Machine vision in our country is in the stage of rapid development, it is a long slope and thick snow track. Machine vision is an important part of advanced manufacturing and a golden growth track: (1) The global machine vision market size CAGR reached 18.05% from 2016 to 2019, rising to $10.2 billion in 2019; China’s machine vision started late, the market size in 2015 was only 3.1 billion yuan, in 2019 increased to 10.3 billion yuan, 2015-2019 CAGR reached 35.01%, much higher than the global machine vision industry compound growth rate in the same period. ② As the world’s largest manufacturing country, China’s machine vision penetration rate is low, there is a large room for growth, in addition to 3C, automotive and other industries machine vision penetration rate will continue to increase, machine vision downstream application scenarios are continuing to expand, China Industry Information network forecast 2023 China’s machine vision industry scale is expected to reach 19.7 billion yuan, The CAGR from 2019 to 2023 will reach 17.6%.

ICS TRIPLEX T9110

ICS TRIPLEX T9110

The machine vision industry has excellent profitability, and local enterprises are on the rise. ① Domestic machine vision has formed a complete industrial chain, related enterprises cover parts suppliers (light source, lens, camera and vision control system, etc.) and integrated developers (assembly integration and software secondary development, etc.) two categories, of which parts and software development in the machine vision system value accounted for up to 80%; As a technology-intensive industry, the maintenance of the core competitiveness of machine vision enterprises depends on continuous research and development investment. ② Looking at home and abroad, parts enterprises in the middle stream of machine vision generally have strong profitability, and the gross profit margin of Cognex, Keenshi and Opte has been maintained at more than 70% for a year. (3) The hot domestic machine vision industry has attracted a lot of capital attention and investment, and promoted the rapid development of local machine vision enterprises, and breakthroughs have been made in the important core links of machine vision, and a number of local representative enterprises have emerged, but the revenue scale is generally small, and the high-end core parts field is waiting for breakthroughs.

Cognex & Keynes: A stone from another mountain can be used to attack jade. As the world’s two leading machine vision companies, Cognex takes vision software as the core and continues to lay out downstream applications, while Keenx takes both software and hardware and has a more complete product line. Summarizing the successful development process of the two can provide reference for local enterprises: (1) The business evolves from non-standard customization to standardization, which can comprehensively improve the unit output efficiency and operational capacity, and is a natural development path for local enterprises to achieve business scale expansion; ② The product extends from hardware to software, software is the core technical barrier of machine vision, is the value center of the industrial chain, independent software platform has become the core competitiveness of Cognex and Keenx, vertical integration to the upstream software link, is the only way for local enterprises to grow bigger and stronger.

Investment advice: Machine vision as a long slope thick snow track, with better growth and strong profitability, focusing on the standard Keenshi’s local machine vision core parts leader Opte, it is recommended to pay attention to the moment technology, as well as the upcoming listing of Ling Yunguang, Zhongke micro to subdivision industry leaders.

Risk warning: manufacturing investment is less than expected, industry competition is intensifying, profitability is declining, and the concentration of downstream 3C electronics is high.