As the saying goes, the best car is always the next, as the world's largest single car market, China's car ownership since 2016 into the peak growth period, although the growth rate has slowed down, but the peak period of car replacement has gradually arrived, the development of new car models and the speed of replacement continues to accelerate. In order to meet the market demand, major car companies have delve into more efficient production methods to shorten the research and development cycle of new models, such as the BMA architecture developed by Geely Automobile, which can shorten the research and development time of new cars to 18-24 months, which is nearly double the research and development speed of traditional platforms.
The continuous emergence of new models has also injected fresh blood into the auto parts market, and as the key equipment for completing the molding of auto parts and achieving mass production of automobiles, molds play an important role in the whole process. The data shows that more than 90% of the parts in automobile production need to rely on mold molding. China's auto mold market with the rapid development of the automobile industry continues to expand, and gave birth to large and small automotive mold manufacturers, Nantong Chaoda Equipment Co., Ltd. (stock code: 301186 stock abbreviation: Chaoda equipment) is located in the forefront of the industry excellent target. The company has been working hard in the mold field for many years, with the ability to develop molds and other supporting products for automakers and automotive interior and exterior suppliers synchronously, with a wealth of product lines, stable product quality, rapid market response and other advantages have won the recognition and praise of a number of domestic and foreign customers. On December 23, Chaoda Equipment successfully landed on the A-share market, furthering towards the beautiful vision of becoming a leading international non-standard equipment manufacturer in the automotive industry.
Focus on automotive interior and exterior molds, integrated supporting services to lay a leading position in the industry
Mold is also known as the "mother of industry", in the 1980s, China's mold industry began to develop on a large scale, and with the continuous changes in the market, the traditional mold manufacturing enterprises gradually completed the transformation from "all-round mold factory" to professional mold enterprises serving specific products in specific industries.
Since the 21st century, China's automotive industry has entered a period of rapid development, the huge demand of the downstream market makes the automotive mold become one of the most important components of China's mold market, the data show that China has about 1/3 of the mold products for the automotive industry service.
Such a huge market is naturally divided into multiple branches, founded in 2005, Chaoda Equipment mainly focuses on the field of soft trim and foam parts molds in automotive interior and exterior molds. You know, although there are many companies in this field, they are generally small, and there has not been a listed company before.
The main mold products of Chaoda Equipment include the internal and external decoration molds used to manufacture various soft trim parts and foam parts such as roofs, carpets, side walls, instrument panels, seats, luggage interior parts, bottom guards, etc.; automotive seat foam molds used to produce various types of automotive seat foam filling materials; and automotive exterior trim molds used in automotive exterior trim products such as bumpers, bottom guards, fenders and other products.
With long-term continuous innovation in products and technologies, the company's R&D, design and production capacity in the field of automotive soft trim and foam molds are in the first phalanx position in the industry, and it is also one of the largest suppliers of automotive soft trim and foam molds in China.
With the continuous development of Chaoda equipment, in order to better meet the diversified needs of customers, the company has extended and developed the automotive inspection tool, automated tooling equipment and parts business on the basis of the automotive mold business, thus forming an integrated supporting service capability of "mold, inspection and work", and further strengthening the company's market competitiveness.
According to the prospectus, from 2018 to June 2021, the company's total sales revenue of inspection tools, automated tooling equipment and parts was 106.7384 million yuan, 111.5469 million yuan, 140.4882 million yuan and 76.1212 million yuan, accounting for 23.18%, 25.11%, 31.26% and 35.86% of the company's operating income, respectively, showing a sustained growth trend and playing a positive role in the company's operating performance.
The "one body, two wings" pattern of molds, gauges, automated tooling equipment and parts makes Chaoda Equipment one of the few enterprises in China that can independently complete the whole process of automobile internal and external molds from research and development, design, wood mold, casting, CNC machining, assembly, mold trial to subsequent modification and maintenance, and because it has the ability to develop molds and other supporting products for automakers and automotive interior and exterior suppliers, it is welcomed by well-known auto parts enterprises at home and abroad.
Customers cover first-tier suppliers, and high reputation boosts the company's continuous growth
Since automotive molds are mostly customized products, downstream vehicle manufacturers or auto parts companies have strict requirements for suppliers' process standards, product quality, delivery time, after-sales service, etc., and need to be assessed to be included in the supplier system. Having stable product quality and market reputation will undoubtedly become a plus point for passing the assessment.
