Text: Tan Qing said AI Author: Zheng Driving.
The explosive power of NOA (Navigation Assisted Driving) is rapidly being transmitted on the chain, and one of the focuses of 2023 will undoubtedly fall on the LiDAR track.
Following the official IPO of Hesai Technology in the United States as the first domestic lidar stock in February this year, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) officially confirmed the filing information of Tudatong's overseas issuance and listing in early August this year.
Until the beginning of this month, Disclosure Easy showed that Suteng Juchuang, which is also the main player of domestic lidar, has passed the hearing of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and submitted a post-hearing information set for the first time.
The fire of lidar is undoubtedly spreading rapidly, but based on the dependence on the high-end intelligent driving market of passenger cars, how long can this fire burn?
With the listing of three start-ups, this problem may have reached the point of touching.
Sales are flying, and financial data are parting ways
Based on the listing progress and the degree of material disclosure, in this paragraph, we focus on Hesai Technology and Suteng Juchuang as examples to analyze the current LiDAR track in China.
First of all, in terms of shipments, surge is the main theme shared by both companies.
In the first three quarters of this year, Hesai delivered 134,380 LiDARs, a year-on-year increase of 3079%, of which 114,482 ADAS lidars were delivered, accounting for 8519%；From January to October this year, the total sales volume of Suteng Juchuang exceeded 136,000 units, of which nearly 122,000 units were vehicle-mounted lidars, accounting for 8971%。
It is worth noting that, especially in October this year, Suteng Juchuang sold nearly 30,000 lidars in a single month, creating a record of its monthly sales.
It is not difficult to find that the explosion of shipments of Hesai Technology and Suteng Juchuang is inseparable, largely relying on the high prosperity of the passenger car ADAS market in the past two years, and in addition, the differences between the two are worth touching.
In terms of core financial data, from 2020 to the first half of 2023, Hesai Technology's revenue was 41.6 billion yuan, 72.1 billion yuan, 120.3 billion and 8700 million yuan, Suteng Juchuang is 17.1 billion yuan, 33.1 billion yuan, 53 billion and 32.9 billion yuan, although it is difficult to distinguish between shipments, but there is a huge gap in revenue, and the former is basically stable at more than twice that of the latter every year.
In terms of net loss, Hesai Technology is even more even, with Hesai Technology in the first half of 2020-2023 being 10.7 billion yuan, 24.5 billion yuan, 30.1 billion and 19.3 billion yuan, while Suteng Juchuang is 22.1 billion yuan, 165.5 billion yuan, 20$8.6 billion as well as 76.8 billion yuan. The latter's net loss in the first half of this year alone is close to the combined cumulative net loss of the former in the past three and a half years.
Why is this happening?Let's take a closer look at the two core figures.
The first is the commonality of industry stages where the volume of deliveries is disproportionate to the growth rate of revenue.
In Q2 this year, Hesai Technology delivered a total of 52,106 LiDARs, compared with 34,834 units in the first quarter of this year, but Hesai Technology's product revenue in Q1 was 424.1 billion yuan, Q2 product revenue of 386.8 billion yuan. Product sales are rising, but product revenue is declining.
This seems to reveal a message to usThat is, in the early stage of the market grabbing the beach, the strategy of "exchanging price for volume" of the head players is further deepening, and Suteng Juchuang, which is still making reserves for listing, is a little more even worse at this point.
Specifically, in the first half of 2020-2023, the average sales** of Suteng Juchuang's lidar for ADAS are 22,500 yuan, 10,000 yuan, 4,300 yuan and 3,700 yuan. In just three years, the price has dropped to more than a fraction of what it used to be, and based on this, it is not difficult to understand the separation between sales and revenue.
If continuous price reduction is the common feature of the current industry, then whether the scale effect can resist the negative impact caused by price reduction is obviously a matter of eight immortals.
Compared with Hesai Technology, one of the biggest features of Suteng Juchuang is that it is still difficult to compete with many loss expenditure data due to the soaring shipments.
For example, Hesai Technology's gross profit relies on the high proportion of delivery of a single product, and although it is still difficult for revenue to catch up with the growth rate of delivery volume, its ability to suppress costs has been demonstrated, and it is close to profitability.
But on the other hand, Suteng Juchuang, from 2020 to 2022, its income will increase from 17.1 billion yuan grew to 5300 million yuan, but the cost of sales is from 09.6 billion yuan increased to 5700 million yuan. At the same time, its adjusted net loss was 0.0600 million yuan, 10.8 billion yuan, 56.3 billion yuan, 24.5 billion yuan, compared with 19.6 billion yuan was also further expanded.
Obviously, they are all selling volumes, but why is it difficult for Suteng Juchuang's compression resistance to match Hesai Technology?
