Reporter | Cao Li CL
Edit | Chen Feiyi
1
The purest lidar company in A shares has come. On December 24, Juguang Technology (688167. SH) on the first day of listing on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, the opening rose by 166.87%.
The IPO of Juguang Technology was priced at 78.69 yuan per share, with 22.49 million newly issued shares, a total share capital of 67.47 million shares before the listing, and a valuation of 18.89 billion yuan. The company expects the net profit attributable to the mother in 2021 to be 60 million yuan to 70 million yuan, calculated according to the 65 million yuan hub, corresponding to a price-earnings ratio of 290 times. Even considering the new revenue generated by the fundraising project and the scarcity of the industry, the valuation is still not cheap.
At the same time, the company has also gathered a number of cutting-edge businesses such as lithography machines and lidar, what is the big chess game that Torch Technology wants to play?
Bottom recovery
Torch Technology's current business is in the upstream and middle reaches of the laser industry chain. In the upstream of the laser industry chain, semiconductor laser components and laser optical components are covered, and in the middle reaches, it covers photonic application modules and systems including lidar emission modules.
Source: Company Announcement, Interface News Research Department
In terms of performance, Juguang Technology's revenue grew rapidly from 131 million yuan in 2016 to 355 million yuan, and its growth in 2019 and 2020 basically stagnated. In the first three quarters of 2021, the company's revenue was 343 million yuan, an increase of 29.33% year-on-year, returning to the growth trend.
Source: Wind, Interface News Research Department
TorchLight's net profit is also not stable. Since 2016, profitability has basically shown a one-year loss, and in 2019, the company's net profit in the first three quarters of 2021 was 56.896 million yuan.
In terms of business, the growth of Juguang Technology's semiconductor laser business has stagnated, and even declined in 2020, the growth momentum of laser optical business is relatively good, and the laser radar and optical system business is still in the cultivation period.
According to the explanation of the company's prospectus, "In 2020 and January-June 2021, the main business income of the semiconductor laser business decreased compared with the previous year, mainly due to the reduction in downstream market demand affected by the epidemic. ”
Juguang Technology downstream customer Innova Laser (301021. SZ) saw its revenue fall 5.65% in 2020, with another customer, Rixo Laser (300747. SZ) revenue increased by 15.25% in 2020, it should be said that the epidemic has an impact on the industry is a fact, but Juguang Technology has been more affected by the impact of the epidemic, and the follow-up recovery situation remains to be seen.
Specifically, Juguang Technology's semiconductor laser business mainly includes semiconductor laser devices, various modules and materials.
At present, fiber lasers and solid-state lasers have a wide range of applications in the downstream fields of laser processing, optical communication and lidar. Semiconductor lasers are packaged by laser diode chips, heat sinks and related structural parts, while TorchLight's laser diode chips still need to be purchased. Therefore, the core technology of TorchLight Technology is mainly reflected in the packaging.
From the application point of view, downstream manufacturers are more inclined to directly purchase packaged semiconductor laser devices or modules from Torch Technology, and at present, only fiber laser manufacturers with packaging capabilities such as Chuangxin Laser will purchase prefabricated gold tin thin film ceramic heat sinks from the company instead of semiconductor lasers. In addition, the company's high-power semiconductor laser products have also been applied to the major projects of the national inertial constraint controllable nuclear fusion test device known as "artificial sun", which can also explain the company's technical strength to a certain extent.
Is LIMO a premium asset?
Juguang Technology's acquisition of LIMO in May 2017 is also the key to measuring the value of Juguang Technology.
Founded in 1992 and located in Dortmund, Germany, LIMO offers refractive micro-optics and optical shaping systems for various types of lasers.
Kaiyuan Securities pointed out in the research report: "Since beam quality is currently one of the key factors restricting the widespread application of high-power semiconductor lasers in the market, micro-optics and beam shaping technology can improve beam quality problems." The company's acquisition of LIMO effectively combines its mastery of semiconductor laser packaging technology with LIMO's world-leading micro-optical and beam shaping technologies to create synergies. ”
But in 2019, LIMO had a goodwill impairment of 57.0826 million yuan, is this company a high-quality asset?
After the acquisition of LIMO, Juguang Technology carried out a strategic reorganization of LIMO in 2019, forming a combination of three asset groups of semiconductor laser product line (ILS), laser optical product line (MO), and optical system product line (UVL), and impairment of goodwill of laser optical product line (MO).
