Fierce market competition

It is not difficult to find from the inquiries of companies that have recently announced the termination of ipos that some risk points have been highly valued by regulators, and abnormal gross margin fluctuations are one of them.

In the first round of inquiries, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange clearly mentioned that the gross profit margin of the main business of Weiben Intelligent has fluctuated in recent years, but the prospectus only cited the customized characteristics of the product without specific analysis of the reasons for the change. In addition, the level of its gross profit margin is higher than that of comparable companies in the same industry, and DKC10.3-018-3-MGP-01VRS the trend of change differs from that of comparable companies.

According to the disclosure, from 2020 to 2022 and the first half of 2023, the gross profit margin of Weiben’s main business was 19.11%, 27.07%, 23.82% and 23%, respectively. In contrast, the average of the same industry was 22.48%, 21.35%, 17.67% and 20.78%, respectively. The divergence is particularly obvious in 2021, with the sharp rise in the company’s gross profit margin significantly contrasting with that of companies in the same industry, with a difference of nearly 6 percentage points.

In the first round of inquiries, Weben Intelligent believes that the main business is mainly non-standard customized products, and the gross profit margin of each year and each project is quite different, and the gross profit margin of the year is mainly determined by the gross profit margin of the project. As for the company’s relevant reply, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange believes that the gross profit rate data of each project is only used to analyze the reason for the change of gross profit rate in the year, and the reason for the change of gross profit rate of the project during the reporting period is not analyzed. Therefore, in the second round of inquiries, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange asked the company to conduct a detailed analysis of the design difficulty and market competition of the projects undertaken in different years, and explain whether the gross profit margin changes in 2021 are reasonable, and the rationality of projects with higher gross profit margin can still be undertaken in the case of fierce market competition.

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In addition, the gross profit margin of Weiben’s new robot business in the first half of 2023 decreased significantly compared with 2022. In this regard, the company explained that the market price of new robots in the first half of 2023 declined, but about 90% of the new robots sold by the company in the current period were products that were prepared or placed orders in 2022, which resulted in a decline in gross profit margin due to tight supply and high procurement prices in 2022.

DKC10.3-018-3-MGP-01VRS Haikang machine’s gross profit margin is also focused on. The Shenzhen Stock Exchange noted that the gross profit margin of the company’s various businesses has shown a certain fluctuation or downward trend in recent years. In this regard, the company admitted that it is mainly caused by multiple factors such as changes in product structure, changes in the proportion of each business model, and changes in unit price cost. If the price of the company’s products continues to decline in the future, and the cost reduction measures cannot effectively hedge the adverse impact of the price decline, it will have an adverse impact on the company.

“Whether the gross profit margin is healthy or not is directly related to the performance and core competitiveness of enterprises.” Industry insiders told reporters that from the current overall structure of the domestic robot industry, many companies only involve the assembly business with a low technical threshold. Because such enterprises do not master core component technology such as servo motor, reducer, controller, it is difficult to enter the high-end supply chain, so the phenomenon of “price for volume” in the low-end market is more obvious, resulting in a downward gross profit margin.