Negative growth of annual output of industrial robots in China

Since October 2019, China's industrial robot production has achieved positive growth for three consecutive months. On January 17, the latest data released by the National Bureau of statistics showed that in December 2019, the output of domestic industrial robots was 20000 sets, an increase of 15.3% year on year. In September 2018, for the first time, the output of domestic industrial robots showed a negative growth in a single month. Until September 2019, the output of domestic industrial robots showed a negative growth trend for 13 consecutive months. In October 2019, the production of domestic industrial robots began to recover, with a year-on-year growth of 1.7%; in November, it continued to grow by 4.3%. The recovery in the last three months still hasn't changed the negative growth trend of annual output. According to the Statistics Bureau, in 2019, the cumulative output of industrial robots in China was 186900 sets, a year-on-year decrease of 6.1%. This is the first time that the annual output of domestic industrial robots has seen negative growth since the National Bureau of statistics began to release the data in 2015.

In 2013, China surpassed Japan to become the world's largest industrial robot market, and still maintains this position. Stimulated by strong market demand, the growth rate of China's robot production has been rising all the way. According to the data of the National Bureau of statistics, in 2015, the production of industrial robots in China increased by 21.7% year on year; in 2016, the growth rate was 34.3%; in 2017, the growth rate jumped to 68.1%. The high-speed growth situation encountered an emergency brake in 2018. In the first five months of 2018, the year-on-year growth rate of industrial robot production is still over 30%, but since June, the year-on-year growth rate of production has dropped sharply to 7.2%. In September 2018, the output showed a negative growth, down about 16.4% year on year. The negative growth continued to the end of 2018. Finally, in 2018, the domestic industrial robot production increased by 4.6% year on year. In 2019, negative growth continued for the first nine months. In the first three quarters, China's industrial robot production fell 9.1% year on year. Robot and intelligent manufacturing industry has a wide range of services, and there is no obvious periodicity. The decline of domestic industrial robot production is mainly due to the reduction of demand for robots in domestic automobile, electronics and other manufacturing industries due to the macroeconomic downturn, Sino US trade friction and other factors.

During the world robot conference in August 2019, Qu Daokui, founder and President of Xinsong Robot Automation Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Xinsong robot, 300024. SZ), said that the slowdown in the growth of the automobile industry was the main reason for the slowdown in the growth of China's robot industry. According to the latest data released by China Automobile Industry Association, in 2019, China's automobile production and sales volume respectively reached 2572100 and 2576900, ranking first in the world, but dropped by 7.5% and 8.2% year-on-year respectively, respectively, 4.2% and 5.4% higher than that in 2018. With the decline of robot output growth, the performance of listed robot related companies such as Xinsong robot, Easton, Huazhong CNC is not optimistic. According to the public financial report information, in the first three quarters of 2019, the net profit of Xinsong robot attributable to the shareholders of the listed company was 287 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 12.83%. Eston's net profit was 57.345 million yuan, down 18.9% year on year. Huazhong CNC's revenue and net profit increased year on year, but the loss still exceeded 40 million yuan.