Written by Lin Ke
On December 20, Zhixing Technology was officially listed on the board and became the "first stock of intelligent driving" in Hong Kong stocks.
The founding team of this company, which provides autonomous driving solutions for downstream OEMs, comes from international Tier1 manufacturers and has more than 10 years of industry experience.
The penetration of intelligent and mass production of new energy vehicles is accelerating, and Zhixing Technology has become the second largest third-party autonomous driving domain controller provider in China in terms of revenue generated from the sale of autonomous driving domain controllers in 2022, with a market share of 262%。
Zhixing has two product lines of autonomous driving domain controllers that support L2 and L2+ autonomous driving functions, covering different price ranges and full driving scenarios, including highways, ring roads, complex urban roads, rural roads, and parking lots.
The company keeps up with the pace of Chinese automobiles going overseas, actively expands the international market, and cooperates with Geely, Chery, Dongfeng and many other domestic OEMs to designate models.
Prior to its listing, Zhixing received investment from shareholders such as Mingshi Capital, Li Auto, National Mixed Ownership Reform**, and HL Klemove.
In this IPO, Zhixing Technology issued a total of 221160,000 shares. Among them, the Hong Kong public offering part won 646 times oversubscribed, and the international offering part received 107 times oversubscribed.
Zhejiang Qixin, Suzhou Industrial Park Industrial Investment**, Runmiao Asset Management and Harvest International Investment participated in the offering as cornerstone investors, with a cumulative subscription scale of US$67 million.
As of the 20th**, Zhixing Science and Technology News 25HK$85 shares, with a market capitalization of about 58HK$500 million.
Accelerate mass production
Zhixing Technology was founded in 2016 by Song Yang, a graduate of the University of Science and Technology of China, and several of his former colleagues at Bosch.
The founding team at Bosch is mainly engaged in intelligent driving research and development, and has accumulated experience in the standardization and engineering of the vehicle industry chain, and the commercialization of Zhixing is very smooth.
On the other hand, Zhixing Technology chose to take the "progressive" autonomous driving development route, established its own electronic manufacturing base in the early stage of the company's development, and gradually changed from a software company to a leading provider of autonomous driving solutions integrating software and hardware.
As the Tier1 of the direct downstream OEMs, Zhixing Technology mainly makes "autonomous driving controllers", which belong to the intelligent brain of automobiles. Component suppliers are upstream and OEMs are downstream.
With the autonomous driving controller as the starting point, Zhixing is responsible for integrating and delivering intelligent modularization to help OEMs solve the intelligent needs of perception, interaction and decision-making information systems.
From 2019 to 2022, the high-end driver assistance system (ADAS), represented by L1 to L2+, will be mass-produced and put on the car.
Zhixing Technology stepped on the upward curve of the market and successfully expanded its territory.
According to reports, the company has been designated by 16 car companies, including Geely Automobile, Great Wall Motor, Chery Automobile and Dongfeng Motor, and delivered a total of about 130,000 autonomous driving domain controllers.
In the past three years, Zhixing Technology's revenue has increased from about 47 million to 132.6 billion yuan, mainly from autonomous driving solutions and products ordered by OEMs, accounting for more than 94% in 2022.
In the first half of 2023, Zhixing Technology's revenue increased from 35.9 billion yuan increased to 54.3 billion yuan, an increase of 51%.
Frost & Sullivan and other research institutions believe that third-party autonomous driving solution providers are more cost-effective for some car companies. In 2022, third-party vendors will account for one-third of the market size of China's autonomous driving domain controllers.
According to the prospectus, Zhixing Technology is the second largest third-party autonomous driving domain controller provider in China in terms of revenue generated from the sale of autonomous driving domain controllers in 2022, with a market share of 262%。
Technology goes to sea
Under the trend of Chinese cars going overseas, Zhixing Technology still has many possibilities.
Zhixing Technology has mentioned its overseas layout many times.
In October 2023, Zhixing Technology established a subsidiary in Germany to be responsible for autonomous driving solutions and products related to its European business.
Zhixing Technology will establish a R&D center in Germany, on the one hand, to provide overseas expansion services for domestic OEMs, and on the other hand, to develop more overseas resources with the help of strategic overseas shareholders such as hl klemove.
In terms of product launches, Zhixing Technology's full-stack self-developed product IDC MID has been delivered to Chery Xingtu Lanyue and Chery Xingtu Lingyun, and is expected to be exported overseas.
Taking Chery Xingtu Lanyue as an example, the IDC MID is equipped with TI's TDA4 chip, four 3-million-pixel surround view cameras, and 12 ultrasonic sensors to achieve 360° all-round perception, allowing the vehicle to see more accurately, widely, and clearly.
Zhixing Technology synchronizes the layout of in-cabin technology development, and the 360° panoramic image of Xingtu Lanyue is realized by adding a circle of PDC water ripple radar wall around the body image.
Through the delicate changes of water ripples, the driver can clearly observe the shape and distance of obstacles around the body. When the vehicle is too close to an obstacle, the system automatically zooms in on the corresponding camera screen to ensure that the driver notices the position of the obstacle.
From June to August, Zhixing Technology obtained two fixed-point letters from Chery.
The diversified product portfolio has improved the core competitiveness of Zhixing Technology. At the same time, this has helped Zhixing to slowly transform from a start-up company into a full-fledged autonomous driving solution provider.
The production line is complete
Zhixing Technology regards the enhancement of "engineering capabilities" as the company's core strategy.
In August 2018, Zhixing Technology acquired two SMT production lines of Suzhou Dongshan Precision Electronic Manufacturing Service Division.
As of December 4, Zhixing Technology has a semi-automatic IFC assembly line, an automatic IDC assembly line, and two SMT production lines.
Among them, the ifc assembly line and the autonomous driving domain controller assembly line are expected to have an annual production capacity of about 1290,000 units and 2120,000 units;Two SMT production lines, with an estimated annual production capacity of about 116 PCBA80,000 units.
Zhixing Technology continues to make efforts.
By the end of the year, the company will set up a new ifc product line with an annual production capacity of about 1 million units, and the ifc production capacity is expected to reach 11290,000 units;
In addition, a test line with an annual production capacity of about 300,000 units (which can be used to assemble autonomous driving domain controllers) and an SMT production line with an annual production capacity of 600,000 to 700,000 units have been put on the construction schedule
Zhixing Technology plans to build a R&D headquarters and production site in Suzhou by the end of 2025, with a total area of 70,000 square meters.
Choosing self-developed software middleware, Zhixing Technology is rare in the industry.
The rapid evolution of electronic and electrical architectures and the rapid increase in the complexity of software and application systems have made the importance of middleware more and more prominent.
Essentially, software middleware is a set of software frameworks between the upper-level application and the underlying system, and it is also a platform for managing, allocating, and scheduling software and hardware resources.
Zhixing Technology's self-developed software middleware does not rely on any open source framework, which can eliminate the intermediate buffer when transmitting data, improve system performance, deploy software to different computing platforms and operating systems, and quickly adapt the products to different OEM hardware, reduce system development time and cost, and improve the adaptability and iteration of solutions and products.
For example, with the help of vision software middleware, Zhixing Technology has developed visual perception algorithms that are compatible with different computing platforms.
It is optimized for time-consuming operations such as image processing, image conversion, depth Xi, and rendering to ensure high performance in real-time image processing.
After successfully landing in the capital market, Zhixing Technology has the opportunity to break into a broader world by virtue of its engineering capabilities and overseas layout.
This article is for reference only and is not intended as an investment basis).