“Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily”, March 20 (Reporter Huang Xiumei) On the evening of March 19, Baichu Electronics disclosed its 2023 annual report. During the reporting period, the company achieved revenue of 1,407 billion yuan, an increase of 56.61% year on year, and realized net profit of 729 million yuan, an increase of 52.01% year on year. The company plans to distribute a cash dividend of 25.1 yuan (tax included) to all shareholders for every 10 shares, and plans to use a capital reserve fund to increase 4 shares for every 10 shares.

Baichu Electronics is mainly engaged in R&D, production and sales of laser cutting control systems. It provides various types of automated products with laser cutting control systems as the core for various laser cutting equipment manufacturers. It is one of the first private enterprises in the country to develop complete control systems for fiber laser cutting.

Regarding the reason for the increase in performance, Baichu Electronics stated in its annual report that during the reporting period, although the domestic and foreign downstream environment was still partially affected by the macroeconomy to a certain extent, benefiting from the continuous growth in domestic demand for high-power thick plate cutting and the continuous expansion of foreign application scenarios, the company's main business still achieved relatively rapid growth.

Judging from single-quarter results, Baichu Electronics achieved revenue of 272 million yuan, 389 million yuan, 330 million yuan, and 416 million yuan respectively from the first quarter of 2023; net profit of 132 million yuan, 230 million yuan, 210 million yuan, and 157 million yuan respectively.

In 2023, the company invested a total of 260 million yuan in R&D, an increase of 82.13% over the previous year; total R&D investment accounted for 18.58% of revenue, an increase of 2.6 percentage points.

Looking at Baichu Electronics' revenue by product in 2023, board card systems, cutting heads, bus systems, and others had revenue of 374 million yuan, 327 million yuan, 335 million yuan, 190 million yuan, and 170 million yuan respectively; the gross margins of the corresponding products were 82.27%, 77.37%, 86.5%, 68.2%, and 86.72%, respectively. The gross margin of the bus system is relatively high.

In terms of domestic and foreign markets, Baichu Electronics still has the highest domestic market share of medium and low power systems, and the product advantages of the “high power system+intelligent cutting head” combination strategy continue to expand; in overseas markets, it continues to expand the recognition and influence of brands and products on the end user side in line with domestic equipment manufacturers' collective overseas plans, and achieve new breakthroughs in overseas markets.

Baichu Electronics also disclosed the “2023 Special Report on the Deposit and Use of Funds Raised” (hereinafter: Special Report). The scheduled usage dates for its 2021 fixed additional fund-raising projects, that is, the intelligent cutting head production expansion project, the intelligent welding robot and control system industrialization project, and the ultra-high precision drive-control integrated R&D project have all been delayed until December 31, 2024.

It stated in the special report that the company's new R&D and production center project building is currently under construction. As a result, the construction content related to the above project lacks the necessary space to be implemented, and the implementation progress has not met expectations. After fully considering the implementation progress of the current fund-raising project and the actual use of the funds raised, the usage time of the above projects will be adjusted.

The “Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily” reporter noticed that during the reporting period, while Baichu Electronics achieved a high market share in the domestic laser cutting field, it also reached a strategic cooperation with Honglu Steel to lay out the field of intelligent welding robots.

Honglu Steel is the largest steel structure manufacturer in China. The two sides signed a strategic cooperation agreement on November 28, 2023, and reached cooperation in the field of intelligent welding robots. The two sides will carry out in-depth development for specific application markets and provide each other with resource support.

Baichu Electronics said in its annual report that the demand for welders in China's steel mills is about 200,000, and the long-term market size of intelligent welding robots is expected to reach 28 billion yuan, based on a unit price of 100,000 units of automated equipment for each machine, based on a unit price of 280,000 yuan for intelligent welding robots.

At the end of 2023, Baichu Electronics stated in an investor survey that the R&D direction involved in the welding business was developed independently by the company. At present, it has completed rapid extraction of large-scale model welds and batch parameter generation technology to optimize visual scanning trajectories and welding trajectories. The ultimate goal is to accurately detect the spatial position of the weld through a weld tracking sensor, and to achieve real-time weld tracking and welding with an intelligent welding control system.

“This business is one of the key strategic directions of the company's current layout. The company has maintained technical communication and exchanges with many welding industry integrators, focusing on developing solutions for industries such as construction steel structures and towers.” Baichu Electronics said.

“The company remains optimistic about the medium- to long-term development prospects of the welding business. The welding system can be expanded to more industrial fields, and the welding robot system has a large margin of profit. In the next 1-2 years, with more project launches and product promotion, it is expected to become a new profit growth point for the company.” Zhou Yi, deputy general manager and director of Baichu Electronics, previously told the “Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily” reporter at the 2023 third quarter results meeting.