Over the years, Chaoda Equipment has won wide recognition from many customers at home and abroad with its stable product quality, efficient production efficiency and good cost performance. In the domestic market, the company's customers basically cover the wholly-owned or joint venture first-class suppliers set up by major international well-known automotive interior and exterior enterprises in China and most of the well-known local automotive interior and exterior first-class suppliers; in the international market, the company mainly provides automotive interior and exterior molds and supporting products for the factories invested and set up by internationally renowned automotive interior and exterior suppliers in Europe, North America and Asia.
According to the list of the world's top 100 auto parts suppliers in 2020 released by Automotive News, a total of 26 companies have automotive interior and exterior trim products business, and the company has reached cooperative relations with 19 of them. And the average cooperation period with the top five customers is more than 10 years.
In addition to mold products, Chaoda equipment gauge products in the more complex structure, higher unit price of the main model of the car has also gradually won the wide recognition of customers, sales volume and revenue proportion continues to increase, the type of customer group is also further expanded, in the SAIC-GM, SAIC Group, Geely Automobile, FAW-Volkswagen, FAW Besturn and other domestic mainstream vehicle manufacturers sales at the same time, but also to WM Motors and other new energy vehicle manufacturers and commercial vehicle manufacturers Dayun Automobile sales.
From 2018 to June 2021, the company's total assets were 683.0965 million yuan, 757.2801 million yuan, 817.5176 million yuan and 798.9796 million yuan, and the net assets were 497.4720 million yuan, 543.3224 million yuan, 611.3929 million yuan and 638.0284 million yuan, respectively, and the overall scale of the company continued to expand.
From 2018 to June 20, 2021, the company's orders on hand were 393.7071 million yuan, 401.6366 million yuan, 354.9872 million yuan and 409.979 million yuan, respectively. And with the normalization of the new crown pneumonia epidemic and prevention and control in the United States, as of the end of 2020, the company's order amount in hand for U.S. customers has increased significantly, with orders in hand 17.103 million yuan, 9.8213 million yuan, 22.1994 million yuan and 21.6205 million yuan respectively in the same period, and also newly opened Kotobukiya Treves North America, Inc. (Shouya Taifo) and other customers, and the United States AAF, Cooperation with customers such as EFP is also deepening.
In the future, with the transformation of the automobile market, automotive interior and exterior molds will usher in a broad market prospect, and as one of the largest suppliers of automotive soft trim and foam molds in China, Chaoda Equipment, which has a deep foundation and strong growth vitality, will also gain higher development space.
New urbanization superimposes carbon neutrality, and the automotive industry has entered a new era of fast trotting
The main customers of automotive molds are OEMs and auto parts suppliers, although the supply and demand of the downstream automotive vehicle market will not directly affect the supply and demand of automotive molds, but the strong demand of the downstream automotive industry will lay a good market foundation for the sustainable development of the upstream automotive mold industry.
Although China's automobile market has won the first place in global sales for many consecutive years, in fact, compared with developed countries, the per capita ownership of automobiles in China is still significantly low. According to the data released by the World Bank on the number of cars per thousand people in major countries around the world, the number of cars per thousand in China in 2019 was 173, only about 20% of the car ownership of 1,000 people in the United States (837 vehicles), and about 30% of the car ownership in Japan (591 vehicles), which is still far from the main developed countries, especially the per capita car ownership in the third and fourth-tier cities and the central and western regions, which is far lower than the average level of developed countries.
In recent years, in order to promote the implementation of the new urbanization strategy and the high-quality development of new urbanization, the state has also issued a series of relevant policies, in April 2019, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the "Key Tasks of New Urbanization Construction in 2019" to further propose the tasks of deepening the reform of the household registration system and promoting the coordinated development of large, medium, and small cities. The increase in the urbanization rate will correspondingly drive the increase in China's automobile ownership, providing a new market space for the development of China's automotive industry. Not only that, the state has also actively restarted the "car to the countryside" policy to encourage rural automobile consumption.
Of course, under the vision of "carbon peaking by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060", the requirements for automobile environmental protection and energy saving will become increasingly stringent, which is not only reflected in the outbreak of the new energy vehicle market, but also makes automobile lightweight an unstoppable trend in the development of the world's automobiles. The so-called automobile lightweight is the use of modern design methods and effective means to optimize the design of automotive products, through the use of new materials, in order to ensure the strength, safety, reliability and other comprehensive performance indicators of the automobile, as far as possible to reduce the weight of automotive products themselves, "Made in China 2025" has taken lightweight as an important direction for the development of the automotive industry.
