Construction machinery industry entered a period of moderate growth

Deep decline in profits

In 2013, the political and economic situation in the world was in turmoil. The construction machinery industry, which is highly related to global infrastructure construction, is also facing unprecedented challenges. In the first half of the year, the operating profit of the world's major construction machinery makers fell by 42%, and companies have adopted a method of accelerating destocking and reducing costs, so as to highlight the "winter" and further highlight the seriousness of the situation.

The same rampant industrial climate also spreads to China. At present, China has become the world's largest construction machinery market with annual sales of more than 500 billion yuan (about 80 billion US dollars). However, since 2012, Chinese construction machinery companies have experienced almost the same intensity of impact.

However, in this emerging market of 1.4 billion people, the "new urbanization" proposed that the world received a strong signal of "a new round of investment is about to start." More and more attention has been directed to China, and more and more More than expected to be placed in this market.

As we all know, when the traditional competitive advantages such as demographic dividends and foreign trade have changed, the whole of China is embarking on the promotion of innovation and upgrading of various industries and efforts to climb to the high end of the global value chain. The task is even more arduous and urgent. Since the global financial crisis in 2008, the group of Chinese construction machinery companies is relying on the technological foundation and the ability to innovate, and has continuously accelerated the grand process of industrial upgrading and integration into the world. Since 2012, XCMG acquired German Schweing, Zoomlion wholly owns CIFA, and Sany Heavy Industry has acquired elephants. It is in recent years that Chinese companies have concentrated on leveraging technological innovation and integrating global resources.

At the meeting, Su Zimeng, secretary general of the China Construction Machinery Industry Association, said that for a long time to come, China will continue to be an important engine for recovery and growth of the world economy. With the deepening of global, especially China's economic adjustment, the improvement of the industrial ecosystem, the changes in the market competition environment and rules, and the adjustment of the pace of growth, the Chinese construction machinery industry will leapfrog in terms of its development model and growth quality. Promote.

The two parallel forums held during the same period focused on more targeted topics and more in-depth discussion space, attracting hundreds of high-level and powerful users in the industry. Among them, the “Global Excavator Summit” came into being when the industry was in a quagmire and needed to be solved. Various interest communities upstream and downstream of the excavator industry chain expressed their views on this platform and conspired for a healthy, healthy and sustainable development of the industry. Way. The “China Lifting Top 100 Summit” is the first time to bring together the most powerful heads of 100 lifting construction companies in China to conduct in-depth dialogues with manufacturers’ representatives to explore a win-win situation.

Many industry leaders said that the low growth rate does not mean that the market for construction machinery has become smaller, but instead it is an opportunity for companies to improve their internal strength.

A distributor in North China stated that from the perspective of industry trends, the running time of equipment in the industry has already dropped by a large margin from the previous two years, and it has stabilized and even slightly increased.

Zhan Chunxin also believes that the contraction period of the industry is a critical period for corporate self-organization. Since the fourth quarter of 2012, Zoomlion has taken the initiative to adjust its business strategy, which is centered on pursuing scale growth as the core and pursuing quality management. According to the 2013 semi-annual report, Zoomlion’s reform dividend has begun to be realized and sales have recovered in the second quarter, with operating income and net profit increased by 138% and 290% respectively in the quarter; net cash flow from operating activities was RMB 1.157 billion. The year-on-year increase was 97.47%.

Strong leader

The conference also announced the list of the world's top 50 engineering machinery manufacturers. The total sales of the top 50 companies reached a total of US$97.65 billion. Although the historical records were again refreshed, the increase was noticeably lower than last year. In terms of specific rankings, Caterpillar ranked first, and Xugong Group, Zoomlion, and Sany Heavy Industry entered the top ten, ranking fifth, sixth, and tenth respectively.

Of the 50 companies, 26 companies achieved growth in sales, of which 19 were from Europe and the United States. At the same time, sales of 24 companies fell, including 18 Asian companies. It is not difficult to see that although the recovery of the U.S. and European markets is not a force, compared with other countries, these have almost experienced a number of U.S. and European companies with fluctuations in the economic cycle, relying on their accumulated experience and strength to be outstanding globally. Completed a counterattack.

However, the profits of the top 50 companies totaled 21.075 billion U.S. dollars, down 5.46% year-on-year, of which only 15 companies had an increase in operating profits.

The performance of Chinese companies has been a huge gap with the previous one. From the point of view of growth capacity or ranking of the rankings, there has been a large decline in the number of Chinese legions. Of the 11 Chinese companies that were shortlisted, the fifth and sixth ranked XCMG Group and Zoomlion continued to maintain growth. The newly-listed Northern Heavy-duty Truck Co., Ltd. achieved growth, while other companies’ sales declined, and the rankings also showed a downward trend. .

Changes in rankings are related to fluctuations in the domestic market. Since April 2011, China's construction machinery industry has dropped from a double-digit “high-speed growth” period to a “moderate-speed growth” period. The convergence strategy of domestic construction machinery enterprises toward high-end and enterprising brings the industry into a post-competition era.

At the Global Construction Machinery Industry Conference, Chairman Xu Min of XCMG Group clearly pointed out the path for the industry and its own companies to solve problems: “China’s construction machinery companies have mastered 90% of the technology, and the most advanced technology is still 10%. These cutting-edge technologies are in the hands of very few companies, and as outstanding companies, they must pool the best talents and use more energy to target this 10% technical problem and use technological breakthroughs to achieve enterprise development."

In order to overcome this difficulty, XCMG accelerated the pace of globalization. As the first overseas manufacturing base of XCMG, the Brazilian manufacturing company has put into trial operation at the end of July this year. XCMG's companies in Poland, Uzbekistan, Argentina, Malaysia, India and other countries have also started production. On October 12, XCMG Europe Co., Ltd. officially operated at the European R&D center in Germany. In the first three quarters of this year, Xugong’s market share of mobile cranes continued to be the largest in the world. In the first three quarters, it achieved operating revenue of 58 billion yuan and earned foreign exchange of 710 million US dollars.

In addition, although the industry as a whole is still stalled with growth, leading companies still maintain growth.

In addition to Zoomlion, Anhui Heli is an example. A person in charge of the company said that the company is expected to maintain a growth rate of around 20% in the third quarter, "a full-year estimate is acceptable."

The reason is that the forklift faces the industrial market downstream, and it is different from the construction downstream market that excavators and loaders face. In addition, in recent years, the battle of callers has led to the flourishing of the downstream warehousing and logistics channels, which also feeds back the forklift manufacturers.

Affected by the investment in downstream projects, there is also road machinery. A staff member of Changlin said that the construction of new rural areas has been relatively hot in recent years, and the village roads and related road hardening projects have driven demand for road machinery.

Similar to this is the on-board crane. According to statistics, only one fifth of trucks abroad are delivered with cranes, and only one percent in China. An industry analyst said, "Engineering machinery companies should pay more attention to the subdivision demand in urbanization, and Mechanized improvement."