Wen 丨 brocade
In a year of consumer stocks plummeting, investors are struggling to figure out: What will be the next robot explosion?
With the listing of lithium electrification representative company Chervon Holdings (HK:02285) and the products previously released by the ninth company WD (SH:689009), the answer seems to have been called out, and the mystery is on the puzzle surface - intelligent lawn mowing robot.
From the perspective of volume and preliminary estimated market penetration, linear deduction, this single product may be able to recreate 8 ninth companies or 12 stone technologies (SH:688169 in the future).
In the face of this new consumption flashpoint, many seeded players are eager to move, and a war on autonomous driving on the lawn has begun.
01. Lawn Economics
For most residents in China, most of our understanding of the lawn in front of the villa and the garden behind the door comes from European and American film and television works, "green lawn, soft sunshine, humid air" makes the lawn and garden of European and American villa bungalows very beautiful.
In fact, to maintain a beautiful lawn and garden, it takes a lot of money and time and energy for residents, and European and American countries require owners to be responsible for maintaining the cleanliness of their own lawn gardens in administrative regulations, and if they do not regularly cut the lawn, they will be subject to administrative fines.
So how expensive is it for owners to either pay for mowing equipment to do it themselves or hire someone to take care of their own lawn?
Taking the US market as an example, there are about 7 months of the year that need to mow grass, and about 2-3 times a month, according to the calculation of 18 times a year, the cost of each hired person is 60-70 US dollars, and the annual cost of lawn outsourcing is about 1000-1200 US dollars.
If you take care of it yourself, the vast majority of U.S. owners will buy a gasoline lawn mower (push-to-hand) that costs about $200-400, and it is another expense to regularly change pistons, filters, spark plugs and other components. At the same time, the time cost of self-mowing lawn attachment is high: $1260 = 18 times/year pruning ×2 hours/h× $35/hour.
It is understood that there are about 250 million private lawns and gardens in the world, 80 million distributed in European countries, and 100 million concentrated in the US market. At present, the global lawn mower market is about 60-70 billion US dollars, of which the size of the riding lawn mower is around 12 billion US dollars, the rest is mainly a hand-pushed lawn mower, and the scale of the mower robot with automatic driving function is only more than 1 billion US dollars.
For the emerging players of A-shares and their investors, the market of mowing lawn has great temptation, especially players who can come up with intelligent lawn mowing robots, because it has the ability to subvert the market and fits the core logic of the large consumer industry.
02, the three major logics of the large consumer industry
At present, many companies on the market are preparing to "attack" the big cake of intelligent lawn mowing robots, if divided into two categories according to their camps:
Traditional companies, including the largest mowing robot manufacturer Husqvarna (covering the Husqvarna brand and Gardena brand), Boschde.
Emerging technology companies, including Nine (SH:689009), Coworth (SH:603486), DJI, etc.
In addition, Alibaba and some companies from the field of autonomous driving are developing product solutions for intelligent lawn mowing robots.
The reason why all parties are focusing on this area is nothing more than the high coupling between intelligent lawn mower robots and the core growth logic of the large consumer industry - brand building, category expansion, and technological upgrading:
Coca-Cola and Moutai are typical of the growth brought about by brand building, which allows Coca-Cola to occupy the global market and allows Moutai to obtain sustained premium capabilities.
Coworth has been recognized by the capital market with the floor washing robot as the second growth curve, which perfectly interprets what is called category expansion.
Stone Technology stands out with a planned sweeping robot, and Dyson relies on core motor technology to create a high-end vacuum cleaner brand, which are all cases of reshaping the industry with technology.
At present, the core growth logic brought by intelligent lawn mowing robots is based on technological upgrading to reshape the industry. The newly entered companies such as No. 9 and Coworth contain the logic of category expansion. Under the superposition of the two phases is a huge potential.
03, why optimistic about mowing robots
As mentioned earlier, the global lawn mower market is about 60-70 billion US dollars, of which the future of lawn mower robots will be what will be the situation? Let's compare.
The evolution of operations on the lawn has generally gone through pure manual mowing, gasoline lawn mowers, lithium electric lawn mowing equipment, lawn mowing robots and other forms:
Manual mowing is time-consuming and laborious;
Gasoline lawn mowers are not environmentally friendly and will gradually be retired in Europe and the United States;
Lithium battery mowing equipment is still very expensive;
Random lawn mower robots save manpower is the biggest highlight, but not mature enough.
Unlike random lawn mowers, intelligent lawn mowers will quickly detonate the market.
The penetration rate of random lawn mower robots in Europe is around 10%, while the penetration rate of lawn mower robots in the United States is negligible, less than 1%. Based on the operating principle of "wiring + random collision", the random lawn mowing robot has been developed for nearly 10 years, although the cost has dropped to the $1,000 level of mass consumption, but it is still unsatisfactory in terms of efficiency and effect.
First of all, the automation products on the market need to arrange (bury) the edge to lock in the weeding range, and the operation is cumbersome and requires specialized personnel to spend half a day and incur external service costs (about 20%-30% of the product price).
Secondly, due to the setting of volume and product structure, the weeding range of automation products is generally between 500-600 square meters, so it is more suitable for the lawn and garden of European families, and is not suitable for the private lawn of the Average 1000 square meters in the United States.
What is more fatal is the product force pulling crotch brought about by the backwardness of technology, and one indicator to measure the efficiency of the lawn mowing robot is the coverage rate (that is, the effective weeding area per unit time), and the random collision products are generally between 20% and 30%, and it is likely that the effect is not good after multiple operations:
A meal operation is as fierce as a tiger, half of the lawn does not move the soil, and at the end it needs manpower to make up.
