Gaogong LED·Weekly | Overseas acquisition, filament lamp, plant lighting, intelligent lighting... LED industry hotspots are constantly raging

This week, cross-border acquisitions between China and Germany have once again become the focus of continued media attention.

First, Germany’s "Economic Weekly" quoted financial sources as saying that the German government has rejected a request from the Chinese side, hoping that Germany would approve the Chinese consortium to acquire Osram's Ledvance. department.

On November 2, Osram WeChat public account issued a notice clarifying that the review of the acquisition case has its established process, including the approval of the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy. The whole process is no different than expected, but some media have made many false statements about the review process.

Subsequently, Mulinsen also issued an announcement, the approval body is in the process of reviewing the transaction according to the standard procedures, and the approval process is in line with Osram's prior expectations.

Of course, the focus is not only Osram but also Ai Siqiang, which is the source of so-called national technical security.

On October 24, the German Ministry of Economic Affairs announced that it had withdrawn the previous non-objection certificate issued by the Fujian Hongxin Investment Fund (FCG) to acquire the German semiconductor giant Aixtron due to "some safety-related news". Restart the appropriate review process.

Earlier, German Deputy Prime Minister and Federal Minister of Economics and Energy Gabriel wrote in the media criticizing China for unilaterally setting trade barriers and announcing that Europe will further protect safety-related technologies in the future.

Who knows what is going on, this week, when Gabriel visited Chengdu, Sichuan, he said that Germany is happy to see the good momentum of Chinese companies going to Germany and will continue to welcome investment from China.

According to Reuters, Gabriel’s speech was very friendly during his visit to Chengdu. He praised the current prosperity of foreign-invested companies including Chinese-funded enterprises in Germany, stressing that Germany is a country that does not impose any restrictions on foreign investment in principle, except for security reasons. "China is increasing its investment in Germany, which is a good thing," Gabriel said. (poke for details)

Obviously, this is just a small episode in the process of overseas acquisitions by Chinese companies. This week, under the LED industry, there are two companies that have encountered some troubles.

Shangyu Lighting: Due to the failure to pay the compensation for departing employees in accordance with the time agreed in the previous agreement, this week, the event of “Blocking the Factory Door” was staged. In June of this year, due to the poor operating conditions of Shangyu Lighting, some employees were terminated from the labor contract and an agreement was reached on the salary and the amount of compensation. (poke for details)

In July, the wages and compensations were not credited to the employee's salary card. The employees applied to the labor department for labor arbitration. After coordination, they reached a supplementary agreement for paying the first-time salary and paying compensation before October 29, but wait until October 29. On the day, the compensation was still not paid.

The relevant parties disclosed: "The investor said that it is now financing. Originally, we promised that we will be October 29! The rest of the money can't be given now, saying that it has not yet reached the money. It is expected to be at the end of December, but they can't guarantee it. ”

On the official website of Shangyu Lighting, “In April 2013, Jingdong teamed up with Shangyu Lighting to light up the Chinese family energy conservation plan.” became the last press release.

The problem is also the Dehao Runda. In the overall LED industry, the performance of the company's three quarterly report is generally good news, Dehao Runda, which has nearly 70% decline in performance, is somewhat dwarfed.

Dehao Runda’s secretary-general office replied that the company’s performance declined, mainly due to the fall in the overall price of LED products. The overcapacity problem in the industry has led to the price of LED products continuing to be low in recent years.

The unavoidable fact is that unsatisfactory performance has dragged down the company's refinancing to a certain extent. Dehao Runda also said that in view of financing costs, the company has cancelled bond issuance and short-term securities lending financing plans this year. (poke for details)

Looking at what other big events this week?

Industrial differentiation: from China to the world

2016 is about to enter the final closing stage. Judging from the performance of the three quarterly reports, the global LED industry has seen a trend of differentiation between Chinese and foreign companies.

In the LED epitaxial chip segment, the performance of Chinese enterprises represented by Sanan Optoelectronics and Huacan Optoelectronics continued to grow steadily; the LED packaging segment, the packaging giant represented by Mulinsen, Honglizhihui and Guoxing Optoelectronics, the first three quarters Both show a situation of increasing income and increasing profits.

At the lighting application end, domestic large factories represented by sunlight lighting and Foshan lighting have not been affected by market competition. Through automatic production line introduction, supply chain and management cost control, both revenues and net profit have shown two-way growth. trend.

