SECOND QUARTER TRANSACTIONS REPORT 2018 Roboticsbusinessreview.Com
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The Old Way Up to The New Way 670 sort locations Applications • E-commerce Order Fulfillment • Return Center Processing • Pre-Sorting Inventory • Kit Building • Direct Store Delivery (DSD) • Transshipment/Cross Docking Up to • Last Mile Delivery 2,400 items per hour 305 Commerce Drive, Moorestown, NJ 08057 opex.com | 856.727.1100 TRANSACTIONS REPORT 2018 FIRST QUARTER China Evergrande led the past quarter with several large investments in automation. Source: iStock Chinese Funds Lead Q2 Automation Transactions By Jim Nash In the second quarter of 2018, China’s second-largest real-estate developer announced that it will raise a $16 billion technology investment fund over the next decade. Advanced automation hardware and software will be a major focus of the fund, created by the China Evergrande Group. At $1.59 billion per year, this commitment was the largest robotics transaction of the second quarter. And while far larger funds have been announced in the past couple of years, the importance of debt-swamped China Evergrande’s move transcends the quarter. And in a June deal, one of China Evergrande’s subsidiaries sank $860 million into Faraday Future, the troubled and previously money-starved startup developing a sleek, artificial intelligence-enhanced car, the FF91. China Evergrande pledged another $1.2 billion in two more payments, for a total of roboticsbusinessreview.com 3 TRANSACTIONS REPORT 2018 SECOND QUARTER about $2 billion. (More on this and other significant deals below.) Advanced automation’s rise to economic and cultural ubiquity ultimately may not resemble the legendary hockey-stick path, but this fund’s creation will have been found to be very close to the industry’s first real climb. That’s because, back in 2015, China’s government decided to re-align the world’s second-largest (and centrally controlled) economy. The aim of Made in China 2025, as the 10-year campaign is called, is to make the country the undisputed global leader in automation and other technologies. This focus likely will do for robotics what a previous plan out of Beijing did for global manufacturing. This move could be chalked up to simple politics. Hui Ka Yan, China Evergrande’s founder and chairman, might be showing $16 billion worth of loyalty to China’s leader, Xi Jiping. But even if that were the only reason, the new fund shows how seriously the nation’s powerful and wealthy take Xi’s priorities. Hui could just be trying to re-energize the publicly traded company. Shares of the firm have fallen by a third following a big 2017. But his choice -- automation -- indicates that even a Chinese land developer sees a lot of short- to mid-term upside with the move. ROBOTICS PART OF CHINESE DIVERSIFICATION Also in the second quarter, China Evergrande invested in another hot economic area -- healthcare. It’s small by comparison: $4 billion. Fully $4 billion will build a “Silicon Valley for health care” in Chongqing. If funding is the focus, it would seem the company sees several times more opportunity in robotics and other technology. roboticsbusinessreview.com 4 TRANSACTIONS REPORT 2018 FIRST QUARTER Still, maybe it’s just a diversification play. Like most large Asian firms, China Evergrande is involved in dozens of side bets, such as subsidiaries involving the Internet and medical cosmetology. All of the above influenced Hui, and the same is true across China. Indeed, each of the previous theories point to broader Chinese investment in robotics. The result will be accelerated growth for automation. It bears mentioning that during the first quarter, in Japan, Nikko Asset Management’s robotics equity fund hit the psychologically important 1 trillion yen, or $9.17 billion, asset benchmark. Nikkei Asian Review proclaimed that Japanese investment money is leaving the monthly dividends of investment trusts, such as those for real estate, for growth opportunities -- in this case, robotics. BIG DEALS CONTINUE ACROSS AUTOMATION Now, a summary of the quarter’s biggest deals, according to funds committed. As discussed above, China Evergrande’s announced equity fund is big whether you look at the first installment, $1.59 billion, or at the entire 10-year pledge. In one bite, the commitment would be the top robotics investment in the second quarter. The No. 2 deal, in terms of capital committed, arrived in May, when executives with the SoftBank Vision Fund said it was making a placement of $2.25 billion in GM’s autonomous-vehicle unit, GM Cruise LLC (doing business as Cruise Automation). GM itself will invest $1.1 billion in GM Cruise upon closing of the