The investment community learned that according to the 36 krypton news, recently the domestic comprehensive laser supplier Zhuo Radium Laser announced that it had completed a new round of financing of 200 million yuan, which was jointly invested by the SDB Manufacturing Industry Transformation and Upgrading Fund and SDIC Venture Capital. Potential Capital acted as the exclusive financial adviser for this round of financing. This round of financing will be mainly used for continuous R&D investment and cash flow reserve to make capital reserve for future IPO listing.
Founded in August 2014, Zhuolai Laser focuses on the design, R&D and manufacturing of large-scale complex laser systems represented by ultrafast lasers and high-energy lasers. Its products are widely used in consumer electronics, semiconductors, new energy, scientific research and medical care, and have been exported to developed countries and regions such as South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Israel, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, China.
At present, the global laser market has reached nearly 20 billion dollars. In addition to the largest material processing and lithography application market, laser products are also widely used in communication and optical storage, medical beauty, instruments and sensors, and these fields together promote the continuous growth of the global laser market.
When we put our perspective back to China, although China is the largest laser market in the world, the market has been occupied by foreign manufacturers such as Tongkuai, Langmeitong, Ennai, Coherent, and Yena for a long time, and the opportunity for domestic substitution has gradually emerged. According to the data of Laser Focus World, a professional journal of the global laser and optoelectronics industry, the laser market in China will reach US $10.91 billion in 2020, accounting for 66.12% of the global laser market. At the same time, the size of China's laser market continues to rise, and is expected to reach 14.74 billion US dollars in 2022.
In fact, the large-scale domestic laser enterprises are still generally engaged in the general-purpose civil laser market, with relatively low technical barriers, but large application space and demand. Once overcome, they can quickly occupy a certain market share. This is the early growth path of many domestic listed laser companies.
Wang Tao, CEO of Zhuolai Laser, said that, by contrast, the ultrafast laser and ultra powerful laser focused by the company are still at the beginning or blank stage of the market. The main reasons are that, on the one hand, ultrafast lasers have been used in batch in domestic micro processing scenes since 2013, and the industry started late. In addition, European and American players have obvious first mover advantages and high market monopoly, which has led to the long-term catch-up of domestic ultrafast lasers and low domestic share; On the other hand, at present, the ultra powerful laser is a small and beautiful market, with huge market space in the future. However, its technical barriers are very high, and the price of single products is expensive. It is also in a state of catching up with Europe and the United States. Under the superposition of various factors, there are fewer players in the overall market.
More importantly, domestic and foreign laser giants are mostly concentrated in the vertical integration of industrial laser equipment and the single category laser track, while there are no mature local players in the comprehensive category laser track, which is where the new opportunities for market development lie.
From the perspective of technical path, at present, the laser products of Zhuo radium laser can be divided into three categories: ultra fast laser (picosecond, femtosecond), ultra strong laser and hybrid technology laser, involving more than 50 laser products of more than 10 series. In terms of ultra fast laser, the company has taken the lead in realizing 100 kHz, ＞ 100W infrared, ＞ 50W ultraviolet picosecond laser output in China, and has been widely used in precision micro processing fields such as display screen, flexible circuit board (FPC), transparent brittle materials, superhard materials, and has achieved domestic substitution while taking the lead in market share in China; In terms of ultra strong laser, the single pulse energy can output 2-100J, which has been applied in many fields such as aeroengine blade impact strengthening, large scientific devices, etc. in batch, filling many domestic gaps.
Wang Tao mentioned that in the past three years, the R&D investment of Zhuo radium laser has accounted for 15%, and has gradually built its own technical barriers. Self made and home-made laser key components such as seed source, amplifier, power supply and control, pump source, acousto-optic modulator/isolator, lens/nonlinear crystal/working medium have been realized.
The background of the team is closely related to the innovation and breakthrough of Zhuo radium laser technology. At present, the company has a team size of more than 130 people, with R&D and production technicians accounting for 65%. The core members are all from well-known laser enterprises at home and abroad, such as Spectral Physics, Coherence, IPG, Han's Laser, and have more than 10 years of experience in laser industry R&D and sales.
Speaking of market competition, Wang Tao believes that the characteristics of laser markets at home and abroad are different. "There are basically no domestic brands in the international market. The advantage of this is that we only need to compete with the imported first-line brands, but the disadvantage is that we have to directly compete with the leading players in terms of technical hard indicators. At the same time, there is no local service advantage in the overseas market." He said that compared with the domestic market, the competition is more bloody and fierce, especially the price war.
In the past few years, ultrafast laser and ultrahigh power laser, as the top two main businesses of Zhuo radium laser, accounted for 60% and 30% of the average revenue respectively, while hybrid technology product lines accounted for 10% of the revenue, while overseas revenue accounted for 20%. "Despite the impact of the epidemic on downstream application demand, the company's shipment is expected to achieve a 30% growth this year." Wang Tao mentioned.
In the next five to three years, Zhuo Radium Laser will focus on semiconductor and new energy, launch more laser products for these two fields, and accelerate the laser market covering consumer electronics, new energy, semiconductor, scientific research, medical care and other fields.
Source: investment community
