Behind the doubling of Sagittarius performance: from lidar to robot revolution

On the evening of March 27, Sagittarius released its 2023 earnings report and handed over its first annual report card after listing., Financial data show that for the whole of 2023, Suteng Juchuang achieved a total revenue of 1.12 billion billion yuan, up 111.2 percent year-on-year. In addition, the gross profit of Sagittarius became positive, reaching 93.64 million yuan, and the overall gross profit margin increased from 7.4 percent in 2022 to 8.4 percent., The scale effect is remarkable. Sagitar Juchuang leads the lidar market. 2023 is a year of rapid development of intelligent driving technology and a year of rapid development of lidar industry. This is particularly clear in Sagitar Juchuang., Financial data show that in 2023, the total sales volume of Sagitar Juchuang lidar was about 260000 units, up 355.4 percent from the same period last year. Among them, the sales volume of lidar for ADAS applications reached 243000 units, up an astonishing 558.5 percent from the same period last year. The increase in lidar sales has led to a significant increase in revenue, with ADAS product revenue reaching 0.777 billion yuan, up 384.6 percent year-on-year., Tuyuan: Sagittarius Juchuang, the scale effect has promoted the improvement of Sagittarius Juchuang’s gross profit margin. The gross loss rate of lidar products used for ADAS applications has greatly improved from 101.1 in 2022 to 5.9 in 2023, driving the overall gross profit margin to become positive. This is also due to the fact that the price of semiconductor chips purchased by Sagittarius Juchuang in 2023 is much lower than that in 2022., In 2024, the automotive lidar market will continue to expand. According to data from the intelligent driving configuration database of the Gaishi Automotive Research Institute, from January to February this year, Sagittarius Juchuang ranked first in terms of installed capacity of lidar suppliers with a market share of 55.3 percent with 73,986 installed capacity. Huawei Technologies took the top spot with 22,025 installed capacity and 16.5 percent of the market share. Tuton and Hesai Technology ranked fourth in the 3. with 18,972 and 17,141 installed capacity respectively., The first four enterprises accounted for more than 98% of the market share, the industry showed a clear head agglomeration effect, and the speed of the company gradually with other enterprises to pull away., The main reason is that Sagittarius Juchuang’s large number of mass production fixed-point orders have begun to exert force, and cooperative enterprises such as Xiaopeng, Qiejie, Krypton, BYD and Zhiji have contributed a lot., By the end of February this year, Sagittarius Juchuang had increased the number of fixed-point orders for mass production of lidar products with 22 automobile manufacturers and first-class suppliers to 63 models, and achieved SOP for 25 models for 12 of the above 22 automobile manufacturers and first-class suppliers., This momentum is expected to continue in 2024. At the earnings conference call, Sagittarius CEO Qiu Chunchao pointed out that the current demand in the lidar industry is at a stage of rapid growth and is expected to maintain this strong growth trend during the year. He thinks Sagittarius has a chance to hit the target of 1 million sets this year., Judging from the development trend of the industry, the goal of setting this 1 million is not empty talk., At present, the high-level intelligent driving function represented by the city NOA accelerates the landing. In 2023, 940000 vehicles will be equipped with pilot-assisted driving, which has achieved large-scale mass production., According to the data reported by the China Information and Communication Institute, as of the third quarter of 2023, 36 domestic car companies have confirmed the use of lidar. The city NOA smart driving products of brands such as Xiaopeng and Jinjie have confirmed that lidar is one of the key sensors to ensure the comfort and safety of the smart driving experience., Since 2024, with the introduction of models such as Krypton 001 and Zhiji L7, the trend of standard matching of lidar in the field of intelligent vehicles has become more and more obvious., According to the statistics of gaishi automobile, at present, more than 70% of the models equipped with NOA pilot function are mainly concentrated in the price range above 300000. As the models equipped with pilot function gradually reach the price range of about 150000, the load is expected to exceed 1.8 million vehicles in 2024. In the process, more models are expected to use lidar as standard., The competition of urban NOA promotes the simultaneous high-speed growth of lidar on-board vehicles, and the policy promotes the development of high-end self-driving vehicles at L3 level and above, and the on-board lidar will usher in a period of rapid release. Sagittarius and other laser radar enterprises, ushered in a broader stage of development., Relying on Sagittarius’s advantages in scale and its early layout in chipping, the average unit price of Sagittarius lidar products has continued to decline. The average unit price of its products for ADAS applications has dropped