However, in contrast, international companies such as CREE and Philips have experienced a decline in revenue, net profit growth, and even negative growth.

Although it turned profitable this quarter, revenues fell by double digits and announced a moratorium on all external M&A activities. Financial data showed that revenue fell 16% year-on-year to $321 million compared to the same period last year.

Philips Lighting announced its quarterly results as of the end of September, with a net profit of 51 million euros (approximately 434 million Hong Kong dollars), down 30.1% year-on-year. During the reporting period, sales fell 5.4% to 1.745 billion euros (approximately 14.952 billion Hong Kong dollars), while comparable sales fell 3.3% year-on-year.

"Compared with international companies such as Cree and Philips, the performance of China's LED listed companies is relatively good because domestic companies are gradually occupying the market and have reached the requirements of the middle and high-end market in terms of technology, quality and brand." According to Chairman Jin Jinsong, Chinese companies have stronger cost control capabilities.

China LED chip global layout

The pace of globalization of China's LED epitaxial chip companies is accelerating.

This week, Huacan Optoelectronics (300323) issued an announcement, and the board of directors approved the “Memorandum of Understanding on Sino-foreign Joint Venture Project Cooperation” signed by the company and South Korea’s SemiconLight. Founded in 2007, Semicon Light currently specializes in flip chip, chip scale packaging and UV products. In 2015, the company was listed on KOSDAQ in South Korea.

Since the beginning of this year, domestic LED chip manufacturers have frequently operated and continued to sprint production capacity to maintain the pace of expansion. In contrast, a number of international LED chip companies are reducing production capacity to alleviate the current situation of supply and demand imbalance in the LED industry and the fall in prices. pressure.

In addition to the deep strategic binding with South Korea's SemiconLight, Huacan Optoelectronics is also on the epitaxial chip related equipment.

Huacan Optoelectronics previously announced the partnership with Australian company BluGlass to explore the application of aluminum nitride (AlN) low temperature deposition on high brightness LEDs and explore the advantages of RPCVD in green LED production.

"LED extension, chip and industrial chain extension projects mainly focus on building an internationally renowned LED industry base. Through the implementation of the project, the upstream and downstream of the LED industry chain and supporting enterprises will be concentrated, which will help further expand the company's scale and cost advantages and enhance the company's core. Competitiveness and industry influence.” Bian Difei, vice president of Huacan Optoelectronics, said.

In addition to technical cooperation and overseas market layout, Huacan Optoelectronics is even more aggressive in its capacity expansion.

In the view of Bian Defei, the LED chip industry as a capital and technology-intensive industry, as the industry matures, the market share will accelerate the concentration of enterprises with technological and scale advantages, and the industry concentration will also lean toward the dominant enterprises. .

Filament light, hot spot is also a risk point

During the four-day Hong Kong International Autumn Lighting Fair, LED filament lamps have become a hot potential product in the LED lighting market. Many LED companies have entered the filament lamp market and brought a variety of new products to the show.

The filament lamp market is heating up in all directions, driven by the two-way drive of business and market demand. As incandescent lamps accelerate their exit from the market, filament lamps, which replace traditional incandescent lamps as the main market, have naturally become the products of choice for consumers.

According to the statistics of the High-tech Research Institute LED Research Institute (GGII), the global LED filament lamp market demand reached 70 million in 2015. It is expected that the global LED filament lamp demand will reach 220 million in 2016, an increase of 367%.

According to the average selling price, the global LED filament lamp market reached 1.19 billion yuan in 2015. It is expected that the global LED filament lamp market will reach 2.9 billion yuan in 2016, a year-on-year increase of 294%. GGII expects that the global demand for LED filament lamps will increase by 70% annually in the next five years.

Many people in the industry have said that LED filament lamps will once again usher in "spring". Compared with a wave of enthusiasm a few years ago, this market demand seems to be more reliable.

With the gradual maturity of the process, the decline in material prices, and the large-scale production of equipment, the cost of filament lamps is relatively large.

There are also concerns in the industry: the current filament lamp industry is developing too fast, and the entire market is somewhat impetuous. The patent issue is one of the focal points.

Previously, Jingyuan Optoelectronics filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Adamax (selling under the Newhouse Lighting brand) in the US District Court for the Northern California on August 30, 2016.

This week, Jingdian and Adamax reached a patent settlement, which will pay the crystal power premium in future LED filament products.

