There is a material that may be inconspicuous in the refrigerator used in the daily use of the family, but it cannot be ignored, and the penetration rate is accelerating. It is a vacuum insulation panel.
In the A-shares, Scitech New Materials is the head player in this segment. It is not difficult to observe from the latest financial data released by Scitech New Materials that its main product, vacuum insulation panel, is in short supply.
For the whole year of 2023, Scitech New Materials achieved revenue of about 840 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 31.69%, and net profit attributable to the parent company of 106 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 66.14%.
On the one hand, overseas demand has fully recovered, which has added color to the performance of Scitech New Materials in 2023. On the other hand, domestic policies are actively moving closer to offshore standards, which is expected to open up the domestic market space for this key material. Moreover, the downstream demand scenarios of vacuum insulation panels are gradually expanding, and the industry, including building materials, is expected to become its penetration field in the future.
In addition, Scitech New Materials is drawing its second growth curve on the vacuum glass track. From the perspective of the industry, vacuum glass and vacuum insulation panels have certain complementarity, and the two are expected to produce industrial synergy in the future.
The recovery of overseas demand drove performance growth
Entering 2024, the revenue scale of Scitech New Materials will continue to expand, and its profitability will be further enhanced. According to its latest quarterly report, in the first quarter of this year, Scitech New Materials achieved revenue of 223 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 46.39%, and the net profit attributable to the parent company was 28.6688 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 152.12%.
The continuous growth of the performance of Scitech New Materials is closely related to the fact that its main business, vacuum heat insulation board, is highly sought after by the market. For a long time, the vacuum insulation board has an unshakable position for Scitech New Materials.
From 2020 to 2022, the revenue of vacuum insulation panels will account for 97.5%, 95.7%, and 97.4% respectively. In terms of gross profit composition, the gross profit of vacuum insulation panels in the above three years has reached 97.6%, 96.7% and 99.7% respectively. In 2023, the revenue and gross profit of this business will also account for 97.7% and 98.6% respectively.
According to the data, the vacuum insulation board is a new type of high-efficiency, energy-saving and environmentally friendly insulation material produced by the principle of vacuum insulation, because its thermal conductivity is only 1/6 or even lower than that of traditional insulation materials, and has the advantages of thin thickness, small size and light weight, and the application is rapidly expanding.
At present, its main application scenarios are in the field of refrigerators and other home appliances. Generally speaking, with the increase in the amount of vacuum insulation panels, the energy-saving effect of refrigerators is improved, and the power consumption is significantly reduced. With the same energy-saving effect, compared with traditional polyurethane insulation materials, the refrigerator freezer adopts vacuum insulation panel, which significantly reduces the thickness of the box wall and increases the effective volume.
However, the cost factor constraints lead to the penetration rate is still low. According to the calculation of the domestic sales volume and market share of Scitech New Material vacuum insulation board in 2022, the penetration rate of vacuum insulation board used in domestic production refrigerators is about 1.6%.
However, the recovery of overseas demand has become the main engine driving its performance growth. In the whole year of 2023, the overseas revenue of Scitech New Materials will account for 54.88%. Moreover, as the world's main producer, consumer and exporter of refrigerators, China's overseas market is of great importance.
From the perspective of the industry, in 2023, benefiting from the alleviation of high overseas inventory, shipping costs and raw material prices, coupled with the impact of a low base in the same period, the export of refrigerators will grow rapidly.
According to industry online data, the total sales volume and external sales volume of China's refrigerator industry will reach 87.23 million units and 43.74 million units in 2023, an increase of 15.4% and 27.4% year-on-year, respectively. It is not difficult to see that the growth rate of foreign sales is significantly faster.
The supply of products exceeds demand, which can be seen from the capacity utilization rate of Scitech New Materials. With the rapid recovery of demand, the production capacity of the company's existing production base in Liancheng, Fujian Province has been relatively saturated. In the first half of 2023, the capacity utilization rate of Scitech New Materials will reach 98.1%, which is the highest in the past five years.
In the whole year of 2023, the production and sales volume of Scitech New Material vacuum insulation panels will reach 9.17 million square meters and 8.82 million square meters respectively, setting a new high in the company's history. This also reflects the strong downstream demand, of course, there is also a certain bottleneck in the production capacity of Scitech New Materials.
