Industrial Robot Industry Survival Survey

Since the "Made in China 2025" proposed, the robot market began to be in a "frenzy" state, local governments have increased the number of robot projects, the construction of a large number of robot industrial parks, a large amount of capital influx, "high subsidies", "price war", robot companies have sprung up, and even real estate, Internet companies have "cross-line" to get a piece of the pie. Looking back on the robot industry, from the merger and acquisition boom in 2016, the investment boom in 2017, and then to the investment surplus heat in 2018, the financing scale has increased by nearly 30 times, and the influx of capital has brought spring breeze to the industry while subverting the ecosystem of the industry. At the same time, China's robot industry has appeared "high-end industry low-end" trend, and there are concerns about overinvestment, the problem of blind expansion of robot enterprises and low-level repeated construction is obvious.

The status quo of the domestic robot industry with the help of capital

The double-edged sword of capital, while promoting the rapid expansion of the robot industry, has also brought a lot of chicken feathers. Investors are interested in policy subsidies and capital dividends, and pursue "fast in and fast out" capital returns, and the best investment object can be listed in three years; Contrary to it, industrial robots belong to the low-key traditional manufacturing industry, the company grows slowly, requires a long period of technology accumulation, before the capital enters, the robot industry grows in exploration, through the orderly competition in the market, some really technology, strength of enterprises to grow and develop.

After the powerful robot companies get financing, investors due to the lack of understanding of the industry and unrealistically high expectations and high valuations of the company, is also a kind of pressure, when it is found that the company's growth is not as expected, can not implement its own strategy and tactics well, and causes the company to lack hematopoietic ability, can only rely on obtaining rounds of higher financing valuation, to alleviate the huge pressure from the previous round of investors.

In 2018, the collapse of Tangbao Robot and the bankruptcy of Rethink Robotics, the originator of collaborative robots, were affected by capital, the former is China's first robot product to obtain "China Robot Certification", last year Tangbao Robot Company was rumored to be deeply involved in the bankruptcy storm due to the rupture of the capital chain, and the founder Wang Minggao is in debt and has now left the United States. The latter had a total of more than 150 million US dollars in multiple rounds of financing, but its sales volume was low, unable to meet the expected growth, and finally withdrew from the historical stage due to problems in the capital chain.

 Is the "low price" strategy of robots viable?

Last year, the price war of robot enterprises appeared, resulting in a significant reduction in the profits of domestic enterprises, which further led to the reduction of R&D investment, and the reduction of R&D investment will in turn affect the performance and sales of products.

In the early stage, relying on this tragic low-price strategy is obviously not conducive to the development of the industry, and the company that implements this low-price and volume strategy cannot meet the income requirements of investors, but only loses money and makes money, and with the "calmness" of capital will inevitably face a severe test.

Affected by the "low price strategy" of the domestic industrial robot market, the trend of "volume reduction and price decline" of imported robots may continue. International giants that are increasingly focusing on the Chinese market have also begun to prepare for price cuts, among which Kawasaki is the most obvious, and only such companies have the capital to fight a price war and seize the Chinese market through a large number of shipments.

There is an overdemand in the industrial robot industry

In fact, it can be seen from a series of data that although the market demand for robot automation is still rising, China's robot market has clearly shown a trend of overcapacity, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, in October 2018, the output of industrial robots fell by 3.3% year-on-year, since June 2018, has declined for 5 consecutive months.

How to break through domestic robot companies

At present, foreign giants have developed to a mature stage, and each giant grasps the vast majority of the market and technology, with low risk but high returns. Domestic robot manufacturers are still in the process of shifting from the start-up period of high risk and low return to the growth period of high risk and high return. In the case of internal overcapacity, market stagnation, and external positive impact by major foreign brands, how to break through domestic industrial robot enterprises is a problem we should think about.

In 2018, although the financing ratio of the entire industry fell by nearly 50%, the financing amount was the sum of 2016 and 2017, and the financing is increasingly concentrated in some advantageous enterprises, and the financing scale of a single enterprise is increasing, mainly concentrated in emerging segments such as machine vision, collaborative robots, and AGV enterprises. The industrial robot industry is already a capital-intensive industry, and the demand for capital is huge. In such an industry context, excellent companies in the industry must take the initiative to learn capital-related knowledge, contact capital, understand capital, and be good at making good use of capital.