Humanoid Robot First Stock Is Coming, Whether Ubtech Is Potential Or Not?

There's good news for the humanoid robot industry.

On December 1, Shenzhen Best Technology Co., LTD. (hereinafter referred to as "Best") passed the hearing to prepare for listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

As early as January this year, Youbi has submitted a prospectus, the update of the prospectus impact on the capital market, indicating that it is a step closer to the "humanoid robot first share".

Humanoid robots are not a new concept, and it has been 50 years since the first humanoid robot, WABOT-1, landed. Half a century later, with the advancement of technology, humanoid robots have attracted more and more attention from the market, and have also attracted the participation of technology giants.

In October 2022, Tesla's first humanoid robot Optimus debuted. At the time, Tesla CEO Elon Musk predicted that people would be able to buy an Optimus robot in the next three to five years. Tesla's entry ignited the enthusiasm of the market, and technology giants such as Amazon and Samsung have also increased their investment in humanoid robots.

On October 23, Amazon tested "Digit, "a humanoid robot developed by Agility Robotics, which recycles Amazon's yellow boxes, at its operations center.

The joining of giants makes the humanoid robot industry more lively. If the company is successfully listed, it will be an important node for the company and the investors behind it, and also provide a reference sample for the humanoid robot industry.

The biggest feature of the so-called humanoid robot is that it looks like a person. This characteristic determines that humanoid robots need to have extremely high interactive forms and strong reaction speed, which requires high technical level and cost investment of enterprises. Judging from the current performance of Youbi, the industry is still facing the dilemma of high investment and difficult profit.

With ChatGPT leading the wave of large models, the interaction and understanding of large model training AI is very consistent with humanoid robots, if you can take the east wind of large models, the humanoid robot industry will also usher in an inflection point.

It is an uneven, but promising road. Going public is only the first step, and how to maintain an edge in competition with giants and find a better business model to increase valuation is the key to the next stage of ubtech.

Humanoid robots. How do you make money from them?

In 2023, with the progress of AI technology, people's imagination of humanoid robots is getting bigger and bigger, and the market of humanoid robots is also concerned.

As a head entrepreneurial enterprise, Youbi has been listed twice this year, and now it has passed the hearing in Hong Kong stocks, which means that Youbi is only one foot away from listing.

Like all companies, before going public, Youbi needs to be tested by the capital market, and the most important thing is to answer how to make money.

Through the prospectus, Youmust also put the real business situation on the table.

According to the prospectus, between 2020 and the first half of 2023, the company's revenue was 740 million yuan, 817 million yuan, 1,008 billion yuan and 261 million yuan, respectively.

In terms of segmentation, the company's revenue comes from enterprise-level intelligent service robots and intelligent service robot solutions, consumer robots and other hardware equipment, and the other three parts.

In other words, the best choice is To B and To C business walking on two legs.

Among them, educational intelligent robots hold up half of the sky's revenue. Prospectus data show that between 2020 and the first half of 2023, the revenue of intelligent robot products and solutions accounted for 82.7%, 56.5%, 51.2% and 29% of the total revenue, respectively.

However, as Youbi said in the prospectus, the use cycle of educational intelligent robot products is long, and educational institutions are unlikely to repeat purchases in the short term, which is likely to lead to Youbi's revenue being affected.

On this basis, in order to reduce its dependence on the education field, in recent years, Youbi has opened up revenue channels such as logistics and other industry customization.

The decline in the share of educational robot revenue from 2020 to 2022 is also proof of this. In contrast, in the first half of 2020-2023, the revenue of intelligent robots of Youbi Logistics accounted for 1.7%, 23.3%, 26.1% and 29.4, respectively; Other industries custom robot revenue accounted for 5.2%, 11%, 8.2%, 8.5%.

One fact is that although Youbi has developed two major businesses, To B and To C, and diversified its revenue segments, humanoid robots still face difficulties in commercialization. Reflected in the best choice, is two years of losses.

According to the prospectus, between 2020 and the first half of 2023, the company's losses are 707 million CNY, 917.5 million CNY, 987.4 million CNY and 547.9 million CNY.

