Looking back on the past three years, a series of capital actions have been carried out frequently around the exploration of new tracks and the transformation and upgrading of traditional tracks in China's logistics industry. In general, the average annual industry financing scale of China's logistics industry in the past three years has exceeded 50 billion yuan, and it reflects two distinctive features: first, the average single project financing scale has shown a continuous upward trend; second, financial investment and Make strategic investments simultaneously to jointly promote the development of China's logistics industry.
In fact, in recent years, the integration between the logistics industry and capital has become increasingly close and mutually reinforcing. Roland Berger has participated in many important investment and acquisition events in China's logistics industry in the past many years. This article discusses investment opportunities in my country's logistics industry under the new pattern with industry colleagues.
1. What are the investment hot spots in China’s logistics industry in recent years?
First of all, from the perspective of the transport capacity market, there have been three key investment themes in the past, namely accelerating integration, finding new tracks and new business models.
1) Accelerated integration
The concentration of the network-based express delivery industry continues to increase. At the same time, the growth rate of the external market driven by e-commerce is gradually slowing down. The competition among mainstream players around cost, efficiency and price has entered a fierce state. In fact, capital power has been an important driving force in the accelerated consolidation of the domestic express delivery industry over the past many years.
2) Xinmi Circuit
With the gradual fragmentation of China's logistics market and the development of large-scale e-commerce, the online express transportation force in the traditional Chinese road less-than-truckload industry has been favored in the past. The huge scale of the highway LTL market and the extremely fragmented market characteristics make the new express network track attract a lot of capital attention.
Financing in the express industry is characterized by large single financing amounts, late overall financing rounds, high frequency of strategic financing, and obvious cash-attracting effects of leading players.
3) New business model
The two-way dispersion of China's transport capacity market and freight demand market, coupled with the implementation of the Internet model, have jointly promoted the rise of transport capacity matching and crowdsourcing platform models in areas including trunk lines, urban distribution and the "last mile", and have become the mainstay of logistics in recent years. One of the investment hotspots in the industry.
Smart logistics has also been one of the hot investment themes in the logistics industry in the past. With the maturity of IoT, cloud computing, AI and other technologies, as well as the supply side's cost reduction requirements, many logistics technologies represented by flexible AMR and AGV robots have attracted capital attention in the past few years, and a number of industry leading companies have been hatched. .
At the same time, as autonomous driving technology is gradually implemented on pilot projects, the field of unmanned logistics has also attracted a large number of start-up companies. In the terminal distribution link, smart express cabinets have completed large-scale deployment with the help of capital.
At the same time, beyond the perspective of logistics, at the supply chain level, the integrated and empowered comprehensive supply chain platform is rapidly emerging in the domestic circular market. The B2B supply chain of fresh ingredients and fast-moving consumer goods is due to the market size and the mature genes of the Internet on the consumer side . It has the highest attention among many vertical segments.
In the international circular market, cross-border e-commerce drives the development of international logistics, and "both light and heavy enterprises" in the cross-border logistics chain are pursued by capital. Among them, the light model uses technological means to improve matching efficiency, reduce information asymmetry, and open up the international logistics information chain through transaction/settlement, SaaS, container matching, etc.; while the heavy model uses overseas development dividends from cross-border e-commerce. Cross-border logistics companies that mainly organize warehousing and dedicated line transportation capacity have become a focus of capital attention in the past, hoping to be the first to seize important strategic nodes.
So, what kind of logistics ecological pattern will China form in the future ?
We believe that China's logistics industry will form a comprehensive ecosystem jointly constructed by five types of players in the future ; and that various types of players will form differentiated value shaping points in their respective tracks and promote and support each other.
2. What investment opportunities will there be in the future?
What new requirements has China's macroeconomic development put forward for the logistics industry ? Considering the future logistics ecology, what are the foreseeable investment opportunities in the logistics industry in the future?
Under the COVID-19 epidemic, the global political and economic landscape has changed dramatically, and the central government has proposed a new development pattern of "dual circulation". Logistics, as a social circulation system, is of great significance in the dual circulation development pattern.
Therefore, the logistics industry, which protects people's livelihood, needs to seize opportunities and promote cost reduction and efficiency improvement, improve supply chain flexibility, promote industrial chain collaboration, and strengthen linkage with the manufacturing industry. Among them, six key directions constitute the main line and key words for the development of the logistics industry in the next stage.
Combining the positioning of future logistics ecosystem players and national macro-development requirements, we believe that multimodal transport, supply chain integration, and smart logistics are investment hot spots in the future potential logistics ecosystem.
1) Multimodal transport
Driven by demand, policy, and technology, multimodal transport will be an important way for the development of long-distance transportation in my country in the medium and long term, and will become an important transportation method and practical guarantee for bulk materials.
However, at present, there are still considerable pain points in multimodal transport. How to grasp the core node resources of multimodal transport and open up information links will become the core and will also become an important investment direction.
2) Supply chain integration
From the perspective of a supply chain integrator, there are two main types of investment opportunities.
First, the outside in perspective: seize opportunities in vertical industries where the current production end and sales end are still relatively dispersed, that is, more investment opportunities in vertically segmented B2B platforms to promote supply chain efficiency improvements in various industries.
In the industrial Internet stage, due to the specific attributes of different vertical industries in terms of circulation systems, upstream and downstream dispersion, and logistics and transportation requirements, and based on the development experience of 2B service markets in developed countries, each track is expected to incubate a number of giants.
In the industrial Internet system, capital flow and information flow (such as SaaS) serve as financial and technical guarantees, and the supply chain platform surrounding business flow and logistics links improves industry efficiency through supply chain transformation and empowerment. Among them, sub-sectors such as auto parts, fresh food, textile raw materials, industrial products, steel bulks, etc. that have relatively high standards, transaction dynamics, and considerable interest rate differentials are expected to be the first to break through.
Second, the inside out perspective: a number of high-quality supply chain companies emerged during the process of externalization and marketization of relevant capabilities by relying on the company's own supply chain capabilities that originally served internal purposes.
The internal logistics of the original enterprise accumulated advantages through its own vertical fields and capabilities, integrated stock logistics resources to release vitality, copied externally, and then copied across industries to other vertical fields.
In the process of socialization of logistics capabilities, the original supply chain companies and cargo owners in other vertical industries and logistics companies in other vertical fields carry out capital binding at the strategic level to speed up industry expansion and customer acquisition, and form a stronger moat of capabilities.
3) Smart logistics technology
Investment in smart equipment has been hot in the past, and technology software will become another hot spot for investment in the future, while midstream system integrators and ecological participants will form integrated solution capabilities through strategic investment.