Source: Lieyun Network
On January 9, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) announced on its official website that Shanghai NewMed Medical Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "NewMed") has initiated A-share IPO tutoring.
According to the prospectus, NewMed is a cardiac valve device company established in China in 2015, developing interventional products for treating structural heart disease. Previously, the company had submitted listing applications to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in August 2021, February 2022, and October 2022, all of which have now expired.
In the latest listing guidance filing report, NewMed also mentioned that the company had planned to list on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, but later terminated the Hong Kong IPO due to changes in the external environment and strategic adjustments.
Tracing back the origin of NewMed's establishment, founder Dr. Qi Feng Yu holds a bachelor’s degree in Metal Materials and Heat Treatment from Sichuan University, a master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering, and a doctorate in Business Administration from the United Business Institutes in Belgium.
In 2007, Yu Qifeng began researching interventional valves, becoming one of the first engineers in China to venture into valve product development. He previously worked in R&D at MicroPort. In 2015, Yu Qifeng and his then-colleague at MicroPort, Qin Tao, reached an agreement, quit their jobs, and embarked on their entrepreneurial journey.
Notably, several employees of NewMed were previously employed by MicroPort. In early 2017, MicroPort raised objections to NewMed, claiming that two of NewMed's patents were similar to those of MicroPort, and that employees such as Yu Qifeng and Qin Tao were formerly employed by MicroPort and were inventors of the disputed patents.
In the end, the court ruled in favor of MicroPort, awarding the disputed patent to MicroPort. The court determined that Yu Qifeng and others had no legal basis for their patent application rights and ownership due to lack of factual and legal support, thus the patent should be recognized as belonging to the plaintiff. However, NewMed stated that the disputed patent is unrelated to any of its products or those under development.
According to NewMed's previous prospectus, the company has established a product portfolio comprising one core product and eight other valve R&D products, including transcatheter replacement and repair R&D products for treating human heart valves.
However, it is worth noting that before the approval and market launch of its core products, NewMed had been in the R&D investment phase for a long time, without generating product sales revenue, making performance losses a norm. From 2020 to the first half of 2022, the company's losses for the period were RMB 115 million, RMB 474 million, and RMB 122 million, respectively, with cumulative losses exceeding RMB 700 million.
In the core product research and development process, NewMed has achieved key breakthroughs in recent years: On August 14, 2024, the Prizvalve Transcatheter Aortic Valve System ("Prizvalve"), independently developed by NewMed, was approved for marketing by the China National Medical Products Administration (NMPA).
On June 24, 2025, Prizvalve Pro, a new-generation balloon-expandable transcatheter aortic valve system independently developed by NewMed, received approval from the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) for marketing in China. With the successive market entries of its core products, NewMed has gradually entered the commercialization stage, and its performance is expected to reach a turning point.
In its development journey, NewMed has also gathered a group of prestigious investors, including YF Capital, OrbiMed, Junzi Capital, Fortune Venture Capital, Temasek, Zhangjiang Science Park, and Boyuan Capital, among other well-known investment institutions. The support from numerous capital sources not only injected development funds into the company but also demonstrated the market's recognition of its sector and core technologies.
Looking back at the past few years, the heart valve market once became a "hot potato" in the capital market, sparking a wave of enterprise IPOs. In 2019, Venus Medtech was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange; in 2020, Peijia Medical was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange; in 2021, HeartFlow Medical was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange; in November 2022, Lepu CardioFlow Medtech was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange...
Behind the Heat: The Rapid Growth of the Heart Valve Market. According to Frost & Sullivan data, from 2017 to 2021, the annual compound growth rate of China's interventional medical device market for structural heart disease reached 48.3%. Among this, the Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR) market is expected to grow at a rate of 53% from 2021 to 2025.
However, in recent years, with the intensification of industry competition and the impact of factors such as some companies' post-IPO performance falling short of expectations, capital enthusiasm for the heart valve field has gradually waned, and the market value of related companies has also experienced a decline—
For example, after its IPO, HeartFlow Medical's market value once exceeded 50 billion HKD, but it is currently at 7.6 billion HKD; Venus MedTech's market value was once over 40 billion HKD, but now stands at 1.1 billion HKD; Renatus Medical’s market value surpassed 30 billion RMB after listing, but has since been halved to 15.4 billion RMB.
Against this market backdrop, for NewMed, a successful IPO is not the end point. Facing an increasingly rational capital market and intensifying industry competition, how the company accelerates commercial-scale production and achieves self-sustaining growth will be the real test after its debut on the A-share market.