Annual revenue of nearly 4 billion! It is a winner on the smart home track and will sprint to the science and technology innovation board

Text/Yang Jianyong

When it comes to fluorite, I believe most of them are relatively unfamiliar, but when it comes to Hikvision, it is a familiar brand. As a mainland security giant, it has been actively developing innovative business in recent years, and has laid out the accumulated machine vision technology to innovative tracks such as smart home, smart medical treatment, and robots. Among them, Fluorite is the most representative innovative enterprise incubated by Hikvision, benefiting from the development of the smart home industry, and its revenue has shown a strong growth trend.

The smart home sector grew strongly, with fluorite revenue of nearly 4 billion

For the innovative business segment in the rapid development, Hikvision is also seeking to spin off and list independently, including launching an independent listing plan for the spin-off of Hikvision Robot Company. Fluorite in the smart home sector submitted its listing application to the Sci-Tech Innovation Board on December 13, 2021. According to the disclosure documents, the revenue has shown a rapid growth pattern in the past few years, from 1.52 billion yuan in 2018 to 3.08 billion yuan in 2020, with a compound growth rate of 41.88% from 2018 to 2020.

In terms of net profit, in 2018, 2019 and 2020, the profit was 132 million yuan, 211 million yuan and 326 million yuan respectively, and the operating performance gradually improved, and continued to maintain a strong growth trend in 2021. Hikvision's annual report shows that the smart home business will have a revenue of 3.95 billion yuan in 2021, an increase of 35.3% year-on-year. It can be seen that Fluorite is also a winner on the road of smart home.

First of all, smart home as an emerging industry, has broad prospects. Forecast data from the China Commercial Industry Research Institute shows that the size of the mainland smart home market in 2022 will be 651.56 billion yuan. Combined with the report of IDC agency, the shipment volume of the mainland smart home device market will reach 260 million units in 2022, and the shipment volume is expected to exceed 500 million units by 2026, showing that consumers maintain strong demand for smart housing equipment.

Secondly, with the increasing improvement of people's quality of life, the living environment is also getting higher and higher, from home security to smart life, in this context, manufacturers around smart home innovation have been strongly developed. In terms of smart home device category, the home security monitoring device market is growing strongly. IDC's report shows that product iterations caused by the significant increase in video surveillance resolution are one of the important reasons driving the growth of the smart camera and video doorbell market in 2021.

In the author's view, Fluorite is an important player in the home security monitoring equipment, and intelligent cameras are the core business segments, carrying hikvision's core strategy for C-end consumers. Benefiting from the smart camera market demand, revenue has grown strongly over the past few years. The data shows that smart home camera revenue accounts for more than 70%, and the trend is rising year by year. In 2018, smart home camera revenue accounted for 63.85%, and by the first half of 2021, the proportion increased to 70.21%.

Single product, intensified industry competition, fluorite pushed the whole house intelligent strategy

Security is one of the just needs in the smart home scenario, and home security products occupy an important position in the smart home market. Previously, IDC predicted that by 2025, the home security monitoring equipment market will ship close to 120 million units. For Fluorite, which started with smart cameras, it is at the forefront of the market. According to iResearch's statistics, the global shipment of home cameras in 2020 was 88.89 million units, and the annual shipment of fluorite smart home cameras in 2020 was about 12.79 million units, accounting for about 14.39% of the global market share. In addition, the mainland smart home camera market will grow strongly in the coming years.

However, the current fluorite revenue structure is too single, mainly relying on smart home cameras, and also faces an increasingly increasing industry competitive environment. Enriching the product line and enhancing the market competitiveness are the first problems faced by Fluorite. In fact, based on smart cameras, it extends to smart home products such as smart door locks, and combines with cloud open platforms to access third-party devices to form smart life solutions. Including upgrading the smart home solution in March this year, forming a "4 + N" product system, and creating diversified scenes around smart life.

"4" refers to smart home cameras, smart homes, intelligent controls, and intelligent service robots; "N" represents the IoT open ecological business, because the categories of smart home products are extremely rich, it is difficult to fully cover, and it is difficult to independently create a complete Internet of Things cloud ecology. By the end of December 2021, Fluorite Network IoT Cloud Platform had access to 159 million IoT devices, and the number of video IoT device accesses remained leading in China. The number of users of the Fluorite Network IoT cloud platform exceeded 90 million, and the number of monthly active users exceeded 35 million.

With the basic management and intelligent analysis capabilities of the Fluorite IoT cloud platform, we continue to develop and expand the smart home product matrix through ecological cooperation, and are committed to becoming a reliable smart home service provider and Internet of Things cloud platform provider. As a result, Fluorite has formed a dual source of income for the smart home product line with smart cameras as the core to expand into cloud platform services, laying a solid foundation for sustainable development. Of course, the smart home industry is competitively diversified.

The smart home industry has both mobile phone manufacturers such as Xiaomi and Huawei, as well as Internet giants such as Baidu and Ali. There are also home appliance giants such as Haier and Midea, and at the same time, many smart home innovation enterprises such as Yunmi, Oribo, and Cadiz have emerged, and the industry has shown a competitive pattern of competing with the deer. Whether fluorite can continue to harvest the dividends of industry development is facing challenges.

In the face of industry competition, Fluorite pointed out in the risk analysis that in recent years, the competition in the smart home and IoT cloud platform industry has become increasingly fierce. In terms of smart home products, the representative enterprises of various smart home products are increasingly competing for the market, and related enterprises have seized the market by increasing investment in research and development to continuously improve product performance and improve service coverage. For Fluorite, the competitive pressure in the industry has increased, but it is independently listed, intends to raise 3.7 billion funds, and after the completion of the investment project, it will help improve the overall technical level of the smart home and Internet of Things cloud platform industry, which is conducive to enhancing market competitiveness.

At last

As a leading enterprise in the field of global intelligent security, do monitoring started, with video as the core, and now began to transform to intelligent Internet of Things, in the face of the wave of intelligent Internet of Things, Hikvision is committed to the Internet of Things perception, artificial intelligence, big data technology to serve thousands of industries, from comprehensive security to smart home, digital enterprises, smart industries and smart cities and other scenarios. As an important carrier of Hikvision's smart home plate, Fluorite provides users with whole-house intelligent solutions such as home safety, home safety, emotional care, comfortable environment, and linkage interaction in home scenes.

However, smart home, as an important market for consumer technology, has attracted many heavyweight players to pour in, and the accompanying competitive pressure has increased, and there are variables in the competitiveness of the smart home track. In addition to excellent products, it is also necessary to build an ecology, so that people's smart family life can be realized with the intelligent landing of the whole house, and it is also a stepping stone for smart home players to open up a new market space in the future, thus harvesting industry dividends.

Jianyong Yang, a contributor to Forbes China, is committed to in-depth interpretation of cutting-edge technologies such as the Internet of Things, cloud services and artificial intelligence.