The bottleneck of domestic accelerated penetration capacity is about to be broken
The overseas demand for vacuum insulation panels has picked up, mainly due to the new energy efficiency regulations announced by the European Union, which have greatly increased the entry threshold for refrigerator energy efficiency, which in turn has boosted the demand for high-energy efficiency refrigerator and freezer products.
In China, the policy is also opening up the penetration space for vacuum insulation panels. It is understood that China's "Household Refrigerator Power Consumption Limit and Energy Efficiency Grade" was officially implemented on October 1, 2016, and it has been nearly 8 years. With the implementation of the EU's new energy efficiency standards, there is a certain gap between China's current standards and them.
However, at the end of 2023, the Standardization Administration of the People's Republic of China has officially launched the revision of the "Household Refrigerator Power Consumption Limit Values and Energy Efficiency Grades", with a project period of 16 months.
According to the previous revision and release cycle of the national standard, the revised national standard is expected to be released or implemented from 2026 to 2027, which is expected to further improve the energy efficiency standards of domestic refrigerators.
Soochow Securities believes that combined with the changes in the EU downstream market in the past three years, China's new energy efficiency standards are expected to have a positive role in promoting the vacuum insulation panel industry after the promulgation and implementation.
More importantly, the application scenarios of vacuum insulation panels are also expected to expand. Among them, building materials are one of the new application scenarios. It is reported that the demand for building energy-saving driven thermal insulation and decorative integrated boards is growing, and the formulation of product standards is expected to accelerate its promotion and application.
In February 2023, the draft of the "Vacuum Insulation Decorative Integrated Panel for Construction" of the China Engineering Construction Standardization Association was completed and solicited for public comment. From the perspective of the industry, the formulation of standards will fill the gap in the domestic vacuum integrated board standard.
In addition, the field of water heaters is also expected to become an emerging application market for vacuum insulation panels, and the medium and long-term penetration rate also has considerable room for improvement.
In the face of the growth of domestic downstream demand and the expansion of application scenarios, Scitech New Materials has begun to break through the bottleneck of production capacity.
For the 2024 expansion plan of vacuum insulation panels, Scitech New Materials has simultaneously carried out the expansion of vacuum insulation panels in Liancheng headquarters and Anhui factory. The company expects that the Liancheng headquarters will gradually release new production capacity from April after the Spring Festival in Anhui Province.
Among them, the Anhui factory plans to build an annual production capacity of 5 million square meters of vacuum insulation panels, and in 2024, the project construction will be rolled forward by installing a batch, debugging a batch, and putting into production, and strive to complete the investment and construction plan of all core material lines, vacuum packaging machines and other major equipment by the end of the year.
Cut into the vacuum glass track to draw the second curve
Although the main product vacuum insulation board is in a state of "short supply", Scitech New Materials does not seem to be satisfied, and the company will also enter the vacuum glass track in 2023.
It is understood that the high vacuum inner cavity of vacuum glass effectively blocks the propagation of sound, and the sound insulation effect is far better than that of hollow and ordinary glass, and has a significant effect on medium and low frequency noise with strong penetration such as traffic noise and construction noise. Moreover, it has super anti-frosting ability, and its anti-frosting performance can perfectly solve the dilemma of freezing doors and windows and vehicle glass in northern winter.
Therefore, at present, the main application fields of vacuum glass products include glass doors and windows for construction, doors for low-temperature storage equipment, vacuum power generation glass, greenhouses, vehicles, ship windows, etc. In the view of Scitech New Materials, the cultivation of new vacuum glass products continues to advance, which is expected to form the company's second growth curve.
In the first half of 2023, Scitech New Materials will complete the linkage of the vacuum glass production test line, optimize the problems exposed in the operation of the equipment, and cooperate with some foreign customers to carry out proofing and sample delivery.
At present, its wholly-owned subsidiary, Weiaiji Vacuum Glass Industrialization Base, has recently completed the capping of the plant, and is expected to produce 2 million square meters of vacuum glass annually after the project is completed and put into production. In the first half of 2024, the site will first invest in the construction of two new production lines, with a total annual production capacity of about 400,000 square meters. The pace of subsequent capacity launch will depend on the market expansion.
Some institutions believe that vacuum glass has good synergy with the vacuum insulation board, the main product of Scitech New Materials. Vacuum glass has certain complementarity with the company's main product vacuum insulation board in specific applications. The industry experience and customer base of Scitech New Materials in the field of home appliances will provide a good foundation for the application and promotion of vacuum glass in the field of home appliances. （CIS）