AI detonates CES2024, Chinese manufacturers return
On January 9th local time, the CES 2024 Consumer Electronics Show opened in Las Vegas, USA for a period of four days. Artificial intelligence is ubiquitous at this year's CES, with chip manufacturers such as Nvidia and AMD exhibiting. Nvidia has released multiple heavyweight game chip products and announced plans to collaborate with gaming companies such as miHoYo and Tencent on AI digital human business.
It is worth noting that this year, Chinese manufacturers returned to the offline market on a large scale after experiencing the epidemic. Not only traditional home appliance giants participated in the exhibition, but also technology giants such as Alibaba and ByteDance. In addition, at this year's CES, more high-tech is expanding into a wider range of consumer sectors.
Comment: John Kelly, Vice President and Acting Exhibition Director of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) in the United States, commented that the number of exhibitors in the automotive, digital health, food technology, and beauty technology fields is all increasing. This marks the penetration of technology into various fields of mass consumption.
Microsoft surpasses Apple to return to the top of the market value list
On January 12th local time, Microsoft Inc. in the United States closed the day with a market value of $2.89 trillion, surpassing Apple Inc. and becoming the world's highest market value company again. Microsoft's return to the top spot in market value is due to its success in the field of artificial intelligence. And Apple is facing a series of problems such as a decline in market share.
Last week, Foxconn, the Chinese assembler of Apple's iPhone, reported a year-on-year decline in revenue. According to a report released this week by analysts at American investment bank Jeffrey, Apple's iPhone sales in China plummeted by 30% in the first week of this year and may further decline.
Comment: In 2023, Microsoft made crazy bets in the field of artificial intelligence, with the most successful investment being $10 billion in support of OpenAI behind the generative AI tool ChatGPT. Although there was a personnel farce in the latter at the end of last year, it did not affect market confidence in OpenAI. The demand for generative artificial intelligence from technology companies is fueling a surge in business for cloud computing giants, with Microsoft being one of the biggest winners. After every release of product news related to artificial intelligence last year, Microsoft's stock price skyrocketed in response. In 2023, the company's cumulative increase was nearly 60%.
The global mobile market size will reach 171 billion US dollars in 2023
On January 11th, the mobile market analysis platform data.ai released the 2024 Mobile Market Report, which showed that after a 2% year-on-year decline in 2022, global mobile market user spending increased by 3% year-on-year in 2023, reaching a new high of $171 billion. The Chinese market has experienced a decline of about 10%, from $57.94 billion in 2022 to $52.06 billion (note: Chinese consumer spending only includes iOS app store data).
According to the report, several major trends in 2023 are that mobile games have continued to decline since 2022, while non gaming application revenue represented by TikTok has rapidly increased. At the same time, the scale of generative AI has grown by up to nine times, driving the emergence of new applications such as AI chatbots and art generators. In 2023, there will be 13 applications and games with user spending more than US $1 billion, of which 3 will be in China, including TikTok, Glory of the King and Genshin Impact.
Comment: According to a report by data.ai, generative artificial intelligence experienced explosive growth in 2023, with a 9-fold increase in scale and driving the emergence of new applications such as AI chatbots and art generators. However, although AI is widely popular worldwide, it has not been among the top five growth categories in some Asian and Middle Eastern markets, including China and Japan.
Tencent Development& Quota; Spring Shoot Plan; Quota; Incubating vertical games
On January 8th, Tencent IEG (Interactive Entertainment Business Group) held an internal employee meeting and released its self-developed project& Quota; Spring Shoot Plan; Quota;. This plan is to continue investing heavily in the above areas in addition to the increasingly fierce competition for popular games, and to appropriately increase certain research and development resources, invest in new opportunities, explore new gameplay, and incubate potential vertical games. At the internal meeting, IEG management also said that the anime quickly entered the mature market, the increase of leisure games was large, and the cooperation with Tiktok increased.
Comment: In recent years, Tencent has focused on high ceiling and large DUA (daily active users) tracks, especially excelling in multiplayer competitive categories. Some segmented tracks have gradually emerged as top manufacturers or games in recent years. After Genshin Impact, there was a anime boom in the industry. Tencent also made its layout through investment and self research, but it was not easy for anime to make a breakthrough. Meanwhile, other vertical games have become popular, such as party games such as NetEase's Egg Party and Tencent's subsequent release of Yuanmeng Star. On multiple vertical tracks; Quota; Sowing; Quota;, The possibility of winning a bet with explosive funds may increase.
