When power bank operator Energy Monster (NASDAQ:EM) made its Nasdaq market debut in April 2021, the timing seemed superb. China’s economy was on a roll after bouncing back from its initial Covid-19 scare of 2020, and consumers were spending. And while the rest of the world was still grappling with the latest Covid variants, the China tech route of 2021 had yet to come.

Fast forward to the present, when the latest earnings report from Smart Share Global Ltd., Energy Monster’s official English name, shows a company grappling with shrinking sales as it battles with rivals for market share. Adding to its woes, Energy Monster is also facing repeated disruptions from China’s ongoing efforts to stamp out Covid-19 outbreaks by shuttering many of the stores, restaurants and other venues that are company’s main source of business.

The Shanghai-based company was riding high at the end of 2020 when it controlled 34.4% of China’s market for store-based power bank charging stations, with peers Yidianyuan and, Jie Dian lagging behind at 22.2% and 17%, respectively. The situation represented a flip-flop from just two years earlier in 2018, when Yidianyuan and Jie Dian were the market leaders, each with more than 30% share, while Energy Monster was the newbie with 9.0%.

Energy Monster’s revenue fell by 13% year-on-year to 737.1 million yuan ($110 million) in the first-quarter, as it slipped into the red with a net loss of 96.4 million yuan compared to a 15.1 million yuan profit a year earlier. Revenue from its core mobile device charging business fell 12.1% to 717.7 million yuan, accounting for the vast majority of sales, while revenue from power bank sales dropped by an even larger 48.3% to 12.9 million yuan. The only bright spot was a 25.5% increase in revenue from the company’s new advertising business and other new business initiatives to 6.4 million yuan, though that figure is tiny in the overall picture.

Things are only expected to get worse in the near-term. In May, nearly 400 million people in 45 cities were locked down across China, including the 25 million people in the country’s economic and financial hub of Shanghai. Energy Monster’s business revolves around the convenience of providing power chargers for hire in a country with more mobile phones than people. But people have to be able to leave their homes to use those chargers. And the shops, restaurants, gyms and other venues where the charging stations are located also need to be open for business.

Energy Monster is among a larger group of hardware-related offline tech stocks, dependent on advances in charging technology and proliferation of devices that need charging. Despite the low cost of charging devices, many people like the convenience of being able to use borrowed chargers. Even as rental prices have risen from about 1 yuan to more like 5 yuan per hour, equal to nearly $1, customers complain but keep using the chargers that are ubiquitous in malls, restaurants, Shanghai Disneyland, and most venues with high foot traffic.

Energy Monster is one of four dominant players that control an overwhelming majority 96% of the market – a factor that has allowed the group to steadily raise rental prices. While market share has shifted during the pandemic, Energy Monster has managed to keep growing in terms of its presence, even if its revenue growth has stalled. The company had 861,000 “points of interest,” as it calls its charging station locations, at the end of March, compared to 845,000 at the end of 2021. Those stations had 5.7 million power banks “available for use” on any given day by the company’s 298.9 million registered users.