The setup
Puya Semiconductor (普冉股份, 688766.SH) filed its third-quarter report on , and the shares closed that day at RMB 251.00 (~US$37.69), down 7.21% from RMB 270.50 (market data, not a filing figure). Quarterly revenue was RMB 3.05B (~US$458M), up 479.25% on the year. Net profit attributable to shareholders was RMB 728.2M (~US$109M), up 3,875.57%, and ex-items profit was RMB 720.0M, so almost none of it came from one-off gains. Gross margin was 55.15%. For the nine months, revenue was RMB 7.01B (~US$1.05B, +389.05%) and attributable net profit RMB 1.55B (~US$233M). USD conversions on this page use ~6.66 CNY/USD (onshore, ) and are approximate.
The year-on-year numbers are the least useful thing in the release. A year ago Puya was a small NOR flash and EEPROM house earning RMB 18.3M a quarter, and it did not yet own SkyHigh Memory, the 2D NAND business it began consolidating in . The report says SkyHigh contributed "about RMB 2.039B" of this quarter's revenue. That is 80.8% of the RMB 2.52B year-on-year increase. The comparison worth reading is the second quarter, and the line worth reading is not the one the release leads with.
That line is minority interest. Puya owns 51% of Zhuhai Noah Changnan, the vehicle that owns SkyHigh. The other 49% belongs to three outside holders, and in the third quarter their share of the group's profit was RMB 450.3M (~US$68M). On the Shanghai exchange's restructuring committee approved Puya's plan to buy that 49% for RMB 247.06M (~US$37.1M) in cash, new shares and convertible bonds, priced on an asset valuation as of . The stake Puya is buying earned 1.82 times its purchase price in one quarter.
Our call is that the acquisition, not the NOR cycle, is the asset on this page, and that the cycle has more time left than we gave it in August. The test is dated. Puya's fourth-quarter gross margin, which falls out of the 2026 annual report due by , holds at or above 50%. A fourth-quarter gross margin below 45% refutes it and says the scarcity rent has started to go.
The numbers
| RMB millions | Q3 25 | Q2 26 | Q3 26 | Q/Q | Y/Y |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Operating revenue | 526.6 | 2,512.5 | 3,050.4 | +21.4% | +479.25% |
| of which SkyHigh Memory (about) | — | — | 2,039.0 | 66.8% of revenue | |
| Cost of sales | 378.4 | 1,133.8 | 1,368.0 | 44.85% of revenue | |
| Gross profit | 148.2 | 1,378.7 | 1,682.4 | 55.15% margin | 28.14% a year ago |
| R&D | 75.9 | 131.6 | 133.7 | 4.38% of revenue | +76.33% |
| Selling | 18.8 | — | 89.3 | +374.55% | |
| G&A | 22.6 | — | 69.9 | +209.78% | |
| Profit before tax | 11.1 | — | 1,355.2 | +12,083.74% | |
| Income tax | — | — | 176.8 | 13.04% effective rate | |
| Net profit, total | — | 937.5 | 1,178.4 | +25.7% | |
| to minority holders | — | 361.9 | 450.3 | +24.4% | |
| to the parent | 18.3 | 575.6 | 728.2 | +26.5% | +3,875.57% |
| to the parent, ex-items | 10.4 | 575.4 | 720.0 | +25.1% | +6,803.88% |
| Operating cash flow | 98.0 | 700.8 | 657.7 | −6.2% | |
| Inventory (quarter-end) | 729.8 | 2,128.7 | 2,553.8 | +425.1 | 83.7% of revenue |
| Receivables (quarter-end) | — | 1,114.3 | 1,566.7 | +452.4 | 51.4% of revenue |
| Short-term borrowings | — | 632.1 | 1,251.0 | +619.0 | |
| Monetary funds | 797.9 | 2,466.9 | 3,637.6 | +1,170.7 | |
Puya reports under PRC accounting standards and the third-quarter report is unaudited. It carries a nine-month income statement and cash-flow statement, not three-month ones, so every third-quarter flow here is the nine-month figure less the half-year figure, and every second-quarter flow is the half-year figure less the first quarter. Balances are as reported. Where a cell is a dash, the line was not broken out for that period in a way we could derive cleanly. The SkyHigh revenue figure is the company's own approximate number, written as "about" in the filing.
Three things stand out before any argument. Gross margin rose by 0.28 points, from 54.87% to 55.15%, after rising 29.1 points over the previous two quarters: the climb stopped, the level held. Revenue rose 21.4% on the quarter after rising 68.3%, 63.2% and 73.7% in the three before it, the slowest step since SkyHigh joined the group. And minority holders took 38.2% of the group's net profit, which is the share of the business Puya does not yet own.
The release explains the quarter in one sentence: revenue grew because "shipments and selling prices of the company's main storage chip products and 'storage-plus' chip products … rose compared with the same period last year," and SkyHigh contributed about RMB 2.039B. Decode: the company names price and volume together and declines to split them. The restructuring report does split them for SkyHigh's first half. Average selling prices rose 103.44% for SLC NAND, 253.77% for eMMC and 251.63% for MCP against the 2025 average, while monthly unit volume rose 8.50%. In the business that is now two-thirds of revenue, price did nearly all of the work.
The rest of this dive is for paid subscribers.
The headline numbers are above. The 12 sections below carry the mechanism, the peer read, the valuation work, and the dated tests that decide it.
- Seven quarters: the level before the delta
- Two businesses in one income statement
- The 49% that earned its price in a quarter
- Where the cash sits, and who borrowed
- The cost line the capex writes
- Connecting the dots
- The December bar
- Valuation
- The strongest case against this read
- What we'd watch
- The trade (analysis, not advice)
- Bottom line
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