Traditional Lighting: Strong Earnings, Weak Stock—How to Break the Deadlock?
sourcewww.lightingchina.com.cn
time2025/10/01
- In capital markets, puzzling patterns often emerge. Traditional lighting is a prime example: many companies report solid profits, yet their share prices keep sliding
In capital markets, puzzling patterns often emerge. Traditional lighting is a prime example: many companies report solid profits, yet their share prices keep sliding. Behind this disconnect lie deeper factors—market saturation, fierce price competition, and slow adaptation to new technologies all weigh on investor confidence.
Market Saturation Restricts Growth
The traditional lighting market has entered a mature stage, with saturation rising steadily. Widespread LED adoption has sharply extended product lifespans, slowing replacement demand. For example, households once changed fixtures every few years, but long-life LEDs now stretch that cycle significantly.
Macro data confirm the trend: China’s general LED lighting growth rate keeps declining, shrinking the replacement market and pressuring traditional players. Even if short-term promotions lift revenue, investors remain wary of long-term growth potential—keeping share prices under strain.
Technology Bottlenecks Stifle Innovation
After years of development, traditional lighting is nearing its technical ceiling. LED heat-dissipation methods—like aluminum substrate cooling—remain limited by insulating layers, causing shorter lifespans, lower efficiency, and faster light decay.
Optical designs face trade-offs: direct-lit setups offer high brightness and low cost but create glare, limited coverage, and dark corners, while edge-lit systems improve uniformity yet suffer from low efficiency and poor cooling.
With core technologies stalled, few breakthrough products emerge to spark new demand. This innovation drought weakens competitiveness and undermines investor confidence, weighing on share prices despite steady current earnings.
Emerging Technologies Disrupt Traditional Lighting
Smart, human-centric, and other niche sectors are growing fast, pointing to the industry’s future. Traditional lighting firms, however, have been slow to invest in these areas, losing market share to tech-driven newcomers.
Innovative smart-lighting brands leverage advanced technology and creative marketing to rise quickly, while legacy players struggle with transformation and lag behind in competition. Investors favor companies active in emerging tech with clear growth potential, leaving conventional lighting stocks overlooked despite stable current operations.
Photo-Negative Ion Technology: A New Breakthrough for Traditional Lighting or not
Photo-negative ion technology integrates healthy-light and green air-purification functions. It delivers a full solar-like spectrum—including visible, infrared, and ultraviolet light—while releasing forest-style negative oxygen ions and using specific wavelengths to decompose any ozone by-products.
The result is bright, gentle illumination that reduces eye strain and protects vision, plus continuous air purification: negative ions bind dust, germs, odors, and formaldehyde, disinfecting and refreshing indoor air. This dual enhancement of lighting quality and air health offers traditional lighting companies a promising path beyond conventional LED limitations.
Photo-negative ion lighting is already used in high-speed rail stations, airports, hotels, schools, hospitals, exhibition halls, offices, and homes. Over 60 primary and secondary schools in China have upgraded classrooms with this healthy lighting, giving students brighter, more comfortable spaces.
For traditional lighting firms, adopting this technology enables product upgrades that meet rising demand for wellness and comfort, while unlocking new markets and strengthening competitiveness. Investors view companies mastering photo-negative ion solutions as higher-growth, making them more attractive in the capital market.
With the sector facing saturation, technical limits, and pressure from emerging smart-lighting players, photo-negative ion innovation offers a clear path to renewed growth and stock-price recovery.