Market value of more than 40 billion! Benefiting from automatic driving and the Internet of Vehicles, NavInfo turned a profit

Text/Yang Jianyong

Due to the significant increase in high-precision maps, automatic driving data compliance platforms, autonomous driving solutions, and intelligent networking business commercialization and mass production cooperation, NavInfo's new revenue has achieved great growth, especially the operating income of advanced assisted driving, autonomous driving, and the Internet of Vehicles has achieved a substantial increase compared with 2020. According to the performance forecast, the revenue in 2021 is 2.9 billion yuan - 3.1 billion yuan, an increase of 35.03% - 44.34% year-on-year, and the net profit is expected to be 101 million to 131 million yuan, a year-on-year turnaround. The loss in 2020 was 309 million yuan.

The image is from NavInfo's new website

In fact, in the third quarter of 2021, NavInfo has achieved a turnaround, with a net profit of 13.87 million yuan in the quarter. However, the tight supply of automotive electronic chips and the growth of raw material prices still have a greater impact on the company, and the first three quarters of 2021 (January to September) still lost 41.77 million yuan. With the recovery of the automobile market, automobile production and sales increased year-on-year, and the revenue of NavInfo's new navigation business increased. At the same time, affected by the increase in the income of the fixed increase in the raised funds, the loss in the first three quarters narrowed, and the loss was reversed in the third quarter.

NavInfo's main business mainly includes navigation business, advanced assisted driving and automatic driving business, Vehicle Networking business, chip business, and location big data service business. Among the several major business segments, the Internet of Vehicles has the highest revenue scale, accounting for more than 40% of the total revenue. In the first half of 2021, the revenue from the Internet of Vehicles sector was 529 million yuan, an increase of 22% year-on-year, accounting for 44.18% of the total revenue. It mainly provides dynamic travel information, intelligent networking terminal equipment and software and hardware integrated solutions, big data operation platforms and scenario-based application solutions, including dynamic traffic information service business, passenger car networking business and commercial vehicle networking business.

Followed by the navigation sector, with revenue of 328 million yuan in the first half of 2021, accounting for 27.39% of total revenue. It mainly refers to the provision of national basic navigation electronic map data and scenario-based data-based products, data format conversion compilation and online update services, multi-modal navigation software and solutions. Among them, the company's vehicle-level national basic navigation electronic map data, road coverage mileage, scene richness and online service capabilities are leading in China, which can meet the increasingly complex and high-level application needs of trucks/pedestrians/public transportation, residential/scenic spots/parks, commercial complexes/building indoor/underground parking lots, high-speed toll collection/vehicle restrictions/road construction/new energy vehicle charging.

It should be pointed out that advanced assisted driving and automatic driving and chips are the most beautiful growth sectors, with an increase of 71.89% and 29% respectively. NavInfo's new advanced assisted driving and autonomous driving business mainly refers to the provision of ADAS maps, HD maps, compliant storage and hosting, automatic driving cloud, automatic driving simulation, high-precision positioning and fusion positioning, full-stack autonomous driving solutions for all scenarios, and related cutting-edge technology research and development, joint verification and mass production for different levels of autonomous driving application needs. For example, as Tier-1, it has become a fixed-point supplier of Kaiyi Automobile's multi-level automatic driving system, and will provide L0 to L2.9 level automatic driving software and hardware integrated full-stack solutions for its mass production models, including parking domain and driving domain.

FourInfo's new business is mainly for automotive electronics subdivisions such as automotive infotainment systems, intelligent cockpit systems, active safety systems, body control systems, and autonomous driving systems, designing, developing, producing and selling automotive electronic chips, and providing highly integrated and integrated system solutions. At present, the new generation of intelligent cockpit chip AC8015 to achieve mass production of goods, in addition, the second generation of high-performance intelligent cockpit chip AC8025 into the research and development stage, is expected to have the first batch of samples for customer product development in 2022.

A new generation of smart cockpit chips has helped automaker customers complete the on-board verification, and many models equipped with AC8015 have entered the mass production stage, and it is expected to match more mass production models in the future. The second generation of vehicle-grade MCUs entered the mass production and realized large shipments in the automotive electronics market and high-end industrial markets. The second generation of AMP in-vehicle power electronic chips has been verified and recognized by the market, and has been equipped with mass production models of domestic leading new forces car companies, and officially mass-produced goods. In the first half of 2021, the revenue from the chip sector reached 153 million yuan, an increase of 29% year-on-year, and the proportion of revenue increased to 12.73%, which is the third largest revenue sector of the company.

This is mainly due to the acquisition of J&D Technology, which deepens the connection and synergy with the talent and industrial resources of automotive electronics and smart chips. Auto customers mainly include Daimler, BMW, Volkswagen, Toyota, Lexus and many other mainstream car companies. In the field of Internet of Vehicles and autonomous driving, through the vertical and deep integration of talents and industrial resources and the cultivation and incubation of future-oriented, we will continue to create future-oriented "data + cloud + AI + chip + software and hardware integration" solution service capabilities, and continuously optimize and improve in the fields of architecture, algorithms, applications, operating systems, in-vehicle hardware, domain controllers, cloud platforms, simulation tests and other fields.

Finally, the transformation of the automobile industry has accelerated, emerging players have invested in high-investment layout, and the commercialization process of automotive intelligent and electrification-related products and services has been continuously promoted, and market competition has become increasingly fierce. In the face of increasingly fierce global market competition, in order to promote the future development strategy, NavInfo needs to continue to maintain a high investment in high-precision maps, high-precision positioning, automatic driving overall solutions, intelligent cockpit chips and other vehicle-related fields, whether industrial collaboration and capital investment can be put in place in a timely manner, and whether new product development and productization paths can withstand market verification and quickly form competitive advantages, facing certain risks.

Of course, with the transformation of the automotive industry entering a deepening period, the development of automotive semiconductor cores will also usher in unprecedented major opportunities and challenges. At present, "electrification, intelligence, networking, sharing" has become an irreversible change trend in the automobile industry, and under the new trend, chips are gradually becoming the most core components of intelligent cars. NavInfo's new CEO Cheng Peng previously said. It can be said that a new round of automobile reform is bringing a huge incremental space to the automotive chip industry, among which automotive intelligence is particularly obvious for the improvement of the value of bicycle chips.

Yang Jianyong, a Forbes China contributor, expresses views only on behalf of individuals. He won the NetEase 2020 Most Influential Award, dedicated to the in-depth interpretation of cutting-edge technologies such as the Internet of Things, cloud services and artificial intelligence, and his views and research strategies have been cited by many authoritative media and well-known enterprises.