Hong Kong offers Chinese storage firms more than capital - RelyEZ CEO explains the governance case

The wave of Chinese energy storage companies filing for Hong Kong listings is routinely framed as a capital story. RelyEZ CEO Naomi Zhang says that framing is incomplete.

"Capital is important, but it requires more than capital," Zhang told Energy-Storage.news. "It requires transparency, governance, international talents, customers' confidence, and diversified financing channels."^[1] The comment cuts to the strategic logic behind a listing queue that now stretches from CATL to mid-tier system integrators - and it reframes what Hong Kong is actually selling to the sector.

The wave and what started it

CATL's May 2025 Hong Kong listing raised HK$35.7 billion ($4.6 billion), the largest IPO globally that year. The deal made it the largest global listing in 2025. What followed was a sustained queue of storage names. From that listing onward, applications came in from Sungrow, Hithium, EVE Energy, Sunwoda, and Sigenergy. Sigenergy's April 2026 debut saw shares surge more than 100%, pushing the startup's valuation to HK$162.8 billion after raising HK$4.4 billion.

The mechanism is straightforward. H-Shares enable firms to tap financing from a broader base of investors and gain greater international visibility than they do from their A-Share listings on mainland Chinese exchanges. But Zhang's point is that the listing process itself - the disclosure requirements, the governance standards, the investor scrutiny - is part of the value, not just a cost of entry.

What Hong Kong provides beyond the raise

RelyEZ's rationale for its HKEX application, refiled on 9 August 2026, goes beyond the fundraise.^[1] Zhang describes the planned listing as part of a long-term institutionalisation process, noting that international expansion requires more than capital - it requires transparency, governance, international talent, and customer confidence.

The company's operational footprint illustrates the point. RelyEZ already offers a full spectrum of services in China, where it has delivered 5 GWh of projects with 8-10 GWh more expected during 2026, and provides nearly all of those services in Poland and Japan, with energy trading as the next frontier in those markets.

Credibility with overseas counterparties - utilities, grid operators, offtakers - is harder to establish from a Shenzhen A-share listing alone. A Hong Kong listing, with its international accounting standards and English-language disclosure, functions as a signal to those counterparties.

Hong Kong as an R&D conduit

InvestHK, the city's investment promotion agency, points to a second function that sits alongside the capital markets role.^[1] RelyEZ has established a joint venture with two professors in algorithmic trading and climate prediction based in Hong Kong, which will act as an R&D arm and outreach to US and European markets.

InvestHK also supports talent development and R&D through programmes such as a booster scheme that helped Jana Energy, a sodium-ion battery developer, set up activities in Hong Kong and partner with Cambridge University. The city's universities and its position between mainland China's manufacturing base and Western research institutions give it a role that pure financial centres cannot replicate.

What the financials show

RelyEZ's own numbers illustrate the commercial pressure driving the institutionalisation push.

• Revenue grew from RMB 435 million in 2023 to RMB 1.87 billion in 2025.^[1]
• Large-scale energy storage system solutions rose from 1.6% of revenue in 2023 to 89.4% in 2025.^[1]
• In the first four months of 2026, the company recorded revenue of RMB 280 million, up from RMB 8.5 million in the same period a year earlier.^[1]

Frost & Sullivan data place RelyEZ's 2025 energy storage system shipments at 5.4 GWh, ranking it 10th in China's overall market, while its standalone energy storage capacity ranked 4th with a 12.5% market share. A company growing that quickly, and pivoting that sharply toward large-scale projects, needs the governance infrastructure that a Hong Kong listing forces it to build - not just the proceeds.

What to watch

The queue of applicants will thin as HKEX scrutiny and market conditions filter out weaker candidates. The more telling signal will be how listed firms perform operationally in overseas markets once the listing is complete - whether the governance and talent arguments Zhang makes translate into contracted capacity outside China. RelyEZ's progress in Poland and Japan, and the output of its Hong Kong algorithmic-trading JV, will be the early test cases.^[1]