In parallel with successive annual losses, is the decline in gross profit margin, 2020-2023 in the first half of the year, its gross profit margin was 44.7%, 31.3%, 29.2% and 20.2%.

In response, the company explained that "the gross margin of educational hardware products and services and software decreased from 62.3% gross margin in the first half of 2022 to 6.6% gross loss in the first half of 2023. Due to lower revenue from sales of Alpha Mini Goku (Education) and uKIT building robot and building block (education) accessories ".

It is worth noting that the manufacturing cost of the current humanoid robot industry is still very high.

In the first half of 2020-2023, the R&D expenditure of the company was 428.8 million CNY, 517.1 million CNY, 428.3 million CNY and 224.3 million CNY respectively, accounting for 57.9%, 63.3%, 42.3% and 85.9% of the total revenue in the same period.

From the point of view of key indicators, the research and development costs of Youbi in recent years have not improved its profitability. However, this is a common problem in the industry, and it takes time and requires the joint efforts of players.

Standing under the tuyere, Youbi will be re-examined by the capital with a more stringent vision. On the way to the capital market, it is important to find more commercial solutions. How to find a balance between investment and income is a test of the future of Youbi.

Will Youbi be a potential stock?

The first time Youbi came into public view was in the 2016 CCTV Spring Festival Evening. At that time, 540 Alpha 1S robots developed by Youbi danced together on the stage, in addition to dancing, Alpha 1S robots can also play boxing and tai chi.

Quite a sense of science and technology, and "human-like" robots, let the audience shine, but also attracted the attention of well-known capital.

Half a year later, in July 2016, Youbeisheng received $100 million in financing from CDH Capital, IFlytek and other companies, and its post-investment valuation reached $1 billion; In May 2018, Youbi completed a $820 million C round of financing, obtained more than 20 institutional investments such as Tencent and Surprisingly Home, and the company's valuation reached $5 billion.

Since its establishment in 2012, Youbi has completed several rounds of financing, and many well-known enterprises and investment institutions including Tencent, Qiming Chuangming, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, CDH Investment, IFlyTek, Thailand CP, Haier, Telstra, Actually Home, Minsheng Securities, Citic Goldstone, Minyin International, CGN and Songhe Capital have participated in the investment.

Tencent Holdings holds a 6.48% stake in Youbi, making it the largest institutional shareholder. Xia Zuoquan, co-founder of BYD and chairman of Zhengxuan Investment, invested in Youbi as an angel investor, and is still one of the main shareholders and directors of the company, holding 5.78%, which is the largest individual shareholder other than the founder.

It is worth mentioning that Tencent is currently its largest institutional shareholder, holding 6.48%.

On the one hand, the slow business process is on the other hand, the high cost of research and development, and you must find an investment institution that can continuously transfusion blood. The reason why investment institutions bet on the best choice is also to see the potential of the best choice.

Before becoming the "first stock of humanoid robots", Youbi's most imaginative products were humanoid robots.

In 2016, Youbi invested in the development of Walker, a large humanoid robot, and Walker has gone through four iterations so far. The latest prospectus shows that since the 2021 fiscal year, the company has sold 10 Walker units.

According to CBO Tan Min shared at the 36 Krypton WISE conference, Walker provided more than 1,200 hours of service during the six months of work at the China Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai, creating a record for humanoid robots in public service places so far. It is also the first commercial service case of humanoid robots.

At the same time, Youbi is also the first company in the world to reduce the cost of bipedal life-size humanoid robots to less than $100,000. Fu Chunjiang, vice president of technology at Youbi, has said that it is expected that the cost of humanoid robots can be reduced to $50,000 or slightly higher by 2025.

Such achievements cannot be separated from the deep cultivation of research and development in recent years. According to the prospectus, as of June 30, 2023, the full stack technology has 1,800 robotics and artificial intelligence related patents, of which more than 380 are overseas patents.

Behind the results, is the continuous high intensity of real money and silver investment. According to the prospectus, during the reporting period, the company's total R&D investment was nearly 1.6 billion yuan, and the average R&D expenditure accounted for 56.5% of the total revenue.

