EFORT has won over 800 million yuan in overseas orders in the past year

Since the beginning of this year, as the epidemic situation has stabilized, China's manufacturing industry has rebounded. At the same time, good news continues to come from companies in the robot industry chain.

On May 5, EFORT announced that its subsidiary GME had received a purchase order from Volkswagen Group Mexico for the integration of the Jetta A7 platform in the H102 solution of the Tayron project in the Puebla plant. The total project amount is estimated to be approximately RMB 223 million (EUR 29,200,730, excluding tax), accounting for approximately 16.82% of EFORT's annual operating income in 2022.

GME is a subsidiary of WFC Group, an Italian automotive equipment and robotic system integrator acquired by EFORT in 2017. It is located in Curitiba, the capital of Paraná State, Brazil, and provides comprehensive solutions for automotive body-in-white intelligent welding production lines including design, engineering, manufacturing, installation and commissioning for automotive brands such as FCA, Audi, Volkswagen, General Motors, and Renault.

Volkswagen Group was founded in 1938 and is headquartered in Wolfsburg, Germany. As of December 31, 2022, Volkswagen Group had total assets of 564.772 billion euros, net assets of 178.327 billion euros, operating income of 279.232 billion euros in 2022, and net profit after tax of 15.836 billion euros.

The order amount is large and the payment cycle is long. The payment will be made according to the unified procurement conditions of Volkswagen Group based on milestone nodes such as purchase order placement, design confirmation, equipment inspection, equipment delivery (including invoices, lists, etc.), installation and commissioning, initial acceptance, and final acceptance agreement .

In terms of order fulfillment risks, the announcement shows that the equipment for this order will be inspected in Brazil and finally received and installed in Mexico. Due to factors such as changes in the political situation and fluctuations in energy prices, production and consumption may be affected to a certain extent. Order execution may be delayed or unable to be fulfilled due to force majeure, affecting the final execution of this order.

Gaogong Robotics noted that this is the second order from Volkswagen Group disclosed by Efort in 2023. Just last month, on April 11, Efort announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary Autorobot received a purchase order from Volkswagen Group USA for the reconstruction of the front and rear door production lines of the Atlas NF and Atlas Cross Sport NF models at the Chattanooga plant in the United States. The total project amount is expected to be approximately RMB 175 million (US$25.5 million), accounting for approximately 13.18% of Efort's operating income in 2022 (Note: its operating income ratio is the data announced in Efort's 2022 annual report).

Previously, in the second half of 2022, Efort also disclosed two other orders from its subsidiary Autorobot:

On October 11, 2022, Efort announced that its subsidiary Autorobot received a purchase order from FCA Italy SpA, a subsidiary of the Stellantis Group, for the front body, rear body and underbody production lines of BEV (Battery electric Vehicle) and PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electic Vehicle) models at the Melfi plant in Italy. The total project amount is estimated to be approximately RMB 254 million (EUR 36.67 million), accounting for 22.14% of Efort's audited operating income in 2021. As of the date of this announcement, the order amount received is approximately RMB 182 million (EUR 26.264 million).

On November 22, 2022, Efort announced that its subsidiary Autorobot had received a purchase order from Volkswagen Group for the ID.3 pure electric vehicle body underbody and rear wheel cover welding line at the Wolfsburg plant in Germany. The total project amount is estimated to be approximately RMB 241 million (EUR 32.9 million), accounting for 21.05% of Efort's audited operating income in 2021.

According to incomplete statistics from Gaogong Robot, information disclosed in Efort's announcements over the past year (May 2022-May 2023) showed that Efort's subsidiaries had received a total of four large overseas orders with a total order amount of RMB 893 million.

According to the information disclosed in Efort's "2022 Annual Report", in 2022, the impact of the economic downturn on Efort's overseas system integration business gradually weakened, and project execution improved compared with the same period last year. The domestic system integration business actively carried out risk control and reduced resource utilization. Overall, Efort's integration business as a whole increased by approximately 15.92% compared with the same period last year.

Although the impact of the economic downturn on Efort's overseas integration business was weakened in 2022, Efort proactively responded to changes in market competition and made proactive adjustments. It completed the replacement of the management team, optimized the personnel structure to reduce costs and improve efficiency, gave full play to its technological advantages, rebuilt customer relationships with important customers, and actively developed new customer business relationships.

In addition, in 2022, EFORT completed the strategic review and focus of integrated applications and restored its growth. Under the leadership of the new management team and technical team, the overseas general industrial integrated application business reversed the situation where old projects could not be closed for a long time in the past. At the same time, it steadily developed new businesses and initially achieved the strategic goals of overseas general industrial adjustments.