stories by riding sector trends when they go public, but stories ultimately need to be validated by performance.

The valuation of hardware companies ultimately hinges on profitability, industry competition, and sector growth potential. When stories fail to keep pace with performance, even the highest valuations will eventually be repriced by the market.

Note: The headline image for this article is sourced from Liu Jingkang's Weibo.