from about RMB 4,300 yuan in 2022 to about RMB 3,200 yuan in 2023., Although this has affected the sales revenue to a certain extent, at a time when the price war has not stopped, the efforts to reduce costs, coupled with the two self-owned manufacturing centers in Shenzhen and the manufacturing center invested by Liteng, a joint venture company, in Dongguan, have ensured their large-scale mass production and delivery capabilities, which have become one of the core advantages of the market., In 2024, with the volume of fixed-point orders and the continuous expansion of cooperative enterprises, the loading volume of its lidar products is expected to continue to increase while improving its anti-risk ability., Sales volume increased, gross profit margin turned positive, why still in the loss?, Figure source: Suteng Juchuang earnings, in 2023 Suteng Juchuang losses expanded year-on-year, net loss of 4.331 billion yuan, the same period last year loss of 2.086 billion yuan. However, it is worth noting that in 2023, the fair value of the preferred shares of Sagitar Juchuang changed to negative RMB 3.5 billion yuan, compared with negative RMB 1.5 billion yuan in the same period last year. This part of the loss far exceeded the company’s operating loss. The increase in losses in this area was mainly due to the increase in the valuation of Sagittarius and the calculation of accounting rules for Hong Kong stocks. This type of data will no longer exist when all preferred shares are automatically converted into common shares after the listing of Sagittarius this year., that is to say,Fair value changeOnlyOn the book increaseof theLossdoes not affect the company’s cash flow ., Therefore, in terms of indicators that are more in line with business operations,2023Annual adjusted net loss of approximately4.34Billion yuan, year-on-year narrowing22.8 percent, the profitability level has actually improved significantly., Based on the current stage of development of the lidar industry and the company’s development needs, spending money is normal, the focus is how to spend?, financial data show that occupy the majority of the Sagitar Juchuang spending or research and development costs. In 2023, R & D spending increased from 0.306 billion yuan in 2022 to 0.635 billion yuan, up 107.6 percent year-on-year. Excluding the option expense included in it, its research and development expenses in 2023 will reach about RMB 0.43 billion, and the investment of assets related to research and development will reach RMB 80 million, and the total investment in research and development will be about 0.51 billion yuan., Figure source: Sagittarius, in recent years, Sagittarius around the farther detection distance and higher resolution and other industry major corner points, step up research and development layout. Previously, Sagittarius launched three lidar platforms: M platform, E platform and R platform, and the product matrix has been continuously enriched., At this year’s CES 2024, Sagittarius also officially released the first 940nm ultra-long range lidar M3, which is the first lidar product in the global lidar industry to achieve 300m @ 10% ultra-long range ranging capability through 940nm laser transceiver scheme., Source: Sagittarius, however, in addition to product iteration updates, more attention needs to be paid to the investment of Sagittarius in AI and chip fields. In 2023, Sagittarius will invest about 30% of its research and development in AI, including algorithms, computing power and data storage, and about 22% in chip research and development., Sagitar Juchuang’s laser radar self-research chip technical barriers, (source: Sagitar Juchuang prospectus), Sagitar Juchuang currently has a total of 563 research and development personnel, of which about 100 personnel focus on chip research and development, nearly 150 personnel focus on AI algorithms., AI and software are not strongly related to traditional pure hardware lidar companies, but they are one of the core competencies for the “non-pure” lidar company., The release of this financial report, Sagitar Juchuang can be said to further reveal the years of accumulation buried foreshadowing, breaking the previous market on Sagitar Juchuang focus on the power of the car lidar impression., Dr. Qiu Chunxin, chairman and chief scientist of Sagittarius, said that RoboSense, in a narrow sense, is robot + perception, but in a broad sense, it is robot + cognition, that is, AI + robot. “Sagitar has defined itself as a robotics company since its inception. Becoming the world’s leading lidar company is only the first step in achieving our goal.”, This sentence can be divided into two levels to discuss: First, is Sagittarius Juchuang a robot company? Do you have the accumulation and ability to force AI robots?, second, has Sagittarius achieved its pre-goal of becoming the world’s leading lidar company?, let’s talk about the latter first. Objectively speaking, from the perspective of sales volume, revenue, market value, products, technology and other dimensions, in the current lidar market, Sagitar Juchuang is worthy of the sentence “global leader”. This report card for 2023 is one of the best proofs. Even if it is still losing money, it is “the norm in