I thought that the year 2023 was not as bleak as imagined, and with the annual reports of listed construction machinery companies in 2023 being issued one after another, we can see the remarkable points of many companies. In particular, in terms of overseas performance and proportion, globalization has achieved remarkable results, and the overseas performance of most companies has boosted the overall performance.
However, with the continuous improvement of overseas income of enterprises, the phenomenon of "making money abroad and spending at home" and "domestic roll out of foreign rolls" is becoming increasingly intensified, and the competition of enterprises is fierce again!
01
Overseas growth is the main force, which greatly boosts the performance of enterprises
The overseas performance of some construction machinery host enterprises in 2023
The above data comes from the 2023 annual reports published by various enterprises, unit: 100 million
Among the 10 companies listed in the table above, 4 companies have a year-on-year decline in revenue, but their overseas revenues are all showing positive growth. Except for Zhejiang Dingli, the overseas revenue growth of the remaining 9 enterprises is more than the total revenue, that is, the overseas revenue has greatly improved the performance level of the enterprise. In the performance report publicly released by the company, whether it is XCMG Machinery with the highest total revenue, Sany Heavy Industry with the highest overseas revenue, Zoomlion with the largest overseas revenue growth, or Zhejiang Dingli, which has the highest proportion of overseas revenue, all highlight its global layout and the growth of overseas markets.
In recent years, the domestic market has continued to cycle downward, and China's construction machinery enterprises have continued to increase their overseas sales by virtue of their global layout, technical level and brand influence. Moreover, with the boom in overseas markets and the price increases of foreign-funded companies such as Caterpillar and Komatsu, Chinese companies have also increased their prices to earn more profits. For many companies, the money earned overseas not only effectively compensates for the decline in the domestic market, but also boosts the overall performance.
However, it is necessary to be vigilant that the construction machinery industry is constantly emerging such a phenomenon: internally, some enterprises use the profit accumulation earned in overseas markets to continue to accelerate competition in the domestic market in order to seize market share; Externally, some enterprises copy the competition method of domestic price involution to foreign countries in order to rapidly expand the market.
02
It is difficult for overseas markets to grow red, and excessive competition needs to be vigilant
For all businesses, long-term profitable growth is the normal and right pursuit. Here, we will not evaluate the correctness of the behavior of "making money abroad and spending it at home" and "domestic rolling up foreign rolls", but the sustainability behind this behavior is questionable.
On the one hand, the overseas market can not forever transfuse for the domestic market, after all, no matter how strong the overseas market demand is, it can not always maintain high growth, which has been confirmed from the first quarter performance of some foreign-funded construction machinery enterprises.
In the first quarter of 2024, the construction machinery market in Europe and the United States is also not optimistic. As can be seen from the above table, except for Terex and Genie, two enterprises with high-speed machinery as their main business, the rest of the foreign-funded enterprises have declined in revenue and profits to varying degrees. Caterpillar said in a public report, "The decline in construction machinery revenue was mainly due to the decrease in sales of end-user equipment, which in turn led to a decline in sales." "Caterpillar, an industry benchmark company, is also inevitably affected by the downward trend in the market, and the phenomenon of declining sales may appear in more and more companies.
On the other hand, the overseas market potential is huge, and the development of overseas markets by mainland construction machinery enterprises is only a drop in the bucket. At this stage, each enterprise can harvest different customers according to their own advantages to expand market share, enjoy enough overseas market dividends, construction machinery overseas market is far from the need for price competition to grab the share of the time.
According to data, in 2023, the number of mainland exports will increase by 4.4% year-on-year, while the export price will decrease by 9.1% year-on-year, showing an obvious situation of "volume increase and price reduction", which is diametrically opposed to the trend of export price driving growth in 2022. The main reason is that the mainland's export products are seriously "involuted" and the price competition is fierce. The story of the mainland motorcycle industry in Southeast Asia is still in front of us, enterprises want to compete and win-win, when they can eat cake together, they must eat cake together, and when they can fight bayonets, they will fight bayonets! Instead of flipping the table when we can eat cake together, hurting the enemy by a thousand and injuring myself by eight hundred.
Enterprise competition itself is not a bad thing, but don't take it for a while and reproduce the lose-lose situation!