Subsequently, Torch Technology gradually began to absorb and transform LIMO's technology, retaining LIMO's original business laser optical product line (MO) in LIMO, and jointly engaging in laser optical components business in Dongguan's new production capacity; transferring LIMO's semiconductor laser product line (mainly industrial application modules, ILS) to Xi'an operation, enriching the product line of high-power semiconductor lasers; and splitting LIMO's optical system product line (UVL) into LIMO Display After injection into Haining Torch Operation.
In the laser optics business of Torch Technology, LIMO products are the mainstay, of which single (non-) spherical cylindrical lenses and light field homogenizers are the two main products, with revenue of 65.22 million yuan and 20.14 million yuan in the first half of 2021, respectively.
Single (non)spherical cylindrical lenses are mainly used to compress the divergence angle of the laser beam, making it easier for the laser beam to couple into the fiber, and is a key optical component in the fiber laser.
The light field homogenizer is used in the main domestic lithography machine research and development projects and prototypes, and supplied to the world's top optical company A company, and finally applied to ASML lithography machine. ZEISS is the most important supplier of optical components for ASML lithography machines, and it is likely to be the supplier A company mentioned in the prospectus. It can be seen that the unit price of the light field homogenizer is about 200,000 yuan, and the gross profit margin for lithography and other applications in the first half of 2021 is 67.3% and 76.85%, respectively, which is the highest gross profit margin among all products. From this perspective, LIMO has its own special strategic value.
Data source: Company announcement, interface news research department lidar to fatigue monitoring
From the perspective of revenue, the lidar business will be the main growth point of TorchLight Technology in the future. The business's revenue in 2018 was only 2.19 million yuan, and it has grown to 29.16 million yuan by 2020.
In 2019, juguang technology and the German continental group cooperation project fixed point, from the sale of semiconductor laser components to provide customers with lidar launch modules, the total amount of the framework agreement is equivalent to about 400 million yuan. The lidar emission module is one of the three modules of laser beam emission, laser beam manipulation and laser beam reception in the lidar photoelectric system.
According to the contract plan, the number of Torch Technology LiDAR launch modules sold to Continental every year will increase from 1859 in 2020 to 28535 in 2024, and the unit price will also be reduced from 1008 euros to 549 euros.
In 2020, Juguang Technology's sales of LiDAR launch modules to Continental Group were 27.3749 million yuan, accounting for 94% of the company's laser revenue that year.
However, as of June 30, 2021, there is a certain difference between the actual number of executions sold by Juguang Technology to Continental and the forecasted progress, with 6950 units planned for the full year of 2021 and only 396 actual sales in the first half of the year. The company pointed out that on the one hand, the reason is that the customer has been affected by the epidemic in Europe, and the mass production progress of the whole machine system has been delayed; on the other hand, the reason is that the commercialization progress of the global lidar industry has been delayed to a certain extent.
In August 2021, Continental has adjusted its annual procurement plan from 6,950 to about 5,300.
Juguang Technology's IPO fundraising projects include Juguang Technology Dongguan Micro-Optics and Application Project (Phase I Project) and LiDAR Launch Module Industrialization Project, which will add 26 million laser optical components and 3.07 million lidar launch modules after production, corresponding to new annual sales revenue of 252 million yuan and 298 million yuan, which means that the annual revenue will increase by 550 million yuan after production, which is equivalent to 1.57 times the revenue of 350 million yuan in 2020.
It is worth noting that the unit price of the lidar module in the fundraising project is only 97.2 yuan, which is far lower than the unit price of 549 euros sold by Juguang Technology to the Lidar launch module of Continental Group in 2024.
At present, the on-board lidar launch module can be used to perceive both the external environment and the driver's fatigue monitoring. Among them, the technical requirements for driver fatigue monitoring are relatively lower, and the unit price is cheaper. Therefore, most of the 3.07 million new lidar launch module annual production capacity of Torch Technology may be lidar for fatigue monitoring, and the value is relatively low.
In addition, Juguang Technology mentioned in the prospectus that the company has reached cooperation intentions or established cooperation projects with many well-known enterprises in North America, Europe and Asia, including Velodyne LiDAR, a listed company on NASDAQ LiDAR in the United States, Luminar, and Argo AI, a well-known driverless company under Ford. From this point of view, Juguang Technology can indeed be called the purest lidar business unit in A-shares at present.