the industry”., Over the past years, Sagittarius has taken on-board lidar as its core. Next, based on Sagittarius’s accumulation of software and hardware capabilities such as sensors and AI algorithms, it will accelerate the exploration of the “AI + robot” road., Add “AI + Robot”. From a technical point of view, both sensors and AI perception capabilities are the core capabilities of Sagittarius. They have accumulated rich experience in hardware, software algorithms and chip technology., In April 2016, Sagitar Juchuang released the “Prometheus Plan” and formally proposed a plan to gradually provide one-stop lidar environmental perception technology solutions to partners in the field of autonomous driving., Not only does it focus on the perception of lidar, the new generation of HyperVision full stack algorithm solution developed by Sagittarius supports both pure lidar ADAS solution, pure vision ADAS solution, lidar + vision ADAS solution, and lidar + vision automatic driving solution., HyperVision, the RoboSense of Sagittarius independent research and development of intelligent driving artificial intelligence perception software, (source: Sagittarius prospectus), around the lidar, Sagittarius has completed the “chip and hardware and AI software” full-link solution layout. Sagittarius Juchuang regards the car as a relatively mature hardware platform, realizing the opening of the whole process of AI (including data, algorithms and computing power clusters), and even establishing its own supercomputing center-“Shenji Supercomputing Center”., Today, Sagittarius intends to expand the commercial landing application in the direction of robotics, and the revenue structure is expected to change., In the past few years, Sagittarius has mainly used Helios and Bpearl to meet most of the needs of robot customers. In 2023, Sagittarius selected two types of robots, cleaning and unmanned forklifts, as well as two types of scenes in ports and mines. In the second half of 2023, Sagittarius found that mowing robots have a strong demand for lidar. Its E platform can meet the demand of such robots very well. It is expected to start delivering relevant products in Q4 this year., As for the application of lidar to embodied intelligent robots, “I think that just as lidar is a key sensor for high-order intelligent driving, lidar has three-dimensional sensing capabilities, natural with depth information, and will also be a key sensor for humanoid robots. I believe that the ripening of lidar in the automotive field can also be a good migration to humanoid robots.” Qiu Chunxin said bluntly., The automotive industry is actually very closely related to robots, in a sense,Smart cars can also be counted as a kind of robot. Tesla calls its car products as on-wheel robots, and the concept of car robots is becoming more and more popular. At the same time, Tesla is also vigorously developing humanoid robot projects., Body intelligence is considered to be “the next wave of artificial intelligence development”. The future of humanoid robots will not only replace human repetitive work, but may even become part of human family members., At Tesla’s 2023 annual shareholders’ meeting, Musk predicted that the demand for humanoid robots will far exceed that of electric vehicles in the future, and this demand may reach 10 billion. According to Goldman Sachs’ latest forecast, the total size of the humanoid robot market will be raised to $38 billion in 2035., Looking back on the development trajectory of Sagitar Juchuang, its pace of innovation is closely linked to the development of the industry. In 2016, the first lidar product launched by Sagitar Juchuang was a 16-line lidar for low-speed robot applications. At that time, when the robot technology and market had not yet ushered in a period of explosive growth, it could be called the first stage of the lidar industry. Although the market size was limited at that time, Sagitar Juchuang laid the foundation for subsequent development with its forward-looking technology research and development and market layout., With the continuous advancement of technology and the increasing maturity of the market, Sagitar Juchuang quickly shifted its focus to the research and development of vehicle-level lidar. By 2021, Sagittarius will be the first to commercialize the solid-state lidar M1, marking the second phase of lidar., Today, the rise of physical intelligence has ushered in new development opportunities for the robot industry. Manialized intelligence requires more advanced and complex sensors to support the robot’s perception and decision-making capabilities. In this context, relying on the accumulation and layout of Sagitar Juchuang in many aspects of software and hardware, Sagitar Juchuang is ready to enter the third stage of lidar, and promote the intelligent upgrade of the entire robot industry through its technological innovation., Qiu Chunxin said, “Next, our team will continue to work hard to reorganize the vertical hardware, AI, chip, horizontal car track and robot track to meet this wave of artificial intelligence technology. Our vision is to become the world’s leading robotics platform company in the next 10 years.”, return to the first electric network home>