CompanyGraph
Hithink RoyalFlush Information Network Co., Ltd.
300033 · SZSE · China
Runs a licensed trading terminal that pulls live prices from China's two main stock exchanges and lets users trade without leaving the screen.
Hithink RoyalFlush holds a China Securities Regulatory Commission licence that gives it direct data feeds from the Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange, routed through its Hangzhou infrastructure at sub-second speed, so retail traders can see a live price and place an order inside the same terminal. Because the data feed already arrives at the terminal, the company can wire it directly into domestic brokerage backend systems through individual partnership agreements, and once that connection is made, securities firms embed their compliance checks and traders build their algorithms around the platform's specific data formats — making it a months-long project to leave, not a simple switch. The whole structure rests on three interlocked pieces — the CSRC licence, the exchange connections, and the brokerage partnerships — and if the CSRC declined to renew the licence or either exchange cut off the feed, the terminal would lose the one thing that gives securities firms a reason to certify it in the first place. Adding more individual users costs almost nothing, since the same data stream serves one trader or a million, but connecting to each new Chinese regional exchange still requires its own separate regulatory approval and physical infrastructure link, so that side of the business grows one approval at a time no matter how large the platform becomes.
How does this company make money?
Individual and institutional users pay a monthly or annual subscription fee to access the financial information terminal. Institutional clients who need dedicated data feeds pay an additional per-user licensing fee on top of that. When users execute trades through the terminal's brokerage connections, the company earns a commission on those transactions. Data partners and developers who want to plug directly into the company's real-time market data pay a separate licensing fee for API access.
What makes this company hard to replace?
Institutional users have built their trading algorithms and technical analysis workflows directly inside the company's terminal, and reconfiguring those for a different platform takes months of work. Securities firms have wired their regulatory compliance systems around the company's specific data formats, making a switch a significant internal project, not a simple software change. The API connections between the terminal and customers' portfolio management systems each require their own certification process, so even a firm that decided to leave today would spend a long time in transition before it could fully move.
What limits this company?
Adding each new exchange or brokerage to the platform requires a separate regulatory approval from the China Securities Regulatory Commission plus a physical infrastructure connection to that exchange's data centre. Neither step can be automated or rushed. So the number of fully integrated exchange-and-execution pairs the platform can serve is determined by how fast those approvals come through, not by how fast the engineering team can write code.
What does this company depend on?
The company cannot run without real-time data feeds from the Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange, an active operating licence from the China Securities Regulatory Commission, partnerships with Chinese securities firms that connect the terminal to live order execution, telecommunications and fibre optic infrastructure linking its Hangzhou headquarters to the exchange data centres, and sufficient network capacity to push that data to end users in under a second.
Who depends on this company?
Chinese retail day traders rely on the terminal's real-time price feeds and analysis tools to make intraday decisions — without them, those strategies simply do not work. Domestic securities firms have built their customer-facing trading platforms around the company's integrated market data, so losing access would strip out core functionality for their own clients. Chinese asset management firms use the company's risk analytics and market surveillance tools inside their portfolio management systems, which would degrade without them.
How does this company scale?
Once the software and data-processing algorithms are built, adding more individual users costs very little — the same code and the same data stream serve one user or one million. What does not get cheaper as the company grows is connecting to new Chinese regional exchanges: each one still requires its own regulatory approval and its own physical infrastructure link, so that part of the business expands slowly no matter how large the user base becomes.
What external forces can significantly affect this company?
Chinese government data sovereignty rules could restrict how market data moves across borders, which would limit any international expansion. U.S.-China technology sanctions could make it harder or more expensive to buy the advanced data-processing hardware the platform depends on. And as younger Chinese investors increasingly trade on mobile apps rather than desktop terminals, the company faces pressure to shift how its product is delivered before that generation becomes its core audience.
Where is this company structurally vulnerable?
If the China Securities Regulatory Commission revoked the company's financial information service licence, or if either the Shanghai Stock Exchange or Shenzhen Stock Exchange cut off its direct data feed, the sub-second price pipeline would stop. Without that feed, securities firms would have no reason to keep the terminal certified, and institutional users would have no reason to stay.