This newspaper (chinatimesnet.CN) reporter Shi Feiyue and Lu Xiao report from Beijing.
In time for the last trading day of 2023, the "first share of humanoid robots" finally "got on the bus". On December 29, 2023, UBTECH officially landed on the Hong Kong stock market, although it did not achieve a sharp rise, but 0The 94% increase is already stronger than many companies that have broken sharply. As the "first stock of humanoid robots" in China, capital may still have reservations about UBTECH's investment attitude, but it still has expectations for this market.
The question is how long the favor of capital lasts. In the eyes of industry insiders, this is inseparable from the technology of robots and the business model of enterprises, but the humanoid robot market undoubtedly has broad prospects, but the outbreak of the tuyere has not yet arrived.
The stock price rose slightly on the first day of listing
On the morning of December 29, Zhou Jian, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of UBTECH, and the industrial version of the humanoid robot Walkers took the stage to sound the gong.
In the first half hour of trading, UBTECH's stock price has been fluctuating in a small range near the opening price, and then it has been almost sideways until 3 p.m., with a maximum increase of 372%, and then began to fall back, as of **, UBTECH's share price achieved 094% increased slightly, and the ** price was 90HK$85 shares.
Judging from the stock price trend on the first day of listing, it can be seen that capital is still relatively cautious about UBTECH. Guo Yuqing, the founder of the lens company, told the "China Times" reporter that in fact, capital is more optimistic about the humanoid robot track, because this is a new technology consumer field with great growth potential, and it is also a subdivision of the new consumer technology company that can overtake the old and Mesozoic consumer technology giants such as Lenovo and Xiaomi, but the final result depends on the company's own product capabilities.
Founded in March 2012, UBTECH is mainly engaged in the design, production, commercialization, sales and marketing and R&D of intelligent service robots and intelligent service robot solutions.
On the road to listing, UBTECH has gone through nearly a year: in January this year, the company submitted an application for an overseas initial public offering of shares to the China Securities Regulatory Commission;In August, UBTECH updated its prospectus;On December 1, UBTECH passed the hearing of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange;On December 19, UBTECH opened its IPO.
The listing of UBTECH plans to sell 1128 globally20,000 shares, 112 shares offered in Hong Kong, China820,000 shares, 1,015 international placement shares380,000 shares, plus 15% over-allotment option;The maximum offer price is HK$116 per Offer Share in board lots of 50 sharesGuotai Junan International is the sole sponsor.
As a representative enterprise in the field of domestic robots, before listing, UBTECH has carried out first-class financing, with a financing amount of more than 5.7 billion yuan. Among UBTECH's past shareholders, investors include venture capital institutions such as Qiming and CDH, as well as well-known enterprises such as Tencent, iFLYTEK, Haier, and CP Group, as well as financial institutions such as Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Goldstone Investment, and Minsheng**. At the same time, there are also state-owned assets from Liuzhou, Chongqing, Zhuhai, Hangzhou and other places.
According to Frost & Sullivan, UBTECH ranked third in China's intelligent service robot and intelligent service robot solution industry in 2022 (in terms of revenue), with a market share of 28%；In 2022, UBTECH is China's largest provider of educational intelligent robots and intelligent robot solutions (by revenue), with a market share of 225%。
According to UBTECH's announcement, the company's total revenue in fiscal year 2020, fiscal year 2021, fiscal year 2022, fiscal year 2022 and first six months of 2023 was 740.2 billion yuan, 817.2 billion yuan, 1008.3 billion yuan, 2$83.5 billion and $261.1 billion yuan.
The humanoid robot market is yet to explode
However, UBTECH's revenue was basically offset by the amount of losses, and the loss in the first half of this year was even twice the revenue.
The data shows that UBTECH lost 7. in fiscal year 2020, fiscal year 2021, fiscal year 2022, first half of 2022 and first half of 20230.7 billion yuan, 917.5 billion yuan, 987.4 billion yuan, 5$15.2 billion and $547.9 billion yuan.
Behind the loss is UBTECH's R&D investment ratio, which is increasing year by year. According to the data, UBTECH's R&D expenditure in fiscal year 2020, fiscal year 2021, fiscal year 2022, first half of 2022 and first half of 2023 was 428.8 billion yuan, 517.1 billion yuan, 428.3 billion yuan, 20.5 billion and 224.3 billion yuan, accounting for about 13% and 859%。
Zhang Yi, CEO and chief analyst of iiMedia Consulting, told the China Times reporter that UBTECH's revenue has been going up step by step in recent years, and the market demand does exist, and the company has also reserved more patented technology. "In order to go public, many companies are desperately trying to lay channels, customers, and goods to form marketing, but they are not in the dominant position in the supply and marketing link, and there is no way to take advantage, so there is no big profit to lead to losses, this kind of problem usually appears in some AI companies, either the product is not up to par, or the value generated by the product does not form a rigid demand. ”
The problem of profit can actually be seen from the data of gross profit. UBTECH's gross profit margin in FY2020, FY2021, FY2022, the first half of 2022 and the first half of 2023 were .7% and 202%, except for an increase in the first half of this year, it is basically declining year by year.
Of course, UBTECH is not the only one who has such a problem. Boston Dynamics and Agile Robotics in the United States, Honda in Japan, and Xiaomi in China are among the major players in the humanoid robot market. Boston Dynamics changed hands three times in 2013, 2017, and 2020 due to continuous losses, and was acquired by Google X, SoftBank, and Hyundai Group.
At present, enterprises that export this kind of technology and hardware cannot learn from the huge losses of Internet companies in the past, because the products they export have relatively high production or procurement costs, so they must solve the break-even problem in the shortest possible time. Even though UBTECH has been listed on the market, the maturity of its business model needs to be improved. Zhang Yi said.
The deeper problem is related to the fact that robots have not been commercialized on a large scale. Taking UBTECH as an example, its "ace" Walker series robots have low sales, UBTECH sold one Walker-2 in fiscal year 2021, one Walker-1, two Walker-2 and four Walker X in fiscal year 2022, and one Walker-2 in the first half of 2023. From 2021 to the first half of 2023, a total of 59.8 million yuan of revenue from the Walker series was confirmed.
On UBTECH's official website, it is written that "let intelligent robots enter thousands of households", however, according to UBTECH's prospectus, UBTECH and its peers have a limited degree of advancement in humanoid robots, and the global humanoid robot and robot solution industry is still in the early stage of technological exploration and development, with limited market participants, and the large-scale commercialization of humanoid robots has not yet been realized.
Zhang Yi pointed out that the problem with the popularization of robots is that the current technology is not enough to become the rigid needs of ordinary families, if one day can achieve "one household and one robot", then this robot must be able to effectively solve the problems encountered in the family, such as because the coolness of the fan is far less than that of air conditioning, so air conditioning can be popularized. "Of course, current robots are still a long way from that goal. ”
Regarding the popularization time of robots and the company's business layout, the "China Times" reporter interviewed UBTECH, but as of press time, the other party did not give a reply.
Editor-in-charge: Huang Xingli Editor-in-chief: Han Feng.