Core TipsAuthor |Song Zihao.UBTECH, a humanoid robot company that has appeared on the Spring Festival Gala four times, has finally ushered in its own outlet in the wave of generative AI. However, in the face of long-term loss-making performance, as well as the strong entry of giants such as Tesla, can UBTECH take off smoothly?
Edit |Liu Yang.
Excellent science fiction works can often predict the development of the real world, and the classic sci-fi anime "Ghost in the Shell" released in 1995 tells the story of the birth of a self-conscious AI, looking for the protagonist Suzi, only to combine with Suzi's prosthetic body to give birth to a new life form.
The combination of AI software and robot hardware seems to be a true portrayal of the current technology industry.
After the rise of AI large models, Tesla's humanoid robot Optimus made frequent appearances, and the humanoid robot start-up technology company Figure AI attracted investment from technology tycoons.
On February 29, Figure AI announced that it had recently completed a total of 6With $7.5 billion in funding, the companies involved in the investment are the dream of the tech world, including giants such as Amazon founder Bezos, Nvidia, OpenAI and Microsoft. According to public information, after the completion of the financing, the valuation of Figure AI has risen from the previous $2 billion to $2.6 billion.
In China, UBTECH, a robotics company listed on the Hong Kong stock market in December last year, set a new financing record for global AI companies at that time with a post-investment valuation of $5 billion as early as 2018. Before the listing, UBTECH's total amount of funds raised was about 47900 million yuan, and the investors behind it include Tencent, Qiming Venture Capital, CDH Investment and other first-line capital.
After experiencing the embarrassment of the listing break, the robot's tuyere finally blew to UBTECH's side. On March 5, UBTECH rose 12% intraday, and its stock price once hit a record high of HK$119.
As the "first stock of humanoid robots", can UBTECH take off with the AI outlet?
1. With a loss of 3.1 billion in three years, where did UBTECH's money go?
In fact, with the boom of AI, the domestic robot track was on fire for a while last year. From the beginning of 2023 to October, the average number of A-share humanoid robot concept stocks is **1374%。Exceeding the Shanghai Composite Index over the same period, Haozhi Electromechanical and many other ** have risen by more than 50%.
UBTECH also landed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on December 29, 2023, becoming the "first share of humanoid robots" in China. But after going public, the industry star didn't usher in the expected following.
According to the prospectus, from 2020 to 2022 and the first half of 2023, UBTECH's revenue will be 74 billion, 81.7 billion, 1008 and 2RMB6.1 billion, with a corresponding net loss of 70.7 billion, 91.8 billion, 98.7 billion and 5RMB4.8 billion; The corresponding adjusted net loss was 64.3 billion, 76.1 billion, 78.2 billion and 36.7 billion yuan.
With a loss of 3.1 billion yuan in three and a half years, UBTECH's financial constraints can be seen.
For the continuous losses, UBTECH's explanation is that, in addition to the basic salary expenses, in fiscal 2022, in order to facilitate the acquisition of a subsidiary, a one-time payment of RMB 92 million on a share-based basis affected the company's profitability.
Aside from accidental factors, UBTECH's own profitability is indeed not strong. In recent years, UBTECH's gross profit margin has also decreased, and from 2020 to 2022 and the first half of 2023, its gross profit margin will be ., respectively2%, and 202%。
According to the prospectus, UBTECH's main revenue** is four major businesses: educational intelligent robots and intelligent robot solutions, logistics intelligent robots and intelligent robot solutions, customized robots and robot solutions for other industries, consumer robots and their hardware equipment.
Affected by the supply and demand relationship of market segments, the gross profit margin of the business fluctuates greatly.
For example, due to the low-frequency demand for educational robots and the decline in the size of the education market in recent years, the gross profit margin of educational intelligent robots and intelligent robot solutions has increased from 506% to 35. in the first half of fiscal year 20232%。The business also accounted for 82 percent of total revenue in 2021The share of 7% revenue decreased to 29% in the first half of 2023.
In addition, in order to promote cooperation with large customers, UBTECH has reduced the price of its logistics intelligent robots to a certain extent, which has affected the gross profit margin of logistics intelligent robots and intelligent robot solutions. The gross margin of the business increased from 149% to 79%, followed by a rebound to 12 in the first half of 20234%, but the overall trend is still downward.
As a technology company, UBTECH has invested heavily in R&D, and the R&D cycle is relatively long. According to the prospectus, from 2020 to 2022 and the first half of 2023, UBTECH will generate R&D expenditures of 42.9 billion yuan, 51.7 billion yuan, 42.8 billion yuan, 22.4 billion yuan, accounting for the total revenue of the current period5% and 859%。
In addition, UBTECH's expenses in sales are not low. From 2020 to 2022 and the first half of 2023, the company's sales and marketing expenses were 31.3 billion yuan, 35.8 billion yuan, 36.1 billion yuan, 1$2.9 billion.
However, in the robotics industry, investment may not be able to obtain corresponding returns, because the commercialization of humanoid robots faces problems such as cost, technology, and application scenarios.
On the cost side, because humanoid robots should be perfectly integrated into non-standard life scenarios and complete complex tasks, the flexibility and versatility of humanoid robots are required, so the structure is more complex.
For example, the production cost of robotic joint servo drives remains high, and a robot needs more than a dozen servo drives, accounting for more than half of the cost of the whole machine. In the past, humanoid robots could easily sell for millions of dollars.
The history of the industry is not without the emergence of companies that are technologically advanced but have struggled with commercialization, such as Boston Dynamics' Atlas and Honda's ASIMO, both of which cost millions of dollars.
During the long research and development period, Honda ASIMO has been discontinued, and Boston Dynamics, which was once funded by the US Department of Defense, has also changed hands several times, first acquired by Google, then resold to SoftBank, and then sold to South Korea's Hyundai in 2020.
