Intelligent networked vehicles have become a popular track for cross-border layout of listed companies.
TZTEK is a leading enterprise in the field of industrial visual intelligent equipment, and its main customers include Apple, Samsung and other enterprises. According to the prospectus, from 2016 to 2018, TZTEK's total revenue from Apple and its suppliers accounted for 49.98%, 67.99% and 76.09%.
In order to reduce dependence on Apple and its suppliers, in the past few years, TZTEK has been increasing its deployment of new business tracks such as automobiles and photovoltaic semiconductors in order to find more performance growth points.
So far, TZTEK's dependence on consumer electronics has been improved, but the gross profit of its main business has declined, and there are still risks such as bad debts of accounts receivable, inventory price decline, and low turnover rate.
In the future, new fields such as automobiles and photovoltaic semiconductors still require huge R&D and market investment. Can TZTEK usher in a new pole of growth?
Main business gross profit decline
In 2022, TZTEK will achieve operating income of 1.589 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 25.6%; realize net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies of 152 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13.4%, and both operating income and net profit have achieved year-on-year growth.
It is worth noting that, behind the double growth of revenue and net profit, the gross profit margin of TZTEK's main business has shown a downward trend. The financial report shows that from 2020 to 2022, the gross profit margin of TZTEK's main business is 42.46%, 42.41%, and 40.43%, showing a downward trend year by year.
In fact, the profitability of Tianzhun Technology has long shown signs of decline . From 2019 to 2022, the net interest rates of TZTEK are 15.37%, 11.14%, 10.6%, and 9.57%, showing a continuous downward trend.
Specifically, TZTEK’s products include visual measurement equipment, visual inspection equipment, visual process equipment and intelligent driving solutions, etc., and its main customer groups cover consumer electronics, automobiles, photovoltaic semiconductors and other fields.
Among them, visual measurement equipment products and visual inspection equipment products are the two business segments with the largest revenue of TZTEK. The operating income in 2022 will be 758 million yuan and 530 million yuan respectively, accounting for 81.07% of the company's total operating income.
The operating income of visual process equipment products in 2022 is 244 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 15.1%; the operating income of intelligent driving solution products is 56.6218 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13.94%, accounting for only 3.56% of operating income.
Among the above-mentioned four major products, except for the intelligent driving solution, the gross profit margin of the other three major products has declined to varying degrees.
The financial report shows that the gross profit margin of TZTEK’s visual measurement equipment, visual inspection equipment, and visual process equipment in 2022 will decline by 1.94%, 2.64%, and 8.2% respectively, while the gross profit margin of intelligent driving solutions will increase to 12.58%.
Tianzhun Technology said that the decline in gross profit margin was mainly due to the increase in operating costs. At the same time, the market competition in the automotive and photovoltaic semiconductor industries is extremely fierce, and there are still uncertainties in future income, and there is also a certain risk of fluctuations in the gross profit margin of the main business.
TZTEK was listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board in July 2019, and is one of the first companies listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board. In the past 3 years, in order to expand from consumer electronics to automobiles, photovoltaic semiconductors and other fields, TZTEK has continued to increase R&D investment. The R&D investment in each period of the report period was 155 million yuan, 217 million yuan, and 242 million yuan, respectively accounting for 16.03%, 17.15%, and 15.22% of the income in the same period.
According to the 2022 financial report, TZTEK currently has more than ten research projects, most of which are still in the development and research stage, and will continue to increase R&D investment in the future . Against this background, it is particularly important whether Tianzhun Technology can stabilize its basic market in the next few years.
future uncertainty
The layout of TZTEK in the field of intelligent driving currently mainly involves two product lines: AI edge computing controller and vehicle-level automatic driving/intelligent driving domain controller.
Among them, the AI edge computing controller is built on the NVIDIA Jetson platform and is applied to various large traffic scenarios (non-automotive business, more inclined to project-based revenue); while the autonomous driving domain/smart driving controller includes Robotaxi, Robobus, Robotruck Autonomous driving domain controllers for L4 application scenarios such as low-speed unmanned delivery vehicles, and high-end intelligent driving domain controllers for mass production of passenger cars.
Before 2022, TZTEK will mainly focus on L4 autonomous driving. However, in 2022, Tianzhun Technology and Horizon have reached an in-depth cooperation, and the two parties will carry out technology research and development and product cooperation in areas such as high-level intelligent driving and vehicle-road collaboration.
