Robots and metaverses are two buzzwords that were born in nearly the same way, and the term metaverse first came from the science fiction novel Avalanche written by writer Neal Stephenson in 1992, which describes an interactive world in which avatars interact in three-dimensional space. Robots are derived from the 1920 Czech playwright Carrilo Chibek in his science fiction play "Rosam Universal Robot Manufacturing Company", which first used the term ROBOT, and then became synonymous with robots.
Nearly the same origin, so that the robot and the metaverse together to show human cognition of new technology enlightenment, practical pursuit, and under the former Facebook Meta, robots and metaverse are also wonderfully intertwined, robots unexpectedly defeat computers, mobile phones, speakers and other multimedia, become the entrance to the metaverse. Recently, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated a voice robot Buildter Bot that can take human voice commands and generate or import things from the virtual world.
It can be seen that robots and metaversms are in the same vein and are closely related to the development of technologies such as AI, big data, and 5G. Driven by the above various technologies, the development of the robot industry representing new technologies has surged in recent years, attracting multiple industries such as Internet technology and intelligent manufacturing, and the track is crowded.
Robot representative enterprises, industrial control leader Huichuan Technology disclosed in a recent survey that it is expanding its own industrial robot product line for the needs of specific industry customer groups, and will successively launch heavy-duty six-joint robots.
Expansion of industrial robots
The six-joint robot mentioned in huichuan technology this time, also known as the joint mechanical arm or multi-joint robot, the movement of each joint is rotating, similar to the human arm.
In 1974, Cincinnati Milacron successfully developed a multi-articulated robot, which for decades has become one of the most common forms of industrial robots in today's industrial field, and is widely used in automobile and auto parts manufacturing, mechanical processing industry, electrical and electronic industry, rubber and plastic industry, food industry, wood and furniture manufacturing industry and other fields.
The six-joint robot is also known as the "six-degree-of-freedom robot", its basic structure is a space six-bar open chain structure robot composed of six axes, with six degrees of freedom, each degree of freedom is a rotating joint, with a good interaction with the outside world open structure, usually used in the production line of automobiles or other larger equipment.
From the expansion of heavy-duty six-joint robots, it can be seen that the strategic changes of Huichuan's technical robot business. Previously, the company's industrial robot business mainly revolved around the synergy with automation to expand, the downstream field focused on lithium battery, photovoltaic, mobile phone industry applications to provide supporting, robot plate products to SCARA robots, there are some small six-axis robots, in addition to some core components such as robot special control systems, servo systems, vision systems, high-precision lead screws, etc.
In the first half of 2021, the company's industrial robot business achieved sales revenue of 192 million yuan, an increase of about 147% year-on-year, with a relatively bright growth rate and becoming a potential growth segment of the company. In a recent survey, the company also disclosed that the robotics business has become profitable in 2021.
Huichuan technology robot, in addition to the reducer, other core components (including servo system, control system, etc.) are self-made, superimposed machine vision, joints, lead screws and other precision components manufacturing capabilities to improve, in the cost side has a better advantage. In the first half of 2021, its gross profit margin of industrial automation & elevators & industrial robots was 40.64%, significantly higher than the gross profit margin of 24.05% of the new energy vehicles & rail transit industry, showing strong profitability.
The expansion of the heavy-duty six-joint robot also shows that the company is optimistic about the development potential of industrial robots and is willing to continue to enter the strategic investment. The company's current new energy vehicles and other customer groups are also important customers of robots, which is conducive to business expansion. In the future, as the technology matures, this business segment will also become a strong driver of the company's performance.
The sector is extremely growth-oriented and faces the challenge of commodity price increases
In 2021, due to the good growth in the overall demand of the downstream industry, huichuan technology general automation business, new energy automobile business, industrial robot business, etc. have achieved rapid growth, and then driven the overall performance of last year.
According to the performance express, in 2021, the company achieved revenue of about 18.06 billion yuan, an increase of 56.86% over the same period of the previous year; the net profit attributable to the shareholders of the listed company was about 3.53 billion yuan, an increase of 68.25% over the same period of the previous year; and the net profit deducted from non-attributable to the mother was 2.957 billion yuan, an increase of 55% year-on-year.