transaction, for undisclosed reasons. We looked at these deals as one $3.35 billion move. roboticsbusinessreview.com 5 TRANSACTIONS REPORT 2018 FIRST QUARTER Bloomberg in April reported that two investors -- Schneider Electric SE and Temasek Holdings Pte. -- picked up the electrical and automation unit of Indian manufacturing and construction conglomerate Larsen & Toubro Ltd. Suffering through India’s long economic trough, Larsen is lightening its load. The unit fetched $2.1 billion, including debt, making it the No. 3 transaction. Schneider will have a 74% stake. Temasek, Singapore sovereign wealth fund, gets the rest. Electric car maker Faraday Future received billions in first- round funding. Source: iStock Also mentioned above, China Evergrande’s all-in $2 billion placement in Faraday Future netted the investor a 45% stake in the U.S. electric-vehicle startup. It was the fourth-biggest investment of the quarter, and possibly the most unusually structured purchase of the year. Reuters does a good job of separating the spaghetti. Suffice it to say that China Evergrande will lend money to its subsidiary, China Evergrande Health Industry Group Ltd. On the heels of that deal was the $1.9 billion placement in April into the truck- roboticsbusinessreview.com 6 TRANSACTIONS REPORT 2018 FIRST QUARTER hailing provider Full Truck Alliance Group, more often referred to as Manbang Group. Investors included the SoftBank Vision Fund and CapitalG, Alphabet Inc.’s late- stage venture fund. The China Reform Fund, a private-equity firm owned by the Chinese government, also participated. MANUFACTURING AND SUPPLY CHAIN DEALS A $1.4 billion investment by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Cainiao Network was the quarter’s No. 6 announced deal. Receiving the funding was Chinese express-courier ZTO Express Inc. ZTO is the biggest deliverer in terms of market share in China. It is experimenting broadly with automation to squeeze every possible cent and second out of its portion of an enormous and chaotic supply-chain environment. In June, Rockwell Automation said it would pay $1 billion for 8.4% of PTC, which writes code to optimize the convergence of a manufacturer’s physical and digital halves. Rockwell, maker of factory automation hardware, recognizes that it needs to bolster its software capabilities if it is to win more factory update contracts, particularly those requiring Internet of Things infrastructure. Also in June, Toyota Motor Corp. made what Bloomberg called “the largest ever bet by an automaker in ride hailing.” Toyota is investing $1 billion in Grab Holdings Inc., which, like most ride-hailing firms, is working on autonomous vehicles. roboticsbusinessreview.com 7 TRANSACTIONS REPORT 2018 FIRST QUARTER Source: Arevo 3D Printing Startup Arevo Names New CEO, $12.5M Funding Round By Keith Shaw Arevo Inc., a 3D printing startup that combines robotics, software, and specialized composite materials, in May announced a new CEO and $12.5 million in Series B funding. Jim Miller, named as the new CEO of the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company, (above) A combination of worked previously at Amazon and Google. He will help move Arevo from the a robotic arm, laboratory phase to full-scale commercialization, said founder Hemant Bheda, a turntable, who remains the chairman of Arevo’s board. and advanced software helps The funding round was led by Asahi Glass, with participation from Leslie Arevo create stronger Ventures, Khosla Ventures and Sumitomo Corporation of Americas. parts for manufacturing. A $1T OPPORTUNITY FOR AREVO And it’s showing Bheda said he sees a $1 trillion opportunity to convert metal parts into a 3D-printed composite materials, which has largely been unmet by the additive bike to prove the technology. manufacturing, or 3D printing, market. High costs of making the parts, a lack roboticsbusinessreview.com 8 TRANSACTIONS REPORT 2018 FIRST QUARTER of scalability, and lack of software have prevented many companies from achieving this, he said. “Our insight was that additive manufacturing with robotics has the potential to address all of these three things,” Bheda said. To achieve this, Arevo has produced a combination of software, a robotic arm, and a spinning plate that can create these composite materials in a true 3D manner. “When we looked at the current 3D printing that has been applied for prototyping, the layers are deposited in a planar fashion on an X-Y plane,” Bheda said. “Our observation was that this gives rise to weakness in the Z direction, which needed to be addressed.” For parts that require higher strength, such as composite materials, Bheda said it was limiting to print in the X-Y plane.