Recently, Soochow Securities released a research report said that the sales of industrial robots in the first quarter of 2023 were 66,000 units, down 3% year-on-year and 13% quarter-on-quarter, lower than market expectations.

In terms of downstream, photovoltaic and automotive electronics markets still maintain a growth rate of more than 20%. Photovoltaic market mainly benefits from the demand for equipment renewal generated by technology iteration. New energy vehicles, lithium electricity, medical and other industries have fallen in the short term, and the recovery of electronics and metal products industries is less than expected, dragging down the industry sales.

In terms of machine types, cooperative robots and parallel robots achieved positive growth, mainly due to the recovery of food and beverage and daily chemical industries, while the sales volume of SCARA, large six axis and small six axis fell short of expectations. The decline of SCARA was mainly due to the slowing down of downstream lithium power and medical demand, and the small photovoltaic demand volume could not form a comprehensive support. The small six axis is affected by the weak consumption and investment in the electronics industry, and the market demand is weak. The six axes were basically flat compared with the same period last year, and the application of heavy load products accelerated to expand, and the demand of the hedge industry declined.

Looking forward to the whole year, robot is the automation product in the “growth” stage. Affected by the downstream business degree, the short-term pressure is expected to show a low before high trend in the whole year, and is expected to rebound in the second half of the year.

The replacement process of domestic industrial robots has accelerated

China’s industrial robot market scale reached 60.9 billion yuan in 2022, up 16% year on year, with an average annual growth rate of 14% from 2017 to 2022.

In 2022, the four major families were seriously out of stock due to the epidemic, which gave domestic robots a good window to enter emerging fields such as lithium electricity and photovoltaic and polish their products.

Under the uncertain market demand trend in the first quarter of 2023, the industry price war and internal volume become an inevitable trend. Domestic brands with the advantage of cost performance seize the opportunity again, accelerate the competition with foreign capital in lithium, photovoltaic, auto parts and other fields and seize market share, and accelerate the penetration in the vehicle field. In the first quarter, the sales of foreign companies grew negatively, but domestic enterprises increased by more than 20%. The localization rate of industrial robots reached 41% in the first quarter, an increase of 9 percentage points year-on-year, and the domestic substitution speed up.

In terms of competition pattern, in the first quarter, sales of more than half of the enterprises declined year-on-year, and only a few domestic leading manufacturers were optimistic about orders in hand. The market pattern was reshaped, and the industry reshuffle was accelerated. Leading enterprises such as Eston, Huichuan Technology and Efte further increased their market share by years of technological accumulation and scale advantage, among which Eston’s market share increased by 2.7 percentage points year-on-year. It ranked top 5 for the first time, equal to the four big families.

China’s industrial robots have the dual drive of increasing penetration rate and domestic substitution, and the industry has a broad prospect:

In terms of penetration rate, the density of robots in China’s manufacturing industry is 322 units per 10,000 people in 2021. According to the Implementation Plan of “Robot +” Application issued by 17 departments including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the target of the density of robots in China’s manufacturing industry in 2025 is to double that in 2020 (about 500 units per 10,000 people). The penetration rate of industrial robots continues to increase.
In terms of localization rate, in 2022, the localization rate of industrial robots in China is only 35%, the market share of domestic leading Eston and Huichuan robots is only 6% and 5%, and the combined share of “four big families” is 40%, benefiting from the take-off of domestic advantageous industries and the expansion of downstream application scenarios, such as the rise of domestic customers such as photovoltaic and lithium electricity, and the localization of industrial robots is facing opportunities.