As Youbi mentioned in the prospectus, Youbi R & D focuses on the core technology of humanoid robots, and has been focusing its research and development work on promoting the integration and combination of core technologies used by humanoid robots, such as computer vision, voice interaction, servo drive, motion planning and control, and positioning and navigation.

However, due to the embryonic stage of the humanoid robot industry, the technical maturity is limited, and it is still early to talk about commercialization. Youbi also suggested in the prospectus that Youbi's advancement compared with its counterparts in humanoid robots is limited. The global humanoid robot and robot solution industry is still in the early stage of technological exploration and development, the market players are limited, and the large-scale commercialization of humanoid robots has not yet been realized.

At present, in the entire intelligent service robot market, the share of humanoid robots is not high. Frost & Sullivan data show that China's humanoid robots and robot solutions market size is expected to be about 9.9 billion yuan in 2028, accounting for about 5.4% of the market size of China's intelligent service robots and intelligent service robot solutions industry.

That means there are a lot of opportunities for players. As a representative of the first landing in the capital market, the future focus may still be humanoid robots, which is also the focus of investors. At the same time, as one of the few humanoid robot companies that has already had commercial cases, the development and financial situation of Youbi will also be continued attention.

Ubtech, can you use the AI accelerator?

Entering 2023, under the Dongfeng AI large model, the industry climax of humanoid robots has quietly arrived.

Over the past few decades, humanoid robots have made few real breakthroughs, hampered by technology. In essence, humanoid robots used to rely on algorithms to have a certain intelligence, but only stayed at the primary level, stagnating on the way to infinite access to "people".

For example, humanoid robots can dance, warehouse handling and other behaviors, in the most complex human language logic ability, dialogue understanding ability, the past humanoid robots are difficult to reach the level of "humanoid".

This year, the large AI model represented by ChatGPT appeared, injecting new life into humanoid robots.

One conceivable scenario is that, with the help of generative AI large model technology, humanoid robots or robots can evolve into conversational understanding capabilities, can imitate human language logic, dialogue with humans, and empower all walks of life.

In short, the integration of AI large models and humanoid robots may allow humanoid robots to really "grow brains" and become robots as smart as people, which is also seen as one of the future landing scenes of AI large models.

From this point of view, it is crucial for humanoid robot companies to be able to catch the express train of AI large models.

According to Tan Min, CBO of Youbi, Youbi is trying to realize the combination of large model + humanoid robot and practice in different application scenarios. In the future, the humanoid robot will revolve around the three major scenes of industrial manufacturing, commercial services and family companionship, redefine the workers in the era of artificial intelligence, and liberate humans from repetitive labor. The commercial service scene is the fastest application market for humanoid robots, while the home landing scene is the most potential application market for humanoid robots.

According to Insight, Youbi has launched a "humanoid robot multi-modal embodied intelligence system" based on the transformer framework. The research and development team of Youbi will layout relevant technologies such as large models in 2020. With the further development and maturity of relevant technologies, starting from 2022, the team began to invest in the research and development of the intelligent system. At present, many departments, including Youbi Research Institute and Humanoid Robot Division, have jointly invested in the research and development and iteration process of "Humanoid robot multi-modal embodied intelligent system".

Before the AI big model will push the industry to a climax, the humanoid robot industry has attracted many technology giants to join.

The most representative is Tesla. Tesla CEO Musk has repeatedly stressed that humanoid robots have become Tesla's most important product development project, and over time, the importance of this business may exceed electric vehicles.

At the Tesla "AI Day" in 2022, Tesla humanoid robot "Optimus" appeared. It is about 1.72 meters tall, weighs about 57 kilograms, can walk 8 kilometers per hour, and can load 20 kilograms of items. According to Tesla, Optimus uses Tesla's most advanced AI technologies, such as the visual nervous system, self-developed chips and FSD hardware.

From the development of Optimus, Tesla's goal is to make technological breakthroughs while designing humanoid robots that can land and be mass-produced. Musk said the first version of Optimus is expected to go into production in 2023, with a price tag of around $20,000 and volume production within three to five years.

In addition, giants such as Amazon, Dyson, and Xiaomi are also developing humanoid robots in their respective fields to empower all walks of life.