In the view of talking about AI, the core of this problem seems to fall on one of the biggest differences between the two today, that is, singularity and plurality.
Hesai to the left, Suteng Juchuang to the right
When we discussed Hesai Technology's Q2 financial report this year, we mentioned an obvious change in its nirvana, that is, although LiDAR is still a rigid demand in today's autonomous driving market to a certain extent, the sales growth rate of Autonomous Driving LiDAR, which was once Hesai's main product, has been completely difficult to match ADAS LiDAR in the past two years.
In addition, among the ADAS lidars delivered by Hesai, such as the 80,000 ADAS lidars sold last year, the AT128 single product has delivered more than 60,000 units.
In simple terms,On the one hand, the explosion of the highly monolithic high-end intelligent driving market for passenger cars has created Hesai Technology's highly homogeneous business and products today, and on the other hand, the high growth of ADAS's single business is mainly supported by customers such as Ideal and other customers whose shipments have exploded.
Therefore, whether it is business, products, customers, revenue and many other aspects, Danghesai has a relatively single characteristic, which is significantly different from Suteng Juchuang and even Valeo, the former first brother of the global vision.
The risk of being too single is obvious to a company's long-termism, but in the short term, this is actually the opportunity for Hesai Technology to reach the C position of the LiDAR track today.
The opportunities here are mainly reflected in two aspects, the first is the outlet, which has focused on the ADAS market in the past two years, enabling Hesai Technology to leverage the rise of the passenger car intelligent driving market to a greater extent.
On the other hand, as far as Hesai Technology's start-up status is concerned, it is normal for start-ups to lose blood and money in the early stage of the technology track, but relying on the short-term characteristics of a single business and a single product, Hesai Technology has rapidly moved towards scale effect, and its financial information has gradually become healthy.
Looking at Suteng Juchuang, it is undoubtedly more diversified than Hesai Technology.
In terms of revenue, in 2022, Suteng Juchuang ADAS autonomous driving revenue will only account for 175% for robots and others accounted for 552%, and solutions accounted for 243%。Even if it is further increased in the first half of this year, Suteng Juchuang's revenue from ADAS autonomous driving only accounts for 447%。
As of June 30 this year, Suteng Juchuang's M platform products have been selected by 21 automobile OEMs and first-class manufacturers for mass production, and according to CIC, its products have also been selected by nine of the top ten automobile OEMs in China.
This is a very obvious difference compared to the large number of orders coming from Ideal Hesai Technology, which actually means that whether it is a dependence on a single customer or a single business, Suteng Juchuang must be more balanced.
However, in the view of talking about AI,Pluralism is obviously not a bad thing for long-termism, but it is actually a question mark for the context of a specific era and the identity of a start-up.
Specifically, the first point of view is the production capacity problem under multi-line customers and products.
According to the prospectus, Suteng Juchuang's largest customer is a Chinese smart electric vehicle company established in 2014, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with corresponding sales of 589250,000 yuan, accounting for 179%。
Based on the establishment and listing time, the customer is likely to be Xpeng Motors.
Coincidentally, due to the slow delivery of the new car G6 after the launch of Xiaopeng, He Xiaopeng said a few months ago that the main reason is that the first business Suteng did not prepare enough lidar at the beginning.
However, further checking the prospectus of Suteng Juchuang, its Honghualing factory, the main production force of on-board lidar, has a capacity utilization rate of only 13 as of the end of March 20238%, and it was not until October this year that its capacity utilization rate increased to 671%。
On the one hand, the supply of orders is insufficient, but on the other hand, the production capacity is not exhausted, which seems to be related to the early development stage of Suteng Juchuang spread too large, which further leads to the further increase in the complexity of resource scheduling of R&D, design, production and other parties.
Furthermore, the spread of diversified business aspects has also made Suteng Juchuang one of the relatively large product matrix among the current lidar start-up players.
For example, Hesai Technology's product sells nearly 8 percent, but based on multiple business scenarios, Suteng Juchuang alone currently has three platforms: M, E, and R, as well as the F platform under development, in addition, there are AI perception software, ADAS solutions, and even V2X solutions for vehicle-road collaboration.
Reflected in R&D investment,The high R&D expense rate seems to be a sign of the high pressure of Suteng Juchuang's current financial data.
Specifically, from 2020 to 2022, the R&D expenditure of Suteng Juchuang will be 08.2 billion yuan, 13.3 billion yuan, 30.6 billion yuan, and in the first half of this year, its R&D expenses were further as high as 24.6 billion yuan, not only has approached the same period 3revenue of 2.9 billion yuan, 74The R&D expense ratio of 77% is also much higher than Hesai's 4241%。
As a result, in Tanqing AI's view, Hesai Technology's bigger concern lies in the long-term future, after all, the short-term financial data in all aspects is gradually improving.