In 2021, Huichuan Technology still maintains the advantages of the industrial control sector, and the year-on-year growth rate is expected to exceed 60%, far exceeding the industry. Among them, in the first three quarters of 2021, inverter products ranked first with a market share of 13.9% in sales.
Although the inverter products have achieved remarkable growth, the company's fastest growth is servo, PLC and other products. According to Rui Industrial data, in the first three quarters of 2021, the sales share of Huichuan technology servo products was 15.8%, surpassing Yaskawa and Panasonic, and the share was the first in China. Soochow Securities maintains the judgment that the revenue of Huichuan's technology servo business will more than double in 2021, and it is expected to continue to maintain a year-on-year high growth in 2022.
Compared with the above two types of products, the company's PLC products effectively seize the opportunity of domestic substitution. In 2021, due to factors such as chips, epidemic situation, transportation, etc., PLC products in overseas markets cannot meet the needs of the domestic market in a timely manner, and under this opportunity, Huichuan Technology has achieved rapid development with high cost performance and rapid response capabilities. Soochow Securities estimates that the sector will achieve more than 50% growth in 2021, which is expected to replace servo as the company's fastest growth pole.
However, while the rapid development of various businesses, it is also necessary to be vigilant against the rise in the price of upstream raw materials brought about by the price increase of aluminum, nickel and other commodities, resulting in rising costs, which in turn drags down gross profit margins. According to the financial report, this type of impact may have emerged, in the first three quarters of 2021, the gross profit margin of Huichuan Technology was 37.49%, down 1.86 percentage points year-on-year.
Not only the first three quarters of last year, the performance of the entire 2021 may be affected, after Huichuan Technology said in the 2021 performance express report that the company's product revenue structure changes, commodity and chip prices rose, making the product comprehensive gross profit margin decreased year-on-year. As for the change in product revenue structure, it is considered that the proportion of automation business with high gross profit has declined, and the proportion of new energy vehicles with relatively low gross profit margins has increased. Huichuan Technology disclosed in the survey that the proportion of revenue in the company's new energy vehicle business increased in the fourth quarter of 2021, and this product structure change brought about a decline in comprehensive gross profit margin.
Led by Huichuan Technology, the growth rate of the A-share robot sector is eye-catching
Like Huichuan Technology, the robot sector, which represents advanced productivity and advanced technology, has achieved good performance in 2021.
Among the 73 companies in the Wind robot sector, 14 have disclosed performance expresses, from the perspective of these disclosed companies, the revenue growth in 2021 is doubled by green harmonics (688017.SH), and Huichuan Technology is temporarily ranked second with 56.86%. Ruiqi shares (300126. SZ), Central Control Technology (688777. SH), Shenkeda (688328. SH) revenue growth is also good.
However, in terms of the growth rate of net profit attributable to the mother, Quanzhi Technology (300458. SZ), green harmonics, *ST Huachang, Han's Laser (002008. SZ), Huichuan Technology, Yongchuang Intelligence (603901. SH) has good growth, the highest Quanzhi Technology net profit increased by more than 140% year-on-year, and the net profit growth rate of Yongchuang Intelligent is also higher than 50%.
brief summary
With the development of 5G, big data, artificial intelligence and other science and technology, the robot technology representing automation and intelligent manufacturing is also increasingly advanced, and is applied to more and more production scenarios, such as intelligent manufacturing and other high-efficiency scenarios, flexible application scenarios, and high-pollution scenarios, etc., with good growth.
As a leader in industrial automation, Huichuan Technology's medium- and long-term strategy is not only to develop the robot business, but also to rely on the advantages of power electronics technology, automation technology and digital control technology to continuously expand emerging fields such as energy storage and industrial Internet.
The company has newly established the energy SBU combat unit under the industrial control division, and has made breakthroughs in high-speed drive technology, high-pressure compressor drive technology, energy storage converter, energy management control system, and its products cover the whole industry from power electronic equipment to control equipment.
A sufficiently broad industrial control automation track, as well as a new business layout such as robots and energy storage, Huichuan technology is also attractive enough to the secondary market under the weak market, and has attracted the attention of hundreds of institutions.
Author: Li Ying