Affected by the supply and demand relationship of market segments, the gross profit margin of the business fluctuates greatly.

For example, due to the low-frequency demand for educational robots themselves, and the decline in the size of the education market in recent years, the gross profit margin of educational intelligent robots and intelligent robot solutions decreased from 50.6% in fiscal 2020 to 35.2% in the first half of fiscal 2023. The business’s share of total revenue also declined from 82.7% in 2021 to 29% in the first half of 2023.

HYDRAN M2-X In addition, in order to promote cooperation with major customers, Youbychoose has reduced the price of its logistics intelligent robots, which has affected the gross profit margin of logistics intelligent robots and intelligent robot solutions. The gross margin of the business dropped from 14.9% in fiscal 2020 to 7.9% in fiscal 2022, and then recovered to 12.4% in the first half of 2023, but the overall trend is still downward.

As a science and technology enterprise, Youbi has a huge investment in research and development, and the research and development cycle is relatively long. According to the prospectus, from 2020 to 2022 and the first half of 2023, the company generated R&D expenditure of 429 million yuan, 517 million yuan, 428 million yuan and 224 million yuan, respectively, accounting for 57.9%, 63.3%, 42.5% and 85.9% of the total revenue in the current period.

In addition, the cost of sales is not low. From 2020 to HYDRAN M2-X 2022 and the first half of 2023, the company’s sales and marketing expenses were 313 million yuan, 358 million yuan, 361 million yuan and 129 million yuan, respectively.

However, in the robot industry, the investment may not be able to get the corresponding return, because the commercialization of humanoid robots is facing many problems such as cost, technology, and application scenarios.

HYDRAN M2-X

At the cost end, because the humanoid robot needs to perfectly integrate into the non-standard life scene and complete complex tasks, the flexibility and versatility of the humanoid robot are higher, so the structure is more complex.

HYDRAN M2-X For example, the production cost of robot joint servo drivers is high, and a robot needs more than a dozen servo drivers, accounting for more than half of the whole machine cost. Humanoid robots used to cost millions of dollars.

The history of the industry is not without the emergence of technology leaders, but trapped in the commercialization of companies, such as Boston Dynamics’ Atlas, and Honda’s ASIMO, the entire cost of millions of dollars.

In the long period of research and development, Honda HYDRAN M2-X ASIMO has been discontinued, and Boston Dynamics, which was funded by the US Department of Defense, has also changed owners several times, was first acquired by Google, and then sold to SoftBank, and sold to Hyundai in 2020, which has long been no longer the limelight of the past.

Therefore, the industry has developed to today, and humanoid robot companies that are not profitable have become less sexy for the market