However, Suteng Ju Creation is a start-up, and under the opportunity of the local outbreak of the industry, the large-scale factory network may be an important reason why its phased financial data is not good.
From a further point of view, for Suteng Juchuang, which is about to be listed, too large stalls and blood loss are also not very stressful.
On the one hand, Hesai Technology's stock price has been on a downward slope since its listing in February this year. Compared with the listing that surpassed Luminar, which once broke the highlight of $2.6 billion, as of press time, even though Hesai Technology is close to making a profit, its market value is still 12$3.3 billion.
According to the information of Tianyancha APP, the pace of financing of Suteng Juchuang has been quite intensive, and in the latest round, the valuation of Suteng Juchuang has exceeded 15 billion yuan, which is almost the same as Hesai Technology in the highlight period.
Therefore, under the premise that many of the current core achievements are difficult to match the opponents, how big is the bubble or "moisture" in the valuation of Suteng Juchuang?It is undoubtedly worth putting a question mark.
On the other hand, the gambling agreement with investors is also the sword of Damocles hanging over the head of Suteng Juchuang.
To put it simply, if Suteng Juchuang fails to be successfully listed before December 31, 2024, it may face 62$1.2 billion redemption, but as of April 30, 2023, the company's total cash balance was only 21800 million yuan.
For Suteng Juchuang, which has passed the hearing, the probability of overturning may not be large, but if it does overturn, it may be catastrophic for its future.
From the option, to the **?
The next question, we might as well ask the entire outbreak of the on-board lidar track.
Thanks to the fact that the race was brought by ADAS, this year's lidar track is generally full of optimistic voices, such as the next step, which is to let lidar go from optional to standard on the car.
Such an optimistic statement may sound unfamiliar at first, but if you put it on the autonomous driving track, it seems that everyone is familiar with it all at once.
In the view of talking about AI, the real problem of lidar in the future vehicle market seems to beFrom the option, to the **?
After all, the battle between the route of Zhijia pure vision and lidar is actually the experience, and the perception of its technology and cost is difficult to fall on the final consumer after all, and the extra cost of materials, appearance design and other aspects, lidar is actually a negative asset compared to light and cheap cameras.
So is LiDAR a rigid need for the intelligent driving experience?If it is said that based on the foundation of software technology, Tesla is the only seedling that dares to give a negative answerBut today, more and more players have the same confidence to give negative answers.
For example, at the OEM level, in October, Jiyue 01 has demonstrated the high-end assisted intelligent driving of the city without lidar, and Xiaopeng, which has the advantage of intelligent driving software, also announced that it will reduce its dependence on lidar in the future.
At the technical level of intelligent driving, even DJI, which sells lidar, has launched a high-end intelligent driving solution that is "no lidar-dependent".Momo Zhixing also uses lidar as an option in its urban full-scene no-map NOH intelligent driving solution, which is expected to abandon the two cost "plasters" of high-precision maps and lidar.
Even on the autonomous driving track, for example, Zhijia Technology is focusing on the technical path of BEV+Transformer today, and with the continuous development of technology, more and more "believers" who follow Tesla's pure vision are in various subdivisions.
Regarding this, Tan Qing said that AI was emphasized in the previous highly singular Hesai Technology, but today it is worth making further additions.
In the view of talking about AI,We still adhere to the view that lidar may be a product of a phase in the process of intelligent driving or even autonomous driving, but even if it is a phase, its short-term value for players on the track is considerable.
After all, this is an opportunity, and we can imagine what would be the fate of the startups in today's listing tide without the large-scale launch of ADAS lidar, especially for Hesai Technology
This is actually a bit like a hundred regiment war after the outbreak of the mobile Internet, but today, Nuomi.com has long been included in the command and entered the cold palace, and the fate of Dianping is almost similar, and even the winner Meituan, today's core business is far from the former **.
Perhaps ADAS lidar will soon enter one change after another under the wave of intelligent driving technology, but this is undoubtedly a springboard for the industrial chain that has been created in the process of the outbreak of China's new energy market.
It is also this springboard that allows Chinese companies such as Hesai and Suteng to really fly once, and fly to Valeo and other international big brothers to wrestle their wrists.
So overall, the risk of Hesai's singleness cannot be ignored, but today's ADAS lidar is still proliferating, and it is not yet the time to be anxiousSuteng Juchuang already needs to sit on this springboard and sit on the end of the greater torque.
As for how the gears of fate will turn in the future?We don't know.
Disclaimer of WarrantiesThis article is based on the company's statutory disclosures and public information, but the author does not guarantee the completeness and timeliness of the information. Another: **There are risks, and you need to be cautious when entering the market. The article does not constitute investment advice, and whether to invest or not should be determined by yourself.