If a reasonably priced, solid and complete intelligent lawn mowing robot can appear on the market, it can fully hit the grass mowing pain points of European and American house owners, thus triggering a comprehensive replacement of products.
After all, if a product is really easy to use, the basic principles of supply and demand in economics have to play a role: prices fall and demand rises. Prices have been drastically reduced, reshaping the market. If the future lawn mowing robot is within 3,000 US dollars, according to 4 years of depreciation, the annual cost is 750 US dollars, which is a huge improvement. Moreover, the smart lawn mower released by the ninth last year has a price of 1200-2500 euros, and the four-year depreciation is 300-625 euros.
At present, the participants of random lawn mowing robots mainly include Husqvarna Group (including Husqvarna and Gardena), Baoshide, which account for about 90% of the global lawn mowing robot share according to the shipment, of which Husqvarna has 450,000 units, Gardena 300,000 units, and Baoshide 300,000 units. According to industry insiders, Husqvarna Group may not be eager to seek intelligent transformation due to the reason that "elephants are difficult to turn", but the intelligent determination of domestic company Baoshide is more resolute.
For secondary market investors, we believe that there should be different attitudes towards related companies in A-shares and Hong Kong stocks.
04, different attitudes to see A/H players
Maybe only two or three years, the market share of intelligent lawn mowing robots can be raised to 15%. According to the market space of 70 billion US dollars, it is 10.5 billion US dollars, equivalent to 67 billion yuan.
In fact, intelligent lawn mowing robots can make the market bigger, because in the past, the time cost of owners who built their own lawns became real gold and platinum to buy equipment, and we did not care about this for the time being.
The three companies in the A-share are all companies with reserves in the field of AI or driverless technology. It has also more or less proved itself through products and can pay close attention to the dynamics of its mowing robots. Judging by their current size, the impact of intelligent lawn mower robots is significant.
For the 12 months ended September 30, 2021, Coworth had revenue of 11.34 billion yuan, company 9 had revenue of 8.89 billion yuan, and stone technology revenue was 5.38 billion yuan.
That is to say, linear deduction, in the next few years, the intelligent lawn mowing robot market can recreate 6 Coworth, 8 9 companies, or 12 stone technology.
For the two Companies in Hong Kong Stocks, the focus is on risk prevention. The old leader I&T Industry with the TTI brand, and Chervon Holdings, which was only listed at the end of December, companies based on the lithium-ionization path, if they cannot keep up with the trend of the intelligent industry, the former will open the value destruction, and the latter may face the situation of listing as the peak.
The source of risk is whether a simple lithium battery will be a transitional product. This will be discussed later.
As far as the trend of industry development is concerned, intelligence is the trend of the times, just like pure electric vehicles cannot be sold in the long run, not to mention Tesla and "Wei Xiaoli" (Weilai, Ideal Automobile, Xiaopeng Automobile), even BYD, Great Wall Motors, and GAC are vigorously embracing automatic driving.
05. Technical beliefs
Similar to the sweeping robot (trilobite) that appeared more than 20 years ago, the lawn mowing robot is not a new object, but has redefined the industry with the gradual advancement of technology.
In fact, Coworth began to develop lawn mowing robots from 2014 to 2016, but did not produce substantial results, and in recent years it has begun to set up projects to cut into the lawn mower market, and plans to launch products in early 2023.
According to relevant understanding, the reason for the re-establishment of the project is that the improvement of the chip computing power has expanded the outdoor visual algorithm capability, and then from the perspective of the visual algorithm technology path of its sweeping robot, its intelligent lawn mowing robot will continue this path.
However, Coworth's experience also shows from another perspective that possible lawn mowing robots have a higher technical threshold than sweeping robots, including obstacle avoidance capabilities, safety regulations, and algorithm capabilities. According to the development of its sweeping robot, continuous market data accumulation is also crucial, and the first mover will build a closed loop of "the more you sell, the richer the data samples, the continuous optimization of the algorithm, and the better user experience".
Judging from the progress of companies, No. 9 may be the first to launch an intelligent lawn mowing robot based on RTK technology and ultrasonic sensors, and its planned products will be on sale in May 2022 at a price of between 1200-2500 euros, which has shown The ambition of No. 9 to become a "dragon slayer teenager". However, judging from the market feedback of its 100 prototypes, there is still room for great improvement in the ability of its products to avoid obstacles, which may further extend the time span of its products from release to listing (originally planned to be launched in February and March 2022).
Bosite, an important player in the "wiring + random collision" lawn mowing robot (about 25% of the city), is working with intelligent solution provider Zhongke Chuangda (SZ:300496) to achieve the settlement of intelligent algorithm technology, and its products integrate RTK technology and visual algorithm technology, and it is expected to release a "borderless + route planning" lawn mowing robot in 2022. Due to the integration of the two intelligent technologies, the cost of its products is likely to be higher than that of Company Nine, but the market may be more concerned about the performance of efficiency and effectiveness.
In addition, DJI and Ali are also cutting into this track, their advantage is to accumulate high algorithmic capabilities, but the product structure of the lawn mower lacks knowhow, so their entry methods either choose to develop their own development and lengthen the cycle, or will cooperate with traditional lawn mower manufacturers to launch products.
There are many participants who are eager to try, and everyone wants to get the first wave of market dividends, but in any case, intelligent lawn mowing robots are the trend of the times, and the intelligent war on the lawn is starting.
And the war brought about by this intelligence, not only on the lawn, but also in the living room (sweeping robots), on the road (robot cars), people's clothing (Tmall TMIC and shein), everywhere, and eventually you will find that technology is the only faith that spans the industry.