The rapid development of the automotive industry has accelerated the speed of downstream products from appearance design to product performance update, and then the requirements for upstream mold products have been continuously improved. However, at present, China's automotive mold manufacturing enterprises, especially automotive interior and exterior mold enterprises, generally have the problem of small scale and limited level of technology and equipment. This has also led to fierce competition among most of China's auto mold companies in the middle and low grades, but few companies have the ability to enter the high-end market.
To this end, the Chinese government has also introduced the corresponding policy support and encouragement of automotive mold enterprises to innovate and develop, according to the China Mould Industry Association "Mold Industry Development Thirteenth Five-Year Guidelines Outline" proposed in the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" during the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" put forward the development goals of the mold industry, the future domestic market domestic mold self-matching rate will reach more than 90%, manufacturing technology development and transformation and upgrading in the need for high-grade molds in the total number of molds the proportion of 60%.
Keep up with the development trend of the industry, break the bottleneck of production capacity and go further
In the face of the opportunities brought about by industry changes, the development ideas of China's mold industry have gradually shifted from past technology imitation and tracking to mainly relying on independent innovation to improve product technology content, thereby improving the overall development level of the industry. Mold companies should not only adapt to the shorter and shorter new car research and development cycle and launch new products in a timely manner, but also actively promote the application of new materials to cater to the development trend of automobile lightweight.
Chaoda Equipment is a key backbone mold enterprise and a key mold export enterprise in China awarded by the China Mould Industry Association, and has "Jiangsu Provincial Enterprise Technology Center" and "Jiangsu Large-scale Complex Mold Process and Manufacturing Engineering Technology Research Center". From 2018 to June 2021, the company's R&D expenses were 35.105 million yuan, 35.0924 million yuan, 34.5924 million yuan and 15.9581 million yuan, accounting for 7.41%, 7.84%, 7.66% and 7.32% of the operating income in the same period, respectively. Up to now, the company has a total of 128 patents, including 63 invention patents and 65 utility model patents, which is the industry's top number of invention patents. He also presided over the formulation of EPS (hairtable polystyrene) and EPP (foam polypropylene) foam mold industry standard "EPS, EPP foam mold technical conditions" (JB/T11662-2013).
On the other hand, Chaoda Equipment is also actively exploring opportunities in the field of new energy automobile industry, developing molds, molds and automated tooling products for new energy vehicle models on the basis of the original business, and the products have been directly or indirectly applied to Tesla, Weilai, BYD, Geely and other new energy vehicle manufacturers. The company also added auto parts business in 2019, mainly for power battery boxes, which has achieved further extension to the downstream of the new energy vehicle industry chain. As of the end of the reporting period, the company has achieved sales of such products to new energy vehicle battery manufacturers such as Guoxuan Hi-Tech.
However, with the introduction of new models of automobiles in the future and the shortening of the cycle of original model modifications, the order demand of domestic and foreign customers is growing, and Chaoda Equipment is also facing the trouble of insufficient production capacity. In this landing on the capital market, the company intends to raise 445.1082 million yuan, mainly for the expansion of large-scale complex interior and exterior molds and the expansion of R&D centers.
The former will expand the production lines of the three main products of the automobile large soft interior molding mold, the automobile large soft interior punching and cutting mold, and the automobile seat foam mold, and enhance the company's comprehensive supply capacity and overall sales scale; the latter can further enhance the technical research and development strength of Chaoda equipment, so that the company's market, production and scientific research are closely integrated, laying the foundation for the implementation of the development strategy of "production generation, research and development generation, reserve generation, and idea generation", and is also conducive to cultivating and introducing more technical high-end talents. Lay the foundation for the company's sustainable development.
In the past 16 years, as a leading supplier of automotive interior and exterior molds in China, Chaoda Equipment has relied on excellent product quality and "mold, inspection, and engineering" integrated supporting service capabilities, while gaining industry reputation, it has also won the trust of many customers, and the company continues to develop well. In the future, the company will continue to take mold design and manufacturing as the core, to the international and domestic market demand as the guide, while consolidating and enhancing the competitive advantage of its own mold products, actively expand the automotive interior and exterior trim gauges, body gauges, main model matching gauges and automated tooling equipment / production lines and other business areas, and constantly deepen cooperation with international mainstream automotive OEMs and primary suppliers of interior and exterior decoration (internal and external decoration assembly suppliers), and strive to become the world's important R & D and manufacturing base for automotive interior and exterior molds and non-standard equipment.