The total financing amount of China's commercial aerospace enterprises rose from 700 million yuan in 2015 to 10 billion yuan in 2020, which took 6 years.
In response to the attitude conveyed by Zhang Hui, managing director of Zhongke Chuangxing, in an interview with Taber Network recently, the investment in hard technologies such as commercial aerospace is worth looking forward to.
Initial productization
Compared with the big moves of foreign countries, domestic private aerospace companies in the early stage of commercial closed loop are more like small fights.
Zhang Hui said frankly that at present, the entire industry is still in the early stage of development, which is an objective fact and also conforms to objective laws. He pointed out, "Whether it is satellites or rockets, there are still relatively few mature standardized products, let alone batch production." ”
Before the ability of private teams has been fully proven, many people have insufficient confidence in private enterprises, a sense of trust has declined, and they dare not cooperate. Even the domestic listed company Leo shares began to officially announce that they would invest $50 million in rockets to spaceX, a commercial space company in the United States.
Unfortunately, this time, Leo shares that wanted to hold Musk's thighs ate a closed door: its investment funds were returned and ridiculed by shareholders: "A big good instant becomes a big joke, not hurtful, very insulting." ”
Whether it's because SpacesX doesn't accept funding from China or for other reasons, the pressure on domestic capital to bet on good local commercial space programs has not been small.
At this point, Zhang Hui has long realized that not only China's commercial aerospace enterprises are not willing to lag behind in benchmarking the commercial aerospace enterprises of the United States, but China's investment institutions are also targeting the capital of the United States, and they are also unwilling to lag behind, especially some of our domestic investment institutions.
Under the capital increase, compared with the early stage of development (2014-2015), Zhang Hui pointed out that the initial productization has made the greatest progress in the commercial aerospace field.
After several years of development, the technological accumulation of some commercial aerospace companies has slowly developed from the past "no" to the current "basic line". In Zhang Hui's view, along with it, commercial aerospace began to significantly improve in terms of policy support, financing and market expansion, and talent attraction.
Zhang Hui pointed out that the current commercial aerospace start-up companies are mainly based on R & D and manufacturing talents, and the cities with aerospace talent advantages nationwide are the most obvious ones are Beijing and Xi'an.
In addition, many provinces and cities in China have successively introduced commercial aerospace policy measures: Wuhan will build the "third pole" of China's aerospace industry; Zhejiang Province will build an innovative aerospace industry cluster; Beijing will further optimize and stabilize the spatial layout of "South Arrow and North Star"; relying on Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Huizhou and other cities, Guangdong Province will build satellite industry clusters and industrial parks.
Earn money from apps that are more fragrant
Under the origin of more than 10 years of hard technology, the investment gene of Zhongke Chuangxing in the field of commercial aerospace has long been revealed: it has invested in some infrastructure in the initial construction of the industrial chain.
In Zhang Hui's logic, commercial aerospace is still in the infrastructure period, and most of the industry's attention is focused on capacity construction, that is, satellite production capacity and rocket carrying capacity.
According to statistics, since 2015, the total number of small launch vehicles in the world has increased by 5 times, of which many popular rocket manufacturing companies in China have focused on small rocket research and development.
Various investment institutions have made some sporadic single-point investments in the industrial chain, which has made Zhang Hui deeply aware that it is far from enough to invest in infrastructure, and the industry's attention to downstream applications should be raised.
This is also why Zhang Hui has always emphasized before, "If the rocket makes money for satellites, the measurement and control makes money for satellites, and even the entire industry is making money for satellites, the entire industrial chain is problematic." ”
In this regard, Zhang Hui further elaborated this logic to Taibo Network: the output value of the aerospace field is mainly concentrated in the application field, and everyone should earn money for satellite applications, and satellite companies should introduce new funds from outside the industrial chain, and then allocate funds to all aspects of the industrial chain.
There seems to be only one explanation, from the perspective of space and time, this track has just begun, and there are still many things to do in the future.
For Zhongke Chuangxing, Zhang Hui pointed out, "The next step of investment will still focus on the cultivation of the industrial chain, excavate a number of enterprises that master the key core component technology, promote the integrity and maturity of the commercial aerospace industry chain, and continue to pay attention to some good investment targets on satellite applications and ground terminals." ”
The market is there, the bubble is there
When returning to the ultimate goal of commercialization, there is constant controversy over the relatively limited resources and capabilities of private aerospace. In Zhang Hui's view, this is reasonable, "Private commercial aerospace companies are building capabilities from scratch, and are currently in the stage of proving themselves, and will inevitably grab the cake from the stock market." ”
In the longer term, the industrial chain dominated by non-market laws is not healthy, in addition to the road of being a national project supplier, Zhang Hui believes that commercial aerospace should find new scenes and new markets with new technologies and new models in the ideal situation. "Considering the difference in advantages, commercial aerospace companies still need to take more orders from the social market and serve a wider range of users, and there are already successful cases in the market."
However, topics such as "bubble" and "inflated valuation" are still inseparable from the main body of commercial aerospace markets and capital.
In this regard, Zhang Hui said bluntly, "It is impossible to eliminate the bubble absolutely, and any emerging field to be grown needs a bubble." The bubble represents attraction, which can direct a large amount of capital and talent and public attention to the field, which is helpful for industrial growth and attraction policies. ”
However, in the bubble, the capital has not stopped examining the risks and returns. "In the current situation that the business progress of commercial aerospace companies and the valuation of financing are relatively mismatched, investment in any link of the industrial chain should be appropriately cautious." But at the same time, it should also be based on whether the business progress and financing match, so that the bubble is kept within a moderate range. ”
This also means that even if investors are not willing to be labeled with the evaluation and label of "no ideal, no vision", the limitation of capital's focus on short-term returns does exist, which will also affect the pace and progress of research and development of enterprises to a certain extent.
In this regard, Zhang Hui gave entrepreneurs some suggestions: the entrepreneurial team with a technical background should seriously consider whether what they are doing is right, especially the technology entrepreneurs are more from their own point of view to consider the problem, sometimes may bring some limitations to the development of enterprises, business development; the financing of enterprises in the commercial aerospace field should be more with strategic vision, long-term accompaniment and empowerment of patient capital to cooperate, in accordance with the rhythm of the enterprise to promote development.
Of course, in addition to social capital, Zhang Hui also hopes that local governments will become important practitioners of the commercial aerospace industry. "The government helps enterprises to solve problems such as capital, land and policies, and even helps enterprises to dock market resources, which is of great significance for the rapid development of enterprises and the maturity of industrial chains." The competition between regions is conducive to the formation of industrial division of labor and promotes the high-quality development of the industry. ”