" After becoming a Horizon partner, TZTEK will devote more resources to serving front-end mass production customers, including OEMs, Tier1 and even intelligent driving algorithm companies." Liu Junchuan, CEO of TZTEK Robotics Division, once publicly stated .
According to the data, for the pre-installed mass production market, TZTEK has launched the TADC-D52 high-configuration domain controller solution based on the Horizon Dual Journey 5+Sinchi X9U+Sinchi E3 platform, which is aimed at urban NOA and memory parking, automatic parking, 360-degree surround view and other high-end intelligent driving scenarios;
And the TADC-D51 mid-range domain controller solution based on the Horizon Single Journey 5+Sinchi G9H+Sinchi E3 platform is aimed at high-speed NOA and memory parking, automatic parking, 360 surround view and other application scenarios.
At present, the smart driving domain controller track for pre-installed mass production has gathered car companies, traditional foreign Tier1 giants, local third-party suppliers, L4 autonomous driving companies, and a large number of new entrants. The market competition has become fierce. .
Especially for the integrated track of travel and parking, the major players have already fought fiercely around the cost. According to incomplete statistics, at present, more than 20 manufacturers have successively launched integrated travel and parking solutions, a batch of products have already started mass production and delivery, and a large number of products will be mass-produced and landed this year.
Since last year, many manufacturers have launched a single-chip mobile and parking integrated domain control solution, and the cost of "thousand yuan" has become a threshold for players to fight each other. Among them, some leading local manufacturers, including Hongjing Zhijia, Moshi Smart, Zhihua Technology, etc., have launched an extremely cost-effective travel and parking integrated solution based on a single SoC solution that can realize high-speed NOA functions, and some companies have obtained mass production. fixed point.
According to the monitoring data of Gaogong Intelligent Vehicle Research Institute, from January to April, 239,600 passenger vehicles with NOA optional configuration were delivered in the Chinese market, a year-on-year increase of 87.63%. Most auto brands have already entered the NOA loading cycle, and more new vehicles equipped with NOA will be launched and delivered in the second half of the year. It is estimated that the potential (including optional configuration) of NOA vehicles will exceed 1.5 million vehicles throughout the year.
Obviously, in the field of intelligent driving domain controllers, a group of manufacturers have passed mass production verification, not only have accumulated rich engineering mass production capabilities, but also formed a very rich product line, which can quickly expand diversified flexible echelon solutions, So as to meet different levels of market demand.
However, TZTEK's TADC series intelligent driving domain controllers for pre-installed mass production have just met the conditions for mass production, and have not yet achieved large-scale delivery, and there are still many lessons to be supplemented in the future.
In addition, it needs to be specially mentioned that TZTEK still has risks such as bad debts of accounts receivable, inventory depreciation and low turnover rate.
The financial report shows that at the end of each period from 2020 to 2022, the balance of TZTEK’s inventory is 398 million yuan, 699 million yuan, and 898 million yuan respectively, and the balance of accounts receivable is 233 million yuan, 312 million yuan, and 508 million yuan respectively. It will face the risk of increased inventory depreciation and bad debts of accounts receivable, which will affect operating performance.
At the same time, TZTEK still has the problem of low inventory turnover rate. During the reporting period, the inventory turnover rate was 1.71, 1.33, and 1.18, respectively, which were all at a relatively low level, which made the company have a high demand for working capital.
However, the cash flow of TZTEK has deteriorated and gradually come under pressure in recent years. The financial report shows that the net cash flow from operating activities of Tianzhun Technology in 2021 and 2022 will be -164 million yuan and -115 million yuan respectively. The continuous net outflow of cash flow has put a certain pressure on the capital status of Tianzhun Technology. At the end of 2021 and the end of 2022, Tianzhun Technology's short-term loans are 152 million yuan and 186 million yuan respectively.
Against this background, new businesses such as smart driving and photovoltaic semiconductors that require continuous capital investment will undoubtedly add more uncertainties. In this regard, TZTEK also admitted frankly, "The domain controller is a brand new business with a high degree of uncertainty."
In the field of domain controllers, TZTEK’s potential opponents include not only local Chinese Tier 1 giants like Desay SV, but also many auto parts OEM giants like Flextronics and Jabil. The market has entered the red sea competition cycle.
In addition, TZTEK is not the only one in Horizon's ecosystem. At present, several listed companies including Xingyu, Luxshare Precision, Keboda, and Joyson Electronics are partners of Horizon, and most of them are old players in the auto parts track.