Therefore, the industry has developed to this day, and for the market, the unprofitable humanoid robot company has become less **.
2. After-effects of overtaking in corners
In fact, compared with other humanoid robot companies that are still in the demonstration stage, UBTECH has achieved corner overtaking in commercialization.
In order to solve the problem of commercialization, UBTECH's solution is to finance and occupy the market segment. First of all, he relied on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala 4 times to open up his popularity and obtain financing. Since its establishment, UBTECH has received investment from well-known institutions such as Tencent, Qiming Venture Capital, CDH Investment, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and Easyhome. Before the IPO, Tencent and Qiming Venture Capital held more than 5% of UBTECH's shares, making them the largest and second largest institutional investors.
Secondly, UBTECH has launched some low-cost consumer and educational robots through the application of subdivided fields to finance and segment the income of the track for R&D investment.
The prospectus mentions that the average selling price of educational robots is less than 150,000 yuan, consumer-grade robots are less than 2,000 yuan, but the average price of UBTECH's proudest walker series humanoid robots is 59880,000 yuan, the production cost is still difficult to reduce.
Before going public, UBTECH sold more than 760,000 robots, of which only 1 Walker's series was sold in 2021, 8 in 2022, and 1 in the first half of 2023. That is, in two and a half years, only ten units of the Walker series were sold.
This kind of commercialization method of cutting into the subdivision field is effective in the early stage, and can even achieve the effect of overtaking in corners. It is also because of this strategy that UBTECH is currently in a leading position in terms of products and patents, and has successfully independently developed servo drives in 5 years, reducing production costs.
However, the product breakthrough of the subdivision track (education, logistics, consumption) has not overcome the core technical problem of humanoid robots - how to solve the versatility of intelligence? How to reduce production costs?
Correspondingly, Tesla hopes to combine robots with the industrial chain of car manufacturing to reduce manufacturing costs. For example, Optimus uses a pure vision solution for environmental perception and obtains information about surrounding objects through 3D multi-eye vision technology, which can be used with Tesla's vision sensors, FSD chips and other components.
In addition, the driving data of Tesla owners can also be used to continuously optimize the FSD algorithm to improve the ability to perceive the environment and analyze autonomously.
With several technological advances, according to Musk, the cost of robots is expected to be further reduced, even within $20,000. Zhou Jian, the founder of UBTECH, also said that Tesla's cost reduction may be the key to the industry's mass production.
On the other hand, UBTECH's products that are subdivided into tracks are also more likely to be affected by the market.
In addition to the impact of the contraction of the education and training market, logistics robots and consumer robots, which have replaced educational robots as the main revenue, are not worry-free.
UBTECH's logistics intelligent robot products and solutions are extremely dependent on large customers, and according to the prospectus data, most of the revenue of UBTECH's logistics robot business comes from Tianqi Automation Engineering Group.
In 2021, 2022 and the first half of 2023, Tianqi Automation Engineering Group contributed revenue of 17.5 billion yuan, 25.1 billion yuan and 71.4 million yuan, accounting for the revenue of UBTECH logistics intelligent robot products and solutions4% and 93%.
UBTECH also mentioned in the prospectus that if it fails to obtain new contracts or maintain business relationships with major customers, it will have a material adverse impact on the operational and financial performance of the logistics intelligent robot business.
The consumer-grade robot-related business also has a low gross profit margin and unstable sales volume due to large market competition. UBTECH's Alpha Mini Wukong (non-educational) products, Alpha 1, Alpha 2 and building block series (non-educational) products have all been unsalable, so they choose to sell at a reduced price.
There are more or less difficulties in the main business, and when the AI outlet comes, UBTECH seems to be a little powerless.
3. Outlet or fork in the road?
On AI Day 2022, Tesla first demonstrated a prototype of the humanoid robot Optimus, a robot that needs staff support to walk, and is described as a solution for future life.
It's unimaginable to help the robot walk from the living room to the kitchen to do housework in the future.
By the end of 2023, Tesla's Optimus second-generation demo** will show that the robot will be able to handle eggs with care. Since the beginning of this year, Tesla has released several shows**, and Optimus has been able to fold clothes with ease. In just a few weeks, Optimus' agility and smoothness of movement have improved considerably.
UBTECH also released the relevant ** of the humanoid robot Walkers entering the NIO factory for "internship".
A big reason for the acceleration of humanoid robot technology comes from the improvement of AI technology.
When talking about the impact of AI on the robotics industry, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang once said, "If you can generate text, you can generate images, can you also generate motion?" Maybe. ”
In other words, after AI crosses the threshold of intelligence emergence, the robot's ability to learn motion may be greatly enhanced.
Figure AI is sought after by major technology companies because of the presence of Open AI behind it. Earlier, Figure AI announced that it would work with OpenAI to develop next-generation AI models for humanoid robots. Figure AI's updated general-purpose robot, Figure 01, can move boxes with bare hands and slowly put them on the conveyor assembly line, demonstrating industry-leading self-learning capabilities.
Catalyzed by the progress of AI technology, superimposed policy increases, and Tesla's strong entry, the commercialization of humanoid robots is accelerating. The Galaxy ** research report pointed out that 2024 is expected to be the first year of mass production of humanoid robots.
This means that humanoid robot manufacturers need to invest a lot of resources to develop and optimize their own AI algorithms and models. In the fields of data, algorithms, and computing power, it is possible to widen the gap.
In other words, AI not only brings the outlet, but also may accelerate the differentiation of the industry.
Compared with Figure AI and Optimus, UBTECH started late in the field of AI, which is a challenge that domestic humanoid robot manufacturers need to face.