Declining revenue and expanding losses: Where is the halo of Haixuewang?

In pursuit of a difficult path to profitability, China's fourth-largest online vocational education institution, Haixuewang, hopes to inject growth momentum into its business through artificial intelligence (AI)

Key Points:

• Haixuewang has applied for a listing in Hong Kong, but its revenue decline and expanded losses in the first half of this year may weaken its appeal to investors.
• The ongoing slump in China's real estate market poses certain negative factors for the company, which is one of the leading providers of skills training in the construction industry.

Tan Ying

Beijing Haixuewang Education Technology Co., Ltd. hopes that its Hong Kong listing application submitted last week will help investors understand the market potential of China's vocational education and training sector. However, the company itself may learn a lesson from investors—due to its close ties to China's sluggish real estate market, investors may choose to wait and see.

Haixuewang's move may be intended to test the market's investment interest; the company is the largest online vocational skills training service provider in China's construction industry and the second-largest online vocational skills training institution in the emergency safety field.

As of the first half of 2025, Haixuewang's gross profit margin reached 85.8%, indicating strong performance in profitability. The company hopes to follow in the footsteps of China's vocational education leader—China East Education Holdings Limited (0667.HK), which went public in Hong Kong in 2019, raising $625 million and becoming the largest education IPO globally at that time.

However, investors have not been friendly towards China East Education. Since its listing, the company's stock price has fallen by about half. That said, China East Education's gross profit margin was only 59% in the first half of this year, significantly lower than Haixuewang's, but its revenue and profit performance were noticeably healthier, growing by 10% and 48% respectively during the same period. In contrast, Haixuewang remained in a loss position during the same period, with declining revenue.

Since launching its first vocational learning brand "Haixue Classroom" in 2010, Haixuewang has grown rapidly and introduced its high-end vocational qualification training brand "Jingjin Academy" in 2018. However, the company has recorded continuous losses since 2022. As mentioned earlier, its core products focus on construction-related professions, and the downturn in China's real estate market over the past few years has put pressure on its business.

Haixuewang's third brand, "Shupeitong," focuses on corporate client training services but has performed relatively weakly. Due to the ongoing decline in the real estate market, most companies are reluctant to invest in training construction workers—there is already a sufficient supply of labor amid the sluggish new construction activities.

To make matters worse, Haixuewang has recently become a focal point for consumer complaints. According to recent statistics from Chinese media, the company has received a total of 8,414 complaints on the "Black Cat Complaint" platform. On the same day the company submitted its listing application, there were still complaints about being misled into purchasing high-priced courses, with subsequent refund requests being denied. Similar complaints had already appeared in a CCTV investigation program during the "315 Consumer Rights Protection Day" in 2020, becoming one of the long-standing negative issues faced by the company According to the application documents, the marketing expenditure of Haixue.com accounts for more than 60% of its revenue, which may not only explain the company's long-term losses but also reflect its aggressive sales strategy or be related to the wave of complaints. The documents also show that as of June this year, the sales and marketing team of Haixue.com accounted for 80% of its total employees.

Performance Reversal

Until recently, Haixue.com’s losses were still narrowing, and revenue seemed to be on a steady growth track. The Chinese vocational education market, in which the company operates, was once optimistic about experiencing rapid growth under strong policy support from Beijing. According to research data cited in the application documents, the market size of online vocational skills and qualification education in China has increased from 37.5 billion yuan (approximately 5.2 billion USD) in 2020 to 46.9 billion yuan last year. Haixue.com ranks fourth in this industry, with a market share of about 1.1%, and holds the top position in the segmented construction vocational qualification training market.

From 2022 to 2024, Haixue.com’s revenue grew by about 28%, rising from 400 million yuan to 510 million yuan, while losses were halved during the same period, decreasing from 180 million yuan to 90.7 million yuan. By June 2025, the company had accumulated 4.3 million paying users.

However, these positive trends took a sharp turn this year—revenue in the first half of 2025 declined by 5.5% year-on-year to 230 million yuan, while losses doubled to 158 million yuan. The only continuously improving metric is the gross margin, which increased from 78.6% in 2022 to 81.6% in 2024, and further rose to 85.8% in the first half of 2025.

Since nearly two-thirds of Haixue.com’s revenue comes from the construction vocational qualification exam courses under the two major brands "Haixue Classroom" and "Jingjin Academy," it is not difficult to see that the main reason for the recent decline in the company's performance is the continued downturn in the real estate market. The proportion of revenue from its construction industry training and qualification services has dropped from 68.2% in 2022 to 59.5% in the first half of 2025.

So, in the face of weak performance and difficulty in sparking investor interest, why does Haixue.com still believe that now is the time to push for an IPO? The company’s answer is—artificial intelligence (AI). Haixue.com believes that the introduction of AI technology will help improve the company's performance. The company began exploring the application of large model AI in 2024 and established an independent AI innovation team in 2025, launching over 30 AI agents within the following six months.

According to the application documents, the company has tested an AI teaching assistant tool, which has assisted in grading over 13,000 assignments since its launch in September 2024; while the AI marketing assistant launched in August 2025 has helped analyze over 100,000 business opportunities. Additionally, the membership product that the company trialed in May 2025 attracted 21,000 paying users within just a few months Another positive factor for HiLearn is that its business has gradually expanded beyond the construction sector in recent years, including new segments such as emergency safety, finance and accounting, legal qualifications, and healthcare.

The company's main business comes from the "HiLearn Classroom" and "Jingjin Academy" brands, with revenue increasing from 380 million yuan in 2022 to 480 million yuan in 2024. The enterprise services under the "ShuPeiTong" brand contributed 21 million yuan in revenue in 2022, but its revenue share has decreased from 5.3% of total revenue that year to only 1.8% in the first half of this year.

By industry, personal training service revenue related to construction in the first half of this year was 140 million yuan, accounting for 60.9% of total revenue; emergency safety training accounted for 21.6%; the remainder came from "other" categories of vocational qualification exam courses. Among them, the emergency safety qualification exam business has become the company's most promising growth engine, with its revenue share rising from 13.3% in 2022 to 21.6% in the first half of this year