Hong Kong in 2025 was its finest year in quite a while: 119 new listings raising nearly HK$290 billion, reclaiming the top spot among global IPO markets. At the market's hottest, getting an allocation was a "favour" the issuer did for institutions — you sign a six-month lockup, and I guarantee you the shares. That "favour" became a bill in 2026.
1. The unlock wave is the bill for the last party
Count back a six-month lockup and the 2025 listings' unlock dates all land neatly in 2026. Locked-up shares coming due are worth HK$1.55 trillion to HK$1.7 trillion — nearly three times the 2025 figure; Goldman Sachs estimates roughly US$274 billion is still queued over the next twelve months. Scale is only the backdrop. The real problem: by the time these chips unlock, prices have fallen to where no one wants to catch them. Through end-July, 72 of the year's 101 new listings were below their offer price, over seven in ten; among those with cornerstone participation the break rate was 54.2%, with the broken ones down 25.9% on average. Eastroc Beverage's 17 cornerstones — Qatar Investment Authority, Temasek, BlackRock, UBS, Tencent — are sitting on a combined paper loss of about HK$2.475 billion; Huayan Robotics halved around its unlock, down 53.6%.
2. Money only believes one story this year
The gainers' list draws a very clear line: Zhipu rose from 116.2 to 601, up 417%; Montage and GigaDevice doubled; Biren and MiniMax stayed in the green — all of them AI large-models, compute and GPUs. The rest are the disaster zone. Eastroc listed at HK$248 and by mid-October was down to HK$98.65, less than 40% of its offer price. One market, two fates.
3. You can stomach a loss — not being able to sell is the death sentence
This is the point I most want to make. Run the most lenient estimate: assuming the entire day's turnover goes toward absorbing one cornerstone's shares, how many days would it take? Zhipu 4 days, Victory Giant 9, Han's CNC 14; but Red Avenue 34, Eastroc 47, Shein 58, Muyuan 109. 109 trading days is close to half a year, and that assumes "every day's entire turnover catches your shares" — something that cannot happen in reality. Small Hong Kong stocks with daily turnover of a few tens of millions are everywhere, while cornerstone holdings run into the hundreds of millions or billions — completely mismatched in scale. Block trades come at a discount, on top of a discount; southbound money is concentrated in banks, telecoms and internet leaders, while its holdings in small robotics names are just 0.1% to 0.36% — a private fund's own words: "we don't even look at stocks with average daily turnover under HK$10 million." So for most broken-IPO cornerstones, only one path remains: keep holding. In a falling market, a loss is a bookkeeping matter; not being able to sell is the real death sentence.
4. The tighter the lockup, the more pricing power changes hands
GigaDevice's H shares were only 33.25 million, with cornerstones taking 14.39 million and leaving retail under 18.86 million — the day after unlock the H shares fell 15.29% and the A shares hit limit-down. MiniMax unlocked 153 million shares, nearly half its total share capital, while its free float before the unlock was only about 17.07 million shares — tradable chips multiplied nearly tenfold in an instant, and the stock is now more than 80% off its intra-year high. The tighter the chips are held, the less an unlock is "just more shares" — instead, pricing power changes hands: from a few people calling the shots, to the market calling the shots — and the market is falling.
5. The pressure has already travelled back to the primary market
A banker's own words: "Once an allocation was a favour done for you; now it's a plea — please, just take a little." Anchor intermediaries' back-end fees have been cut from 30% to below 20%; at least one IPO originally set for October has been postponed because institutions pulled out; the Hong Kong exchange has a backlog of over 500 listing applications. New stocks aren't scarce — what's scarce is the money to take them down. Once "the cornerstones are basically all crying" becomes consensus, whether the next batch of six-month lockup allocations can still be sold is an open question. This is the question regulators truly face: lockup periods, cornerstone ratios, free-float thresholds — these institutional parameters were designed to "win the allocation", and now they must be redesigned to "get the exit".
6. Landing on our own business
My business is helping Chinese companies go global, and a Hong Kong IPO is one financing channel on that road. The reminder this unlock wave carries is the same for us as it is for issuers: overseas financing can't only settle "can we raise the money" — it must also settle "can we get the money out" in advance. Whether participating as a cornerstone or designing a special fund, liquidity should be a one-vote veto, not a bonus point; chip structure and free-float share should be run as a stress test, not recited as a marketing line. For Chinese companies going global, listing has never been the finish line — unlock day is the real exam. The valuations nurtured through the lockup will all have to accept the market's most honest quote on that day.
⚠️ Disclaimer: This article reflects personal views and does not constitute investment advice.