At the same time, Jingyuan Optoelectronics (Crystal Power) announced that it has signed a patent license agreement with Super Time Light Source (Group) Co., Ltd. (Super Time), and obtained the patent for the related patents of Jingdian LED Filament in the era.

Jingdian has a key patent portfolio related to LED filament and filament lamp technology. In addition to the LED filament structure, this patent portfolio covers lighting products equipped with LED filaments.

Rui Disheng CEO believes that “small enterprises do not pay attention to patent issues. In this case, we need to make a difference and come out to defend the patent rights.” Ruidisheng has been in 23 countries in Europe, Asia, America and other regions. Obtained patent recognition for filament lamps.

Intelligent lighting, the market enters deep water

In recent years, cooperation between LED lighting companies and the Internet and intelligent control giants has emerged one after another. This year, Huawei is the first to establish an intelligent lighting eco-chain with LED lighting companies such as Op, Rieter, Philips Lighting and China Micro-Optical Electronics.

This time, Philips Lighting broke the past cooperation model and chose a joint venture approach with the intention of increasing market promotion.

On November 2nd, Philips Lighting and China's Internet leading company Xiaomi signed an agreement in Beijing to form a new joint venture to jointly promote the development of smart connected home lighting in China.

The newly formed joint venture company will design and develop intelligent and interconnected LED lighting products for Xiaomi's smart home ecosystem, enabling intelligent control of lighting for applications (Apps) in Android and Apple smartphones.

The joint venture will further expand the territory of both smart connected lighting and smart home ecosystems in China.

“It’s a win-win situation to combine Xiaomi’s highly acclaimed smart home ecosystem and online marketing strategy with Philips Lighting’s superior smart connected lighting technology,” said Wang Wei, president of Philips Lighting Greater China. “In the future In the coming months, we will gradually provide more users with leading-edge, high-performance smart connected LED lighting products to users of Xiaomi Smart Home Ecosystem."

“Philips Lighting is a global leader in lighting and has a history of more than 100 years. Xiaomi has the largest intelligent family ecosystem in China with the most extensive product categories and the largest number of users,” Xiaomi Co-founder and Vice President, Xiaomi Liu De, head of the eco-chain, said, “Through this cooperation, Xiaomi will work with Philips Lighting to leverage the advantages of both parties in their respective fields to provide users with the most intelligent lighting product experience.”

Behind Philips Lighting's joint venture Xiaomi, Philips Lighting hopes to break the market squeeze of the domestic LED lighting companies that are constrained by the traditional LED lighting business in the Chinese market.

Plant lighting, arrow on the string

With the increasingly fierce competition in the general lighting market, many LED manufacturers have launched market segments such as plant lighting, ultraviolet LED, and visible light communication to open up a new way.

Among them, greening plant lighting has become another "blue sea" of LED lighting.

According to the statistics of the High-tech Research Institute LED Research Institute (GGII), the output value of global LED application plant lighting has shown rapid growth since last year. International lighting manufacturers Philips, Osram, GE, Toshiba, Mitsubishi Chemical, Sharp, Panasonic have already competed. In the field of plant lighting, the beginning of the exhibition.

With the increase in the penetration rate of plant lighting for global LED applications, the Chinese market is slowly emerging, and the market prospects are broad in the future. It is estimated that by 2018, China's LED plant lighting field will reach the market scale of several billion yuan.

During the visit of the Hong Kong International Autumn Lighting Fair, Gaogong LED found that many domestic LED lighting companies have begun to arrange plant lighting and bring new products to the show, attracting many domestic and foreign exhibitors to visit.

Some people in the industry believe that "plant lighting belongs to an emerging market, the price of products is relatively high, and it is relatively used in China. At present, it is mainly based on exports."

According to the statistics of the High-tech Research Institute LED Research Institute (GGII), in 2015, more than 90% of China's LED plant lighting products were exported for export, and the export scale exceeded 20 million US dollars.

In fact, the current LED plant lighting technology is not very difficult, the key is the lack of comprehensive knowledge of biological training knowledge and LED technology.

At the same time, the current domestic LED plant lamp market is still in its infancy. The lamps used in the field of plant growth not only have problems such as high cost and poor light penetration ability, but also have product clutter, irregular production design and lack of uniform quality standards. And so on, and these are the places where we need to solve the upgrade in the future.