A few days ago, Tesla's robot account updated the daily dynamics of its Optimus (Optimus Prime) robot.

In this video, Optimus walks uphill and downhill in a "blindfolded" state, and although the posture is not very elegant, he still completes these tests with a good balance and crookedness.

In Musk's view, based on advanced technologies such as humanoid robots and artificial intelligence, goods and services will be accessible to everyone on the planet. He predicts that there will be 20 billion humanoid robots in the world in the future, which will be active in human production and life scenarios.

Musk also has ambitions to say that by the end of 2025, Optimus will achieve external sales. The price will eventually be set at $25,000 or $30,000.

But looking at the world, such a low price can only be helped by China's extreme supply chain. Therefore, every time Tesla announces the latest progress of Optimus, the robot concept stocks in the domestic capital market will be speculated.

Among them, Nine Company (689009. SH), also on the list of "robot" concept stocks. The stock price has changed its downward trend since February this year, reaching a maximum of 57.88 yuan per share.

However, humanoid robots are still in the stage from "0-1", as more and more industrial chain enterprises announce the layout of robots, who can eat the dividends of this wave of times, there are still a large number of uncertainties.

In the midst of this, does Nine's robot have room for imagination? Aside from the concept of robots, what is the real core competitiveness of Nine? Where will its future growth come from?

1. Throw off Xiaomi and hug NVIDIA

Different from the current robot concept stocks on the "list" that some companies intend to "list", Nine Company wants to emphasize its "robot" attribute from the beginning.

Gao Lufeng, chairman of No. 9 Company, once said, "We originally hoped to use the name No. 9 Robot to land on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, but when submitting the IPO application, the proportion of related business income was not high, so this idea could only be abandoned." ”

However, although the concept of robots was mentioned earlier, in fact, looking back at the development path, Nine Company was from balance bikes, scooters, and then entered the field of two-wheeled electric vehicles, and finally made efforts in the field of delivery robots.

Why has the robot business been slow to carry the crown? It is mainly due to the path dependence of Nine Company on Xiaomi in the past.

As an enterprise that has grown into the Xiaomi ecological chain, Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi, has stood for Platform Nine more than once. When No. 9 landed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, Lei Jun also posted on Weibo to congratulate: "No. 9 Company is the most passionate company in the Xiaomi ecological chain, and it is also the project with the largest investment in the Xiaomi ecological chain, reaching tens of millions of dollars. ”

In the early days of the development of the Nine, Xiaomi gave strong support.

Today, the leading position of the company in the electric self-balancing scooter is precisely in April 2015, with the support of Xiaomi, the cross-border acquisition of the global electric self-balancing scooter pioneer Segway, and obtained its three major product series, nearly 10 product ownership and more than 400 core patents in the industry.

In 2016, No. 9 officially entered Xiaomi's ecological chain, and with the help of Xiaomi's sales channels, it completed the early market share seizure by exchanging price for volume.

However, Xiaomi's extremely cost-effective strategy not only makes it difficult for Nine to improve its profit margin, and there is no way to develop it without money, but it also means that the ideal of the dream-chasing robot is shattered.

From this point of view, Nine Company walked out from under the wings of Xiaomi, not only to stiffen the waist, but also with an obsession with robots.

At the NVIDIA 2024 GTC conference earlier this year, NVIDIA founder Jensen Huang released a new developer kit, NovaOrin, for the NovaCarter AMR, an autonomous mobile robot platform jointly built with Nine.

The current cooperation model between Nine and Nvidia can also be glimpsed in this product - Nvidia provides computing platforms and software services, and Nine is responsible for exporting mobile chassis and motion control capabilities. After the end user buys the product, he can choose to develop it by himself, or he can provide customers with a complete solution through Nine Company.

However, judging from the financial data, there is still a certain gap between the ideal and the reality.

Judging from the third quarterly report, the revenue of No. 9 Company in the third quarter was 4.239 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 34.75%; In the first three quarters of this year, the company achieved revenue of 10.905 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 44.90%.

The substantial growth in performance is inseparable from the high growth rate of Nine's smart electric two-wheeler business.

In the third quarter, electric two-wheelers sold 937,600 units (936,300 units in China) and generated revenue of 2.592 billion yuan. In the first three quarters, the domestic sales of electric two-wheeled vehicles were 2.1347 million units, a year-on-year increase of 86.08%, and the sales revenue was 5.908 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 87.45%.

In the third quarter, the company sold 361,200 self-owned brand retail scooters, with a revenue of 693 million yuan, all-terrain vehicles sold 5,874 units, with a sales revenue of 259 million yuan, and lawn mower robots sold 145 million yuan.

Although Nine has always regarded itself as a "robot" company, the "bot" in its English name, Segway-Ninebot, means robot. But from the perspective of business proportion, the current Nine Company is not a "robot".

In other words, it's too early to speculate on the concept of Nine's robots.

2. The potential of a company with smart mobility capabilities

At the "2024 (22nd) Annual Meeting of Chinese Business Leaders" held in Beijing a few days ago, Gao Lufeng once again reiterated the positioning of No. 9 Company - "We are a smart mobility capability company. Focus on short- and medium-distance transportation and service robots. ”

From self-balancing bikes to all-terrain vehicles, the product forms vary greatly, but there is a unified core inside.

Taking electric two-wheelers as an example, why has Nine been able to rise rapidly in this field in a short period of time?

This is mainly due to two reasons, one is differentiated product positioning.

Nine Company avoided the advantageous areas of the low-price segment where Yadea and Emma are located, and focused on the mid-to-high-end market that has not yet been valued by the giants, and faced young people in first, second and third-tier cities in China. And these young people are naturally interested in cutting-edge, technology, etc., and are especially willing to pay for "intelligence".