The stock price of the humanoid robot industry chain; Quota; Rush& Quota; Industry chain companies accelerate their layout
In the humanoid robot industry chain, several major reducer stocks began to soar at the end of October 2023. Green Harmonic, Double Ring Drive, and Zhongda Lide rose by more than 40%, 18%, and 20% respectively in about a month. At the same time, some ball screw, motion control system, and sensor manufacturers also experienced stock price increases. So far, many stock prices have rebounded, but there are still some concept stocks that have recently hit the limit up, indicating high heat on the track. Recently, Tesla supplier Sanhua Intelligent Control announced that the company plans to invest no less than 3.8 billion yuan to build a research and production base for robot electromechanical actuators and domain controllers. Tesla's other supplier, Topp Group, also announced an investment of 5 billion yuan to build a production base for robot core components.
Comment: Stock Price; Quota; Rush& Quota; Behind it is the optimism of the capital market towards the future application of humanoid robots, with a stock price correction or the fact that it will take a long time for humanoid robots to truly drive mass production of related components. Industry chain manufacturers are currently investing real money and silver to build robot component production bases, which is optimistic about the future. The humanoid robot industry chain involves AI and a series of hardware components, with a long and complex technological chain. The cost of humanoid robots is still high, with some products costing over $1 million. Although 2024 is considered the first year of humanoid robot production by the outside world, it is not easy for sales to truly explode.
Hisense Home Appliances announces the 2024 A-share employee stock ownership plan
On January 8th, Hisense Home Appliances (000921. SZ) released the draft of the 2024 A-share employee stock ownership plan, which plans to acquire approximately 1% of the company's total share capital. The total number of participants in this employee stock ownership plan (draft) does not exceed 279, including 8 directors (excluding independent directors), supervisors, and senior management personnel, at a transfer price of 10.78 yuan per share. The assessment target for this shareholding plan (draft) is to increase the company's net profit from 2024 to 2026 by 122%, 155%, and 194% compared to 2022, which means the target net profit attributable to the parent company is 3.2, 3.7, and 4.2 billion yuan. If the target value is achieved, 100% can be unlocked.
Comment: Hisense Home Appliances' central air conditioning and white electricity businesses saw an increase in profitability last year, with a revenue of 64.9 billion yuan from January to September 2023, a year-on-year increase of 13.8%, and a net profit attributable to the parent company of 2.426 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 126.75%. Following the launch of the incentive plan in early 2023, Hisense Home Appliances launched another incentive plan in early 2024, reflecting the normalization of incentives and the gradual deepening of the binding between company operations and employee interests. According to a research report by Tianfeng Securities on January 10th, Hisense Home Appliances has increased its dividend payout ratio to 50% in 2022. If this dividend payout ratio can be continued in 2024, the corresponding target performance of 3.2 billion yuan and the dividend yield of the current stock price will be around 5.4%.
Venture Capital Vanguard
According to Tianyancha information, a total of 105 investment and financing events occurred this week; From the distribution of financing events, angel round, A-round, and strategic round are among the top, with 21, 20, and 17 events distributed; Investment institutions are becoming increasingly diversified, including Qianhai China Shipbuilding Intelligent Ocean Fund and Wuzhong High tech Venture Capital.
In the medical and health sector, a total of 15 financing events occurred this week; There are 4 incidents in round A, 3 incidents in round Angel and 3 incidents in round B; Xunyao Biotechnology, Huiying Medical, Baiao Regenerative Medicine, and Jixing Pharmaceutical, with a financing amount exceeding 100 million yuan; From the perspective of investment institutions, industrial capital, including the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (Lianyungang) International Logistics Park Development Fund and the Jianchuang Medical Growth Fund, as well as state-owned capital, have all invested.
This week, there were a total of 6 financing events in the artificial intelligence industry; Mainly angel round and strategic financing, with 2 financing events each; Zhuoshi Technology and Yindun Cloud have raised over 100 million yuan in financing; From the perspective of investment institutions, Zhongguancun Collaborative Innovation Fund and Zhongma Qiyuan Asset have a record of sales.
A total of 25 financing events have occurred in the advanced manufacturing industry; Among them, financing events related to chips and integrated circuits dominate, accounting for over 40%; From the perspective of rounds, A round and Angel round have 5 financing events, and Strategic financing has 4 financing events; In terms of financing amount, Linsheng Polymer, Sibichi, and Xinlian Pioneer have raised over 100 million yuan; From the perspective of investment institutions, TCL Venture Capital, Midea Capital, and others have all made efforts.
There were a total of 5 financing events in the automotive transportation industry this week; From the perspective of rounds, strategic financing is the main focus, with 2 financing events; In terms of financing amount, Deepway and Meixing Technology have raised over 100 million yuan; From the perspective of investment institutions, Beidou Seven Star Investment and Yumei Fund have all made moves.