Recently, the National Bureau of Statistics released the national industrial Robot output data for September 2021. The data shows that the output of industrial robots in September 2021 was 29,006 sets, a year-on-year increase of 19.05%; the cumulative output of industrial robots from January to September was 268,694 sets, a year-on-year increase of 57.8%.
Judging from the monthly output data from March to the present, the output of industrial robots in September reached the lowest value, and the growth rate dropped sharply. Compared with August, the output of industrial robots in September decreased by 3,822 sets. In fact, since the monthly production of industrial robots peaked in June, there has been a drop in volatility in the following July. June has thus become a turning point for the high growth of industrial robots this year. Some industry insiders judge that the slowdown in the growth rate of the industrial Robot market in the fourth quarter of this year is a high probability event.
Industrial Robot output data from January to September 2021
Data source: National Bureau of Statistics, collated by Gaogong Robot
The first half of the run
Lu Zhangyuan, director of the High-tech Robot Industry Research Institute, made the following judgment on the market situation of industrial robots this year in the article “Writing at the “Inflection Point”, “Cold Thinking” about Robots: The high growth in the first half of 2021 is a bit An “unexpected” surprise, but the slowdown in growth in the second half of the year is almost a “reasonable” expectation.
On the one hand, the growth base in the second half of 2020 is relatively large; on the other hand, there are still several key factors to be vigilant about in the second half of 2021. One is the rise in PPI, the shortage of raw materials and the rise in prices may continue; the second is consumption Due to the impact of end and export, the recovery of production capacity in overseas markets will curb the demand for Chinese production capacity to a certain extent.
At present, this prediction is becoming a reality.
During the company visits in the first half of the year, it can be clearly found that the positive market sentiment of the company is the main theme. “The performance KPI indicators for this year have been basically completed in the first half of the year” has become a high-frequency statement for industry insiders to summarize the market trend. In fact, in the previous performance statistics of 19 smart manufacturing concept stocks, it was found that 18 companies had a net profit growth rate of over 100%. After excluding the highest growth rate of Shuanghuan Transmission, the average growth rate of net profit of 18 companies reached 305.45%.
The entire manufacturing market entered a period of rapid development in the first half of the year. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, in the first half of the year, the added value of industries above designated size increased by 15.9% year-on-year, with an average growth rate of 7.0% in the two years, 0.2 percentage points faster than that in the first quarter; of which, the second quarter increased by 8.9% year-on-year. In June, the added value of industrial enterprises above designated size increased by 8.3% year-on-year, an average increase of 6.5% in the two years, and a month-on-month increase of 0.56%.
The prosperity of the downstream market has directly improved the prosperity of the industrial robot market. On the one hand, traditional manufacturing industries such as textiles, packaging, tobacco, construction machinery and other industries are growing rapidly. The new energy industry has entered a large cycle of expansion.
Among them, only taking the expansion of the lithium battery industry as an example, according to the incomplete statistics of high-tech lithium battery, in the first half of 2021, the new planned capacity of domestic power batteries will reach 745GWh, the total investment will exceed 258.7 billion yuan, and the investment in lithium battery equipment will reach 149 billion yuan. Among them, the cumulative order of lithium battery equipment issued by a company in Ningde era alone has exceeded 16 billion yuan.
Statistical time: As of the first half of 2021, the source of the table is Gaogong Lithium Battery
volatile second half
Industrial robots are a typical industry driven by incremental markets. As long as there are new production lines and factories, there will be orders. However, when the growth trend slowed down, unfavorable factors such as rising raw material prices, core shortage crisis, and soaring shipping prices that hindered exports gradually emerged under the agitation of time, which further affected the upstream equipment market such as industrial robots.
According to feedback from industry insiders, due to factors such as the reduction of export orders and power cuts and production cuts, orders for the “four major families” of industrial robots fell significantly year-on-year from July to September this year. The industry insider further analyzed that as the 3C industry enters the off-season in the second half of the year and the demand release of the automotive industry fails to meet expectations, the industrial robot market will likely not be able to replicate the glory of the first half of the year.
On the one hand, the global crisis of core shortage has directly affected the normal production of some 3C electronic products. Apple may cut its projected iPhone 13 production target by as much as 10 million units due to a chronic shortage of chips, public information shows. Tianfeng International analyst Ming-Chi Kuo further analyzed that this year’s shipments of MacBook Air and MacBook Pro equipped with Apple’s self-developed M1 processor will be cut by about 15%; one of the reasons for the cut is a shortage of parts.
However, in this round of core shortage crisis, the biggest impact is on the automotive industry. The world-renowned market analysis company Aisin Huamai issued a report saying that the global semiconductor shortage will reduce the world’s auto industry production by as much as 7.1 million vehicles this year until the end of 2022. It will not ease for half a year. According to AutoForecast Solutions, as of August 9, the global loss of vehicle production due to chip shortages has reached 5.853 million units. Among them, North America and Europe lost the most, with 1.874 million and 1.746 million respectively, followed by China with 1.122 million.
3C, automobile has always been the main position of industrial robot application. When the basic disk faces various challenges, it is inevitable that industrial robots will be affected.
At the same time, rising commodity prices and rising shipping costs have made export orders faced with many obstacles, superimposed on the sudden outbreak of power cuts and production cuts, and various volatile factors are mixed and fermented, and the overall market environment has greatly increased volatility and uncertainty.
The epidemic has profoundly changed the global market environment, and the future full of uncertainty has become a deterministic consensus. The continuous promotion of intelligent manufacturing has been proven to be an effective way for the manufacturing industry to cope with uncertainty. From this perspective, the general direction of robots is clear, but the process of realization is tortuous.
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