Nine Company keenly captures this trend, and its electric two-wheeler products are intelligently sold from the beginning, and the electric two-wheeled vehicle products released are equipped with the self-developed RideyGo stop-and-go system (which can realize induction unlocking), equipped with an attitude sensing system, supporting GPS, Beidou, and base station triple positioning, and can also be upgraded OTA wirelessly in the future.

On the other hand, it is excellent R&D and marketing capabilities, especially compared with the traditional two-wheeled electric vehicle brand, Nine Company, as the original Xiaomi ecological chain enterprise, has its own Internet genes.

Last year, in addition to continuing to promote the brand endorsement cooperation with Yi Yang Qianxi, Nine also officially signed a contract with LNG E-sports Club as the "Title Sponsor Partner of LNG E-sports Club", which gained great volume and traffic for Nine.

A set of combination punches down, the effect is also surprisingly good. From the perspective of industry status, among the currently listed companies, the revenue scale of electric two-wheeled vehicles of No. 9 Company is second only to the leading Yadea Holdings and Emma Technology, and higher than that of Maverick Electric, another company with similar product positioning.

From the perspective of market share, the national sales of electric two-wheelers in 2023 will be 63.74 million units, of which the high-end electric two-wheeler market will be about 12 million, and the market share of Nine Company in the mid-to-high-end market will be about 12%.

More critically, the success of electric two-wheeler products is not accidental, nor is it the first time.

Gao Lufeng explained that Nine Company has a complete set of product methodology: find edge innovation opportunities in the mature track, break into the center from the edge, and use technological innovation to improve the user experience.

In fact, it is also based on the guidance of this methodology, Nine Company started from a balance car, and successively launched electric scooters, electric two-wheelers, and all-terrain vehicles.

3. What does Nine look for in the future growth?

What is certain is that the more certain performance of No. 9 Company in the future will still be two-wheeled electric vehicles and balance vehicles. But finding a new track and innovating new products has been something that has to be done.

Objectively speaking, the intelligence of Nine Company is ahead of other competitors, and the most direct competitor Maverick has fallen into decline in the past two years, and the advantages of Nine Company are expected to continue to expand. The performance growth rate is also relatively stable.

However, the intelligence of two-wheeled electric vehicles is not an absolute barrier, and more and more competitors are beginning to participate. For example, Tailing has joined the intelligent transformation by carrying Huawei's Hongmeng system, and Huawei's strong user base and R&D strength far exceed the capabilities of Nine Company.

At the same time, while the domestic two-wheeled electric vehicle market is shrinking and slowing down, the overseas market has shown a vigorous growth trend, and the overseas strategy has quietly transformed into a "compulsory course" for domestic two-wheeled electric vehicle manufacturers.

From the traditional brands represented by Yadea, Emma, Tailing and Xinri, to the cutting-edge brands represented by Maverick Electric and Nine Company, as well as DJI, which announced its entry into the E-bike, and Harrow, which has shared electric vehicles overseas, has gone to sea, the overseas market is a "gold mine" to be explored, which has brought more possibilities to Nine Company, and the competition in the overlapping market should not be underestimated.

In addition to two-wheeled electric vehicles, under the general trend of "cost-effective consumption" in China, scooters and balance vehicles without the right of way may be difficult to have explosive growth. In the future, the main incremental market of Nine's balance bike business will also be overseas.

However, overseas, due to the awkward positioning, many countries have strict restrictions on balance bikes and scooters, and it is difficult for related industries to continue to grow at a high rate.

This also determines that the global market space for electric scooters is very limited. According to statistics from Fortune Business Insights, the global electric scooter market size is expected to be $19.43 billion in 2024 and reach $50.15 billion in 2032, with a CAGR of only 12.6% from 2024 to 2032.

An industry insider said that if Nine wants to maintain its current high growth expectations, it must continue to define more new products in the electric short transportation track, and switch revenue growth to innovative business before the two-wheeled electric vehicle and balance car market enters the red ocean.

And this is the fundamental reason why Nine is betting on service robots.

Up to now, the main robots of Nine Company are mainly concentrated in hotel delivery robots and lawn mower robots.

According to the financial report, the products of No. 9 Robot have covered nearly 10,000 hotels, restaurants and other industries in China, successfully settled in first-tier hotel groups such as Marriott and Hilton, and reached in-depth cooperation with head hotel groups such as Jin Jiang Group, Shangmei, Green, and Atour, with a total of hundreds of millions of deliveries.

Another lawn mower robot has made some progress, with its revenue reaching 449 million yuan in the first half of the year.

According to Fortune Business Insights, the global robotic lawn mower market size was valued at USD 1.29 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow from USD 1.48 billion in 2021 to USD 4.04 billion by 2028 at a CAGR of 15.5%.

Although Nine's lawn mower robot has a certain channel advantage, it can reuse its Segway scooter channel overseas, and rely on the popularity of the Segway brand in Europe and the United States to enter the offline channel.

But this cake has also been targeted by many companies. In addition to this track, including No. 9, Ecovacs, Songling, Dreame, and Stone, there are also strong competitors who are mainly engaged in lawn mowers, including Daye Co., Ltd., Glebo, etc.

In other words, Nine is not a small company in competition when it comes to lawn mower robots.

Looking at the future from the present, whether Nine can replicate its miracle in electric two-wheelers and balance bikes is directly related to how far it can go on the road of "smart mobility capability company".

This article is from the WeChat public account "Finance Mowgli", author: Xiao Tian, 36 Krypton is authorized to publish.