ChatGPT is a hot topic, and the popularity of concept stocks and robots continues to rise

Recently, some media reported that as of February 7, concept stocks continued to rise sharply, reaching a new high in the past year. This is the 14th consecutive day of rise in this sector, becoming one of the most aggressive concept sectors this year. Among them, on February 7, Yokogawa Precision, Green Harmonic, Maihe Shares, Jiangsu Beiren, Aolian, Jiangsu Leili, Kelda, Hechuan and many other stocks rose by more than 10%, and Zowee Technology, Mingzhi Electric and many other stocks hit the daily limit.

In this regard, some colleagues in the industry are wondering why robot concept stocks, which once slowly rose and often had low tides, have continued to rise recently? Thinking of the recent hot ChatGPT, although it seems to have nothing to do with it, it still makes people wonder.

ChatGPT's popularity has triggered a surge in concept stocks

So is the robot's multi-day rise really related to it? "It is directly related. Recently, anyone who touches the concept of ChatGPT can rise to the sky." An institutional person analyzed. It is understood that Open released a new chat robot ChatGPT on November 30, 2022. Just two months after the launch of ChatGPT, its monthly active users at the end of January 2023 exceeded 100 million. ChatGPT even crashed due to a surge in visits. According to SimilarWeb data, OpenAI has ranked among the top 50 websites in the world. In January of this year, the number of visits to the OpenAI website exceeded 672 million, an increase of 3572% from November. The website had 18.3 million visits in November 2022.

This has also triggered a wave of follow-up trends. Not only has Google revealed plans to launch a chat machine Bard to compete with ChatGPT, but domestic Internet companies such as Baidu and 360 have also announced that they will launch related products.

On February 7, Baidu officially announced that it will launch an AI chatbot similar to ChatGPT. The project is named "Wen Xin Yi Yan", and its English name is ERNIEBot. It will be open to the public after completing internal testing in March. Baidu said that in the four-layer architecture, there is a full-stack layout. Including the bottom layer, framework, large model and the top-level search and other applications. Wen Xin Yi Yan is located in the model layer. 360 also stated that the 360 ​​Artificial Intelligence Research Institute has been continuously investing in AIGC technologies including ChatGPT-like technologies since 2020, but so far it has only been used as a productivity tool for internal business use. 360 also plans to launch a demo version of ChatGPT-like technology as soon as possible. For this reason, it is not impossible that the popularity of ChatGPT has driven the rise of robot concept stocks. So besides the ChatGPT factor, are there any other factors that have caused the continued rise of robot concept stocks?

The reason why the popularity of robots continues to rise

Recently, as ChatGPT became popular, rumors of humanoid robots were spreading, and the long-dormant market also started to move. On February 7, online media reported that there were rumors in the market that Tesla would launch a robot prototype, "sla Bot" Opmus (Optimus Prime) in March. There were also rumors that Tesla had placed an order for 60,000 sets with a robot company. However, Tesla did not respond to the news agency regarding the above news.

Some institutions have stated that the market has strong expectations for Tesla's robot "Optimus" to be open for ordering this year, and the market expects the number to be at the level of 100,000 units. Regarding the expectation of the domestic industrial chain to participate in Optimus, the most common view is the mechatronic joints: divided into trunk joints and finger joints. The trunk joints are mainly composed of rotational and linear drive units (14 each). Based on the level of the existing domestic supply chain, the value of a single integrated joint is 5,000 yuan. Based on this, the value of a single robot is 140,000 yuan. According to the solution of Mingzhi Electric, the value of a single joint of the finger joint is 10,000 yuan (+ reducer), and the value of the finger joint motor + reducer is 12,000 yuan. The corresponding value of 100,000 devices is 15.2 billion yuan. As soon as this rumor came out, humanoid robots and robot concepts also harvested a wave of heat. In addition, recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other 17 departments issued the "Robot +" application action implementation plan, which also had a certain stimulating effect. The plan proposes that by 2025, the density of robots in the manufacturing industry will double compared to 2020, the depth and breadth of application of service robots and special robots will be significantly improved, and the ability of robots to promote high-quality economic and social development will be significantly enhanced. A number of "robot +" application benchmarking companies will be created, and a number of application experience centers and test verification centers will be built. Various industries and regions will be encouraged to carry out "robot +" application innovation practices in combination with the industry development stage and regional development characteristics.

To this end, some institutions have analyzed that China has become the world's largest and fastest-growing robot market, and believe that the domestic industrial robot industry is still in a stage of rapid growth and is expected to usher in greater development space in the future. Companies with core technologies and continuously expanding downstream market applications are expected to stand out. Other institutions have stated that against the backdrop of rising labor costs and an aging population, my country's robot market has huge potential for medium- and long-term growth. For example, the market share of complete machine companies in the domestic market continues to increase, and core component manufacturers are not only accelerating domestic substitution. In addition, my country has been the world's largest consumer of industrial robots for nine consecutive years. According to data from the Gaogong Robot Industry Research Institute (GGII), China's industrial robot sales are expected to reach 303,000 units in 2022, a year-on-year increase of approximately 15.96%, accounting for more than 50% of global sales. my country has been the world's largest consumer of industrial robots for nine consecutive years, ranking first in the world's largest industrial robot market.

GGII said that China's robot industry has entered a stage of rapid industrialization, with product forms continuing to be enriched and technological progress being obvious. At the same time, the penetration rate of downstream applications of robots continues to increase. Robots have been widely used in the automotive, 3C, metal, chemical plastics, food and beverage industries. At the same time, it is foreseeable that the demand for robots is becoming more certain, and the awareness and acceptance of downstream users are significantly improved. This series of positive factors has also become the basis for the rise of robot concept stocks.

So, is it possible for such a high level of popularity to continue? Perhaps we can find the answer from GGII's top ten predictions for China's industrial robot industry in 2023 (market level).

1. Based on the backlog of robot orders of various companies in 2022 and the demand analysis and prediction of various downstream industries, it is estimated that the growth rate of China's industrial robot market will be around 20%-25% in 2023. The overall recovery-style "big explosion" is gradually fading away. The downstream demand is mainly driven by new energy vehicles, auto parts, photovoltaics and other fields. Following the rise of another golden track after power batteries, energy storage batteries, the thickness of new energy industries (lithium batteries, photovoltaics, etc.) continues to increase, and the demand for industrial robots is expected to exceed 20%.

2. The Chinese industrial robot market will re-form a competitive landscape of "one super and many strong"; by 2023, there will be at least two domestic manufacturers with annual sales of more than 20,000 industrial robots, and the number of domestic manufacturers with annual sales of more than 10,000 units will reach five, further improving